George Grey needed a job. A long way from his Alabama home, he couldn’t pick cotton like he did when he was a kid. Living in Elmont, working his way through school, raised by a single mother, money was tight. The 14-year-old got a visitor’s pass at the Belmont Park stable gate and started walking horses for Charlie Roberts. Barn 35. Three bucks a horse.
“You let go of the horse, you let go of your job,” Grey said. “I held on for dear life.”
A few years later, Grey needed a better job. A friend of his mother’s found him a job with H. Allen Jerkens. 1970.
The next morning, Grey walked into the high-profile, low-diplomacy Belmont Park barn.
“I don’t need nobody, get him out of here,” Jerkens yelled.
Grey boarded the pirate ship. For 15 years – 15 glorious years.
“I became his favorite. He wanted to adopt me when I was in high school. He signed for my first brand-new car. He gave me a blank check to buy a Mercedes, but he cussed so much and fussed so much, I ripped it up and dropped it on his feet,” said Grey, who bought a Fiat X1/9 instead. “It was amazing to work for him. He would feed at like 3:30, 4:30. We would go out and play football, after that we would go through every stall, the whole barn of 20.”
With grooming jobs tight at the top, Grey walked hots for Jerkens for five years. The tall, skinny black kid from Alabama traipsed through the mud from Clare Court to the infield paddock for the 1973 Whitney at Saratoga. Howard Jones on the shank. Grey with a bucket and a sponge. Secretariat on the stage. And Onion on the prowl. Grey knew he was going to win.
“I knew it because I would take Onion out and graze him all the time. You can tell when a horse is coming around,” Grey said. “It was beautiful, Chief could catch a horse in his rhythm. He could catch them at the right time and sick em on whoever.”
There was no bigger whoever than Secretariat.
Four days after winning an allowance race going 6 ½ furlongs on Opening Day of Saratoga, Onion did the impossible, ousting the Triple Crown winner, a deft and theft front-running gem at 1 1/8 miles.
“He beat good horses with cheap horses. You could feel it. When a horse gets to where they can beat anybody, everybody, you could see it,” Grey said. “The crowd? It was silence. Silence. We beat the 1-5 shot. He won on Tuesday and came back on Saturday, socked it to Secretariat. He ran 6 ½ in 15 and 1 and come back and run a 1:48 on Secretariat.”
Secretariat was 1-10 and Onion stopped the clock in 1:49 1/5, but who’s counting?
“He’d run them until they cooled off. And then he would pull their shoes off and turn them out in the pen or in the back of the barn. He could squeeze the lemon,” Grey said. “A horse win four in a row and he seen they’re drying up, he’d stop on them. Where others might get greedy and keep going.”
Two years after Onion, Grey was still walking horses and helping Duck Butter, Howard Jones, Usses, Paycheck. Flannel and fleece artists, they taught Grey how to wrap legs and mine diamonds. Five years in and still turning left, Grey wanted a promotion.
“Well, Chief when am I going to get some horses to rub?’ Grey asked.
“I can’t give you none of my horses,” Jerkens said. “You don’t even know how to put a bandage on.’ “
“Chief, I been putting bandages on your best horses, what you talking about?” Grey said.
Jerkens sent Sailors Watch Grey’s way. A back-of-the-knee chestnut son of Crewman and Seven Thirty, they called him the Funky Sailor when he walked. Problems were dares in that barn.
“In the wintertime, I would put an ice tub out there, let it snow, ice, then break the ice and put him in there before he went to the track and put him in there when he came back from the track. I’d put six bandages on him,” Grey said. “He would eat apple turnovers, bacon and eggs, everything I ate, he ate. He had problems, but run, good golly, good golly. That joker, he would give you everything.”
And then there was Kinsman Hope. The chestnut son of Swoon’s Son won the Remsen in 1972 but was on the skids when he joined Jerkens’ barn two years later. He won the Tom Fool in 1975, the Royal Poinciana in 1976.
“That horse ended up winning seven races in a row,” Grey said. “You see him take a horse, buy a horse…he had a horse sense that you see very rarely. He could look at a horse when he’d buy him and tell you what he was going to win.”
In his 69th year, filling up water buckets and checking horses at Phil Serpe’s main-track barn late on a quiet Wednesday morning, Grey reveled in the old days.
“I was there from can’t see to can’t see. Can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night,” Grey said. “My daughter says I love horses more than I love people. Horses don’t talk.”
But Grey does. At the end of the day, I told him I’d be back.
“All right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll remember some more. We can reminisce.”
Count on it.
