May

4

Any man who plays tennis knows how great a good, men's doubles match can be, with pace and at the net — a fight involving of four where you don't feel the punches.

In November 1996, I had a regular game with three others in a club I belonged to every week, at about 530 a.m. It was worth getting up for. One of those days, I would have a flight later that day to Newark, and from there a taxi or car into the city to do a class at New York Institute of Finance late afternoon, back out to Newark for a red eye flight to Amsterdam, where I was to speak at an IFTA conference the following morning.

One of the staff came out, midway during our game, to tell me I had a phone call.

I took the call, and they were telling me that my 96 year-old grandad had passed away that night. Realizing I couldn't bail on the commitments I made, I got on the plane, did what I committed to do so no one got stood up, managed to get a ticket off the street in Amsterdam (since the airline wouldn't change my ticket) for a flight, out of Brussels the following night to JFK. I got into JFK late, rented a car, drove the 11 or so hours, and showed up at the old man's funeral.

We were quite close, though our horns were always locked. He was a gritty guy who spoke with a Southern Ohio/ Kentucky accent ("I see you on the fourth of Joo-Lie") not unlike the old cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn. He played and coached in the early days of pro football ("The worst was that day in Detroit, the wind was cold, the field was cinders, not grass, and every time you went down you gotcha self scuffed"). I used to describe him as "Tougher than catshit."

He was.

But he was gregarious, and fun, and we used to go down to Lou-vull for the Derby quite frequently. It was a big deal every year– it was the culture he was from.

Every year on Derby day, I can;t help but think about him, and how now, now that I am older and slower don't care about a lot of things I once did, I realize how right he was about so many things.

The following May, I had to go without him, and it was more of habit than anything else (and it is not a glamorous place, contrary to the depiction on television, quite the contrary, there is a pervasive seediness to the whole area).

Hemingway describe The Derby as "the most exciting two minutes in sports, an explosion, an emotion."

That Derby, that one, with my Silver Charm - Captain Bodgett Box, I got it, I got Hemingway. Absent the old man, it wasn't the best Derby I could remember — but it was certainly the most exciting for me.


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