Fast Animals and Swiss Steak

Tags

cooking, dog races, greyhounds, memories, race horse, relationships, Secretariat, stepfather

http://secretariat.com/

I saw the film, Secretariat, today. I’m a sucker for animal lore and nothing exceeds the excitement of watching galloping horses on the big screen. Actually, the sanitized movie version of horse racing is better than the real thing, which leaves me a bit queasy. I’m too aware of the negatives aspects of the horse racing industry—of any industry that places a dollar value on the performance of or lives of animals.

The first time I experienced a live race must have been about 1971—and it wasn’t a horse race. For some reason my mom was out of town. She left me in charge of the horses and my stepfather; she left my stepfather in charge of the remaining menagerie and me. My assignment was to make sure Glenn had proper meals and took his pills. His assignment, I suppose, was to make sure I did what I was supposed to do and nothing else.

Amazon.com

I was a tomboy for whom the kitchen was an abyss. All I’d done there was wash dishes. But I took my assignment seriously. For breakfast on Friday morning, I dutifully served toast, link sausage, and fried eggs that perched atop a leathery skin of overcooked egg white. For dinner I traveled through my mother’s stack of cookbooks. In Round the World Meat Cookbook I found a recipe for Swiss Steak. I was astounded when I served up our meal. It was actually yummy and Glenn sang my praises. After I’d cleared the table and washed the dishes, Glenn asked me what my plans were for Saturday. Aside from the usual chores, I was open. Rather shyly, he asked if I would be interested in accompanying him to Loveland, Colorado to visit his sister and brother-in-law. They could take us out to the dog track and show us around, he suggested.

I was thrilled by such an adult adventure. At the time, it never crossed my mind that Glenn had probably been waging war with his conscience about how he could swing a trip to the track on his “free weekend,” without deserting me and risking the wrath of my mother should she discover that I’d been left to my own devices.

http://www.gra-america.org/

Glenn’s brother-in-law, Uncle Rudy, had recently retired from a career at the Greyhound track. Retired or not, Uncle Rudy lived and breathed “the dogs”— code for the entire dog track scene. He and Glenn set me up with a race card and $20. Rudy explained how the bets worked and how to read the race card. The men left me alone in the stands while they went downstairs to place our bets, mine included. They returned to the stands just as the dogs leapt from the starting gate. Before I could blink my eyes, the fake rabbit on an electric wire flew by the grandstands with a blur of dogs in pursuit. It was like watching the hubcaps of a car spin at 30 miles per hour. I had no idea what had happened, but Rudy announced gleefully that my dog had come in second…I had won.

For the rest of the evening, I watched the crowd and studied the race card. I played it safe, betting “to show,“ which meant that for me to win, my dog could come in first, second, or third. We walked back to the car at 11:30. I had won several dollars which Glenn insisted I keep, along with the seed money he’d provided. I felt grown-up and I felt lucky. In the wee hours of the night, we drove the 70 treacherous miles back to Wyoming on an inky-black, 2-lane road, praying that no deer or antelope would commit suicide in front of our car.

The memory of the evening is as surreal as the reality of it was. How could anyone get excited about these poor stupid dogs who didn’t even care that they were chasing a fake rabbit and that the game was rigged so they’d never ever get the prize. The wait between races plodded like Mrs. Wood’s Latin class. Once the starting gun went off, the race was over faster than a shooting star. What I really longed for was to see a horse leap out of the starting gate. A horse race would last long enough to build suspense and besides, nothing boils my blood like a galloping horse.

Wikipedia

But, I remember that night also for the rare camaraderie that I felt with my stepfather. He treated me as an adult. He was kind and patient and seemed happy to have me tagging along in his wake, rather than annoyed at having to be responsible for me.

Tonight, after watching Secretariat win the Belmont by 31 lengths on the silver screen, I served Swiss Steak for dinner. The Swiss Steak was a hit this time too.

The Diamond-Shaped Window

Tags

childhood, Laramie, memories, moving

The diamond-shaped window was the keyhole to my new life. The only problem was, I was too small to see through it. After driving for God only knows how many hours and miles, we pulled up to a big, two-storey house on the corner of 9th and Garfield and gaped through a veil of lethargy. The journey had lasted more days than a four-year-old could count. We were tired, grimy, and grumpy. But mother was eager to see what she’d bought.


I wonder what she had envisioned. Had she seen a photo of this house that she’d purchased sight-unseen? The pink and white stucco septuagenarian met all her conditions: three-bedroom, older home, near a school, with ample lawn. We trudged up the front walk, darkened by the shadow of an enormous, overgrown lilac tree, and stumbled up two concrete stairs to the covered porch for a first peek at our new home.

My sister had been a grumpy travel companion. The voyage across the country had not been her idea. At 13, she was outraged at being ripped from the fabric of life as she’d always known it. She was leaving friends behind and trading a life in New York City for life in a hick town in the middle of nowhere. She’d grumbled about the twister in Kansas and moaned through the heat of Nebraska. Now she peeked through the triangle and umphed. I bounced fretfully, pleading for a glimpse. My sister dutifully hefted my scrawny frame until my eyes were just level with the bottom of the triangle. All I could see was a red Victorian banister guarding a flight of stairs directly in front of the door. As the late summer evening crept toward us, we returned to our motel room for much needed rest. In a fever of anticipation, I traveled that vague staircase throughout the night.


The next morning, we met the moving vans in front of the house. Flying up and down the stairs and in and out of the door in real time now, I made a nuisance of myself, careening between pairs of men burdened with mother’s ungainly antique furniture. My unrestricted comings and goings were like the first taste of forbidden fruit. Till that day, I’d never left my mother’s eyesight. Going outside had entailed a hand-in-hand escort by my mother and my sister, down the elevator, past the doorman, around the corner, and down the street to Riverside Park.


My mother spent the next 10 years unlocking the mysteries of what made that old house tick. The first improvement was a three-foot high chain link fence which served to define my boundaries, as well as, enclose the ever-fluctuating menagerie for which we became famous with the school kids: bum lambs, an orphan palomino filly, a goat, a coyote, and an endless stream of puppies and kittens. 


Although my mother was annoyingly restrictive about my activities and friends, my sister loved to remind me of how lucky I had it. She had never enjoyed the freedom of dashing in and out of the house. Being the first-born, she juggled the opposing forces of worshipful grandparents versus our mother’s banal first-time-parent discipline. It is true; I did have more freedom than she’d had. Nevertheless, when the time came, I was eager to leave that old house and my turbulent and frustrating childhood behind. Even so, a front door with a diamond-shaped window always flings my mind back to the unfathomable promise of that first glimpse of the red banister.


The photo was taken on my 4th birthday about 5 months before my mother, my sister, and I moved to Laramie, Wyoming.