“Horses for courses” is an old phrase used for the phenomena of certain racehorses to perform better under particular racetrack conditions. Some ran better in the slop, a “mudder” we called them, running muscular in the rain or just after the rain in a deep, wet course. Some ran like rolling thunder and crackling lighting on dry, hard dirt. Others ran better on courses entirely of turf, which is grass, and which is a different course entirely.
Seattle Slew, if I remember 1977 correctly, ran well versus his three-year-old competition in mud. In my own analysis of the legendary rivalry of Affirmed and Alydar in ‘77 and ‘78, I could not discern a difference, except that in Triple Crown races Affirmed ran better by an average of a stride over the three-and- 15/16ths miles total of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. Triple Crown courses were his.
To me, Secretariat – the Second Coming – could have run even on water in 1973.
“Horses for courses” means “To each his own.”
When I was a kid with my grandfather down in the cabin country of Wisconsin, we would drive on Saturday mornings to take our trash to the dump (and hope to see bears) where they burned the county’s trash. Or to the bait shop in Star Prairie to buy lures and minnows and leeches. Or in the fall to my grandfather’s oak and maple firewood stand. On Sundays in winter we would drive reluctantly and very far to the nearest Catholic church (Germans and Poles only and us Irish) and later freely to check my rabbit snares along the Willow River far upstream.
On all those old roads – old even back then – we drove old paved county roads and dirt roads and section roads and winding roads – we’d pass the occasional car coming the opposite direction, and the other driver would wave with one hand and my grandfather would wave back.
Very early on I asked my grandfather:
“Do you know that person?”
My grandfather would shrug his shoulders. He never spoke much. Occasionally I would ask curious questions and he would answer curtly. Often I would talk just to relieve the tension. Just as often I would sit with the feeling that it was because of me he wouldn’t speak.
Shrugging his shoulders meant that he didn’t know if he knew that person driving by waving, or that he didn’t care to answer my question. But probably that No, he didn’t know them.
I don’t know what has happened to waving in the country, on the country roads. I always try to wave, especially at our local law – the sheriffs or border patrol or troopers, and to the road construction gangs. On Highway 61, I share waves with the people I know, my friends and acquaintances, or the Como guys or Superior or Sawtooth guys or Johnson boys.
The test is when you are off the highway, on the county roads, Camp 20 or 60 or the Arrowhead Trail, or Otter Lake or Esther or Irish Creek roads, and it has become only a small fraction of the motorists waving back.
I rationalize that the city folk don’t wave back, tourists, or seasonals, or weekenders, the ones that came up and may not know the pastime of the country, not know what it’s like to get a flat tire in the middle of the forest or slide into a ditch or snowbank on Trout Lake Road or North Road.
One important aspect of writing is the necessity of detecting one’s own weaknesses. As I write this, I reconsider how things happened many years ago in the country in Wisconsin.
In truth, my grandfather did not often wave back on those country roads in Wisconsin, or would wave back very reluctantly. He could be a cur at times. So can I.
But I’ll keep on waving. I think I asked him very early on, “Why don’t you wave back?”
And he answered, “I don’t know them.”
There are Seattle Slews, and there are Affirmeds and there are Alydars. But then, I remember, there are Secretariats.
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