Derby Day

Tomorrow is the Kentucky Derby.

The 1972 Derby remains the only major national sporting event that I’ve ever attended. I missed the Secretariat winning the Run For The Roses by one year. That’s like going to the Super Bowl the year before “Da Iggles” won it. It was great but not as great as it could have been.

My personal highlight was seeing a race horse close-up. They are beautiful and a lot bigger than they appear to be on TV.

Naturally, Cheap Ed got in free of charge. Fort Knox soldiers, including Lt Dufton, were stationed inside the infield fence to prevent the 100,000 drunks carousing there from jumping the fence and racing across the track. “Those horses aren’t so fast. I can outrun them. I’ll get on the track and prove it.” That makes sense after many, many beers on a hot afternoon.

We brave soldiers maintained the peace. All races went off without incident. The “incidents” that raised concerns were when rabble rousers decided it would be great sport to tip over some of the overflowing Port-A-Potties on the infield. Even hard-bitten GIs were not about to wade into those fetid pools and re-erect those Port-A-Potties.

With fifty-two years of perspective, my Derby Day experience encapsulated America, both then and now. The main grandstand at Churchill Downs was reserved for the Beautiful People, women in chiffon dresses with absurdly large hats, men wearing seersucker suits, very Atticus Finch. You practically needed a retinal scan to enter those hallowed grounds. The grandstand was for the Upper Class.

The infield was for the Common Folk. Dressed in Wal-Mart bargain counter garb, paying more attention to dancing to their “boom boxes” and re-stocking their coolers than to the races, they were having a better time than their “elders and betters” across the way.

Between these two very different groups was the Army maintaining the peace.

Sorry, Mr Jefferson. In America, all men are not created equal. Some of us are born to sip a mint julep in the air-conditioned comfort of the grandstand. Others will never do better than chugging a beer in the blazing sun alongside an overflowing Port-A-Pottie.

By Ed Dufton