Hell's Belles

By Trevor Dallas

William C. Rhoden wrote in the New York Times: “Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass?” He’s referring to the filly Eight Belles breaking down after the Kentucky Derby. “Why isn’t there more pressure to put the sport of kings under the umbrella of animal cruelty?” Why indeed? And while we’re at it, why don’t we take a hard look at short men driving $300,000 cars in an asphalt circles for hours on end? Or the outsized brutes who pummel one another on weekends, August through January? Cavemen on ice? The multi-billion dollar lottery where the nation gambles for a month on sham scholars whose only lasting contribution is to the lingua franca of scratchy sports-talk A.M. radio? Why do we give any of them a pass?

“The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting.” Meanwhile, on the same day as Rhoden’s PETA pleading, the same section of the paper ran a piece on the Wachovia Championship, a golf tournament in Charlotte. It is an example of a civilized pastime. As Larry Dorman reports, Wachovia “outperks” other tournaments with gestures like hand-delivered invitations (distributed in Hawaii, with a Dom Pérignon lubricator), valet parking (for the caddies), and “monogramming the initials of a top golfer’s children on hotel pillows and towels.” As Phil Mickelson says: “Everything they’ve done here is the right way.”

This is Marie Antoinette stuff. Hugh Pedro McGreevey tells me that if things keep going the way they are – and they are – we’re going to blow up. H.P. thinks that soon we’ll be eating corn three meals a day and riding horses to work, those of us who have any. Think Cuba in Connecticut. If that’s true – and H.P.’s usually correct – then we’d better not extirpate the single remaining element of our society that has any equine knowledge. We’re going to need it.

Tomorrow I’m going out to the Joppa Farm point-to-point. This is the informal end of the spring hunt season, the antidote to twenty thousand spectators at the Hunt Cup two weeks ago. It takes the form of little girls racing Shetland ponies. My hostess writes that she’ll compete as well, riding as “the bug jockey on the favorite, Mardi Gras, the filly by Xerxes out of Whoopee, standing tall at eight hands. I’m praying that I don’t fall off the way everyone did last year.”

Where’s William Rhoden when we need him? Real horse people run the Joppa Farm point-to-point. Thoroughbreds watch from over pasture fences; kids’ parents trailer their ponies in from all over. Must all sport be Spartan, militaristic, and Manichean to matter? Or, perhaps, is it rather the case that those sports which actually do contain the realities of life and death – rather than those that only play it as mummery – have no choice but to strike an ironic pose?

Apropos of which: If your mint isn’t coming up at the end of the driveway, then go to the garden center and assemble a pot of it. Water it every day and keep it in a sunny spot. By Saturday week you’ll have enough to harvest for your cocktails. The word julep comes from the Persian for rosewater. People have all sorts of rituals around the drink – secret syrups and mysterious ingredients – but in reality, the mint julep is very green. Take a large amount of mint leaves and put them into a cup. Silver is best for various reasons – conductivity, cachet. The children’s baby cups do nicely if you don’t have a proper set. All those Jefferson cups you got as souvenirs from trips to Monticello and Williamsburg also work well. Fill the cup with the mint – there’s not too much mint. Add granular brown sugar. With the butt end of a wooden spoon, muddle the mint. The sugar gives the grit. A splash of bourbon helps create the slurry. A woman I once knew from Lexington – a turf woman – insisted on putting the resulting syrup in the freezer. It gives the cup a nice hoarfrosting. Crushed ice, an ample dose of bourbon, a small spritz of seltzer, some mint garnish, and a silver stirring spoon – it’s entirely therapeutic. It is the early herbs of spring, a view of the turf, the smell of onion grass, the sight of the jockeys’ silks. The horses dark with sweat. It is the dawn of life. It is the realization of certain death.

John Stanmeyer, Afghanistan, 2001-2002, Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York