American fiction -- 20th century; American poetry -- 20th century; Short stories, American
“That’s different.” he’d say and get the waiter over and pay the pile
of saucers and we’d get a taxi to the Gare St. Lazare and get on the
train out to Maisons.
One day at Auteuil after a selling steeplechase my old man bought in
the winner for 30.000 francs. He had to bid a little to get him but
the stable let the horse go finally and my old man had his permit and
his colors in a week. Gee I felt proud when my old man was an owner.
He fixed it up for stable space with Charles Drake and cut out coming
in to Paris and started his running and sweating out again and him
and I were the whole stable gang. Our horse’s name was Gillford, he
was Irish bred and a nice sweet jumper. My old man figured that
training him and riding him himself he was a good investment. I was
proud of everything and I thought Gillford was as good a horse as
Kzar. He was a good solid jumper a bay, with plenty of speed on the
flat if you asked him for it and he was a nice looking horse too.
Gee I was fond of him. The first time he started with my old man up
he finished third in a 2.500 meter hurdle race and when my old man
got off him, all sweating and happy in the place stall and went in to
weigh I felt as proud of him as though it was the first race he’d
ever placed in. You see when a guy aint been riding for a long time
you can’t make yourself really believe that he has ever rode. The
whole thing was different now cause down in Milan even big races
never seemed to make any difference to my old man, if he won he
wasn’t ever excited or anything, and now it was so I couldn’t hardly
sleep the night before a race and I knew my old man was excited too
even if he didn’t show it. Riding for yourself makes an awful
difference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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