The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
Written under duress by Hunter S. Thompson
Sketched with eyebrow pencil and lipstick by Ralph Steadman
I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands...big grins and a whoop here and there: "By God! You old ba*tard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good...and I mean it!" In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other--"but just call me Jimbo"--and he was here to get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey..."
I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.
"Look." He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. "I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I've learned--this is no town to be giving people the impression you're some kind of f*ggot. Not in public, anyway. sh**, they'll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have."
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. "Say," he said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"
"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."
"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"
"Playboy," I said.
He laughed. "Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of--nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you'll be workin' pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That's a race just for fillies." He was laughing wildly. "Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!"
I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My a**ignment is to take pictures of the riot."
"What riot?"
I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the newspapers?"
The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
"Well...maybe I shouldn't be telling you..." I shrugged. "But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They've warned us--all the press and photographers--to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting..."
"No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. "Those sons of b**hes! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!" Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?" I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country--to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed like everybody else. You know--coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts...well, that's why the cops are so worried."
He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh...Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?" "Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink...and good luck."
He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: "Nixon Sends GI's into Cambodia to Hit Reds"... "B-52's Raid, then 20,000 GI's Advance 20 Miles"..."4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest." At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom." The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of "student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at a university in Ohio called Kent State.
I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn't have any. "You can't rent one anywhere," he a**ured me. "Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks." I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. "Maybe we'll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"
I shrugged. "Where's the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people."
He sighed. "My friend, you're in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby."
I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: "Look, I'm from Playboy. How would you like a job?"
He backed off quickly. "What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?"
"Never mind," I said. "You just blew it." I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it--SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing -and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says "Photog. Playboy Mag." I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. "Never mention Playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first," he said. "Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike. They'll go belly up every time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic."
Well...maybe so. I'd used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth century a** of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition." Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn't missed a Derby since 1954. "The little lady won't come anymore," he said. "She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say 'loose' I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin' out of style! Horses, whiskey, women...sh**, there's women in this town that'll do anything for money."
Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, "If I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market." And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.
**********
The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no press credentials and--according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier Journal--no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegra** country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I'd rented from a used-car salesman named Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.
Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan's was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. "Hell, you can't be serious," he said. "The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there's no more room...and what the hell is Scanlan's Monthly anyway?"
I uttered a painful groan. "Didn't the London office call you? They're flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He's Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set." He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two pa**es to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.
"That sounds a little weird," I said. "It's unacceptable. We must have access to everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don't think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we'll get inside. Maybe we'll have to bribe a guard--or even Mace somebody." (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown d**tore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor's box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good...)
By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he'd changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning--demanding only one pa** now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.
The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar looking; when I mentioned Steadman's name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, "You bet he did." Then she favored me with a big smile. "Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?"
I shook my head. "I'm supposed to be working with him, but I don't even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I'll have to find him in the mob at the track."
She chuckled. "You won't have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd."
"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with him? What does he look like?"
"Well..." she said, still grinning, "he's the funniest looking thing I've seen in a long time. He has this...ah...this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it's all over his head." She nodded. "You'll know him when you see him; don't worry about that."
Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan's press packet. Well...what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn't think we're abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, "Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!"
**********
I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.
But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sungla**es. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried. "Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management's Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. "I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works."
By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of pa**es that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections "F&G"...and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in "G," along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we'd be legal in a box in "G" where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby's special vibrations.
The bars and dining rooms are also in "F&G," and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that's what they're in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.
Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the "walkaround" press pa**es to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, hara**ing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround pa**es would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn't leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.
**********
**********
Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I'd been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge gra**y meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said, "will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene-- thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We'll have to spend some time out there, but it's hard to move around, too many bodies."
"Is it safe out there?" Will we ever come back?" "Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling
mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races.
The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's
hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people
falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped.
Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls
of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up."
He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said.
"Don't worry. At the first hint of trouble I'll start pumping this
'Chemical Billy' into the crowd."
He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that
special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It
was a face I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to.
I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry--a pretentious
mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the
inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant
culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any
other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify
the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse
breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast
horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very
fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to
retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of
humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern
society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and
acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting
their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons
and in their own ways. ("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter?
She went crazy in Boston last week and married a n******g!")
So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a
symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that
makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.
On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadman
about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us
had brought any strange illegal d**, so we would have to get by on
booze. "You should keep in mind," I said, "that almost everybody you
talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at
first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all." He nodded,
staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I
tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my
brother.
Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South,
England--just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of
us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal
conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a
vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The
main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally
led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces,
cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad
accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a
member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a
certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had
no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock
after shock.
Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the
various social situations I dragged him into--then giving them the
sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several
times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some
perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who'd seen or even heard about his work. He couldn't understand it. "It's sort of a joke," he kept
saying. "Why, in England it's quite normal. People don't take offense.
They understand that I'm just putting them on a bit."
"f** England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard
what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what
happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head
off."
Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a
very decent, straightforward sort."
"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very
horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on
his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left
the restaurant so fast?"
"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.
"What Mace?"
He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"
"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving,
anyway."
"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn
gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes
hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the
motel."
"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"
"She was angry," he said.
"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we f**ed up about equally on
that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're
around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them.
We'll just try to relax and get drunk."
"Right," he said. "We'll go native."
**********
It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having
breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village.
Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They
had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn't handle it
anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they
moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the "darkies" in the
kitchen.
Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I
preferred the "French toast," which was really pancake batter, fried
to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie
cutter to resemble pieces of toast.
Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point
was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go
ahead and steal two pa**es, if necessary, rather than miss that part
of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to
make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on--almost from
the very moment we started out to the track--we lost all control of
events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of
drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are
somewhat scrambled.
But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that
scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat
mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and
stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with
sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:
**********
Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of
mud and madness...But no. By noon the sun burns through--perfect day,
not even humid.
Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the
clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again?
Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand
people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the
mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand
collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to
crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.
Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people's
front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs:
PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. "That's fine, boy, never mind
the tulips." Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.
Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards
Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in
tight pink shorts, many blacks...black dudes in white felt hats with
leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.
The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in
the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white
riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to
us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman
eyed them nervously. "Why do they have those clubs?"
"Black Panthers," I said. Then I remembered good old "Jimbo" at the
airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very
nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on
through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the
jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each
race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be
bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate
was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards,
waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police
Athletic League...they were all turned away. "Move on, fella, make way
for the working press." We shoved through the crowd and into the
elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very
hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press
box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats
for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting
sheet and went outside.
**********
Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seers**er
coats and bu*tondown collars. "Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's
phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first
place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in
silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and
humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why
not?
The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at
night, screaming out there beside that little iron n******g in jockey
clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many
snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus,
the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone
pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send
him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.
Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is
swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone
mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in
the Derby today.
I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our
bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a
group of young men around a table not far away. "Jesus, look at the
corruption in that face!" he whispered. "Look at the madness, the
fear, the greed!" I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table
he was sketching. The face he'd picked out to draw was the face of an
old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days
with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said,
with the snaps of a 32 B bra**iere. They called him "Cat Man."
But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn't have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar
on Derby Day...fat slanted eyes and a pimp's smile, blue silk suit and
his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge...
Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what
they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms
and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals.
"They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their
suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them
manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss
their shoes."
In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman
and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky
Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it
to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days
prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the
Seelbach Hotel.
The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as
the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should
probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people
across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about
it, but since none of the awful things I'd warned him about had
happened so far--no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks--
he shrugged and said, "Right, let's do it."
To get there we had to pa** through many gates, each one a step down
in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the
tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust.
"God almighty!" Steadman muttered. "This is a...Jesus!" He plunged
ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed,
trying to take notes.
**********
Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track...nobody
cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to
watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.
Old blacks arguing about bets; "Hold on there, I'll handle this"
(waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding
piggyback, T-shirt says, "Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail." Thousands
of teen-agers, group singing "Let the Sun Shine In," ten soldiers
guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue
football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.
No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle
Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot.
Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the
Kentucky Derby.
**********
We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing "My Old Kentucky Home," Steadman faced
the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice
screeched, "Turn around, you hairy freak!" The race itself was only
two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-
power gla**es, there was no way to see what really happened to our
horses. Holy Land, Ralph's choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the
final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch
but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named
Dust Commander.
Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the
exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day's Courier told of
violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets
were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this,
having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By
this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue,
culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around
the press box long enough to watch a ma** interview with the winning
owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown
into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he'd "bagged a record
tiger." The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter
filled Lehmann's gla** with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000
with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he
said, was "retired contractor." And then he added, with a big grin, "I
just retired."
The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too.
And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I
can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them
down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest
memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old
friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown
Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to
the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were
struck, but the emotional effects were ma**ive. Then, as a sort of
final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis.
**********
Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a
scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the
curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. "What the f**
do you want?" I shouted.
"What about having breakfast?" he said.
I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the
night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn't cope with the chain! The
thing wouldn't come out of the track--so I ripped it out of the wall
with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn't blink. "Bad luck," he
muttered.
I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the
sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible
heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved
around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then
suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45.
"Christ," I said. "You're getting out of control."
He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. "You know, this
is really awful," he said finally. "I must get out of this place..."
he shook his head nervously. "The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I
don't know if I'll make it."
I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs
on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of
recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought
somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking
for. There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden
caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some
once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been
looking for--and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...
"Maybe I should sleep a while longer," I said. "Why don't you go on
over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and
chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near d**h to
hit the streets at this hour."
He shook his head. "No...no...I think I'll go back upstairs and work
on those drawings for a while." He leaned down to fetch two more cans
out of the beer bucket. "I tried to work earlier," he said, "but my
hands kept trembling...It's teddible, teddible."
"You've got to stop this drinking," I said.
He nodded. "I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some
reason it makes me feel better..."
"Not for long," I said. "You'll probably collapse into some kind of
hysterical DT's tonight--probably just about the time you get off the
plane at Kennedy. They'll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you
down to The Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until
you straighten out."
He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went
back to bed for another hour or so, and later--after the daily
grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart--we had our last meal
at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher's offal, fried
in heavy grease.
By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more
water. "It's the only thing they have that's fit for human
consumption," he explained. Then, with an hour or so to k** before he
had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and
pondered them for a while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit
of the thing...but we couldn't make up our minds. His hands were
shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision
was so blurred that I could barely see what he'd drawn. "sh**," I
said. "We both look worse than anything you've drawn here." He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We
came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of
their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you
know what? It's us..."
**********
Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.
A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is ma**acring students
at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is
driving, ignoring his pa**enger who is now nearly naked after taking
off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to
wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and
chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical
off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit;
his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The
journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front
of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the
pa**enger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off,
you worthless f*ggot! You twisted pigf**er! [Crazed laughter.] If I
weren't sick I'd kick your a** all the way to Bowling Green--you
scums**ing foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without
your kind in Kentucky."