Disappearing To A Place One Belongs, Part 1

[Fairmount1]

Present Day

A onetime brand new brilliant white XL T-shirt was likely worn to play wiffleball games on the Churchill Downs infield. It was always a battle against the Whiting barn in the early 80’s he told me. It is now a yellowed, aged relic that hangs over a chair in my place. It reads “I’M FOR SUMMER TIME RACING ’83 at CHURCHILL DOWNS” on the front. The back says “FLINT RACING STABLE.” He gave it to me a few years ago without a reason why. . .

August, 2024

A phone call comes into Frank\'s  car via Bluetooth.  FrankD is giving me the full tour of the Lake George area and Rich was full of vim and vigor. He was carrying on about watching the Pete Rose special from HBO. “Frankie, he was one sick F***! He found one of his wives at River Downs as she was standing on the rail while he was high above in the grandstand looking through his binoculars while a race was being run. He went down there and introduced himself to his future wife. Frankie, you gotta watch this HBO Special about Pete Rose.  Him and Al Michaels were buds like you and me!”

The topic of Arthur\'s Ride in the Whitney came up and he told us he didn\'t work for Mott long, maybe 3 weeks, but Mott really knew what he was doing as a trainer. He had a good laugh about his short stint with Mott and maybe a not so pleasant breakup.

He was talking about the All Time Hits Leader. He was talking about one of the greatest trainers of all time. There is no doubt he was the greatest writer in these parts. All time post leader in TG-“LAND” for writing that captured the room every, single time.  Rumor is he has written quite a book. (I might always know more than I share).  

January, 2016

Downtown Louisville on a Monday morning, I ended up in the City Library. I just knew I could find it. He told me there was an article in one of local newspapers about her. She had rattled off 7 in a row. I worked fervently going through slide after slide after slide of microfilm, month after month, day after day of sports sections.  I was struck by all the Calumet articles and just how important racing was to the Sports section in the 1980s. He was a Flint groom with the horse. And then there it was appearing on the front page of the Sports Section. The article about the horse the Flint barn trained that rattled off 7 wins in a row. Our future TG-“LAND” expert groom had the audacity to tell the reporter “it was about time you showed up!” LOLOL.  Oh, that fits so perfectly.  In a photo he had sent from a Fair Grounds win for the horse, Timeless Magic, the groom is holding the horse in the winner’s circle. It showed a young man doing something he loved with his whole life ahead of him. Truly, Timeless Magic.

I hustled home from Louisville, scanned the photocopies I had printed off the slides and created a PDF to email him the article. He was shocked!  And thankful.  The copy he had ended up in a basement of a house in St. Louis at a relative\'s place and was lost when the basement flooded many years ago. My digging earned me a racing calendar “in perpetuity” from NYRA he said and he sent one each year thereafter. As luck would it have it, (good for him and bad for me) NYRA ended the calendars just a few years later and his legal obligation was released early we joked.

I arrived with my STL friends to Saratoga for the first time. He told me to call him the moment I arrived. I deserted my STL friends I traveled with to see richiebee for the 2nd time in my life.  The first time we actually spoke to each other knowing the other. He had told me to call the moment I walked in the gates and I did. We found each other readily in the backyard and he walked me right over the Big Red Spring to let me taste the healing waters. I've carried on the tradition every time I can pranking my friends this summer on their maiden backyard journey and they spit it out all over just like I had 9 years earlier. This in person encounter led to me knowing all the people I've met through the board which is many. He deservedly bragged he made it every day for one meet way back in the old days and that I should try to do it once.  Bucket list!

Circa March 2013

I post on the Thorograph board for the very first time using the moniker Fairmount wishing to remain anonymous.  I was able to disappear online never realizing I might find myself through the friends I would make thereafter.  I had never communicated online whatsoever but this horse racing topic deserved my two cents I thought. I fretted over every word. Soon after, a private message rolled through from richiebee. Who is this guy? In his message, he told me a little about himself. That he knew Fairmount from being in law school at WashU here in St. Louis in the late 70's.

More particularly, he described that almost a year before in 2012, he was in town visiting old friends. He said he was in a room full of gamblers at Fairmount Park sitting in a booth. He recalled some knucklehead in the room in the last booth that was yelling "that Kentucky guy didn't train that horse that won the 3yo stakes. He was a Straw Man trainer for the doper from Cali that shipped it to him." A moment frozen in time. I was in fact the guy who always sat in the very last booth in the room on Saturday afternoons. He had identified me off a single post on the TG board. Talk about big time handicapping.

April, 2012

My buddies and I at Fairmount had been gambling in that same room for a solid decade every Saturday afternoon. Just like people all across America did until online racing accounts really started talking off. Some random guy was sitting four booths away from me. And he wasn't part of our crowd. He made a challenging comment or two about our group's handicapping. I wasn't sure I liked him. But I knew he was sharp. We all wondered who he was. Little did I know, he would introduce me to some of the very best friends I've ever made much less through gambling and handicapping the horses.  And he didn't like my comment about calling a trainer a doper.  Ironic, given he would tell me tricks of the trade he knew about from his time on the backside.

Mid 1980's

Richiebee was out there as a trainer on his own in New Jersey! His dad got hooked on racing when 'bee bought a 2yo in training for 3k bucks. By the end of the auction, bee became a capitalist and sold the filly for 9500! Ron, his father, was immediately in love with racing. Rich claimed a horse named Missy Mink for 6250. He put her in for 8000 while she was "in jail" to earn a few placings and then back in for 6250 for a win and she was claimed away. Her jock was Sidney Underwood who 'bee said intentionally misspelled her first name. She later was paralyzed from a spill at Atlantic City in 1992 he told me. As recently as 2016, he told me his dad was telling him he should take out that trainer's license again.

Early 1980's

Employed by Bernie Flint, 'bee loved hitting the Midwest Circuit including what he called Reefer (River) Downs. Horses named Genuine Article and Timeless Magic along with Mr. Chief Justice occupied his time as he was their groom. He told me the backside was a good place for a young man who loved animals and loved racing to stay close to the action. Probably a little too much partying limited his opportunities at the time. One regular jock of one of these horses was banned for life for fixing races although 'bee shared he should have been ruled off for a battery.

Circa January 1978

A third year of law school means it is almost over. Glory lies ahead. No one would quit. Especially a man from the East Coast at the prestigious Washington University. Folks outside these parts don't all know that WashU is a touch below Ivy League level and nothing but first class. And when I learned this guy had quit, I was blown away. That's crazy. One semester to go and he said the heck with it! What could possibly drive someone to quit. A game.  A sport.  A love for animals.  A desire to disappear from what the world says we should be doing with our lives.  Yes, Horse Racing created Houdini! A triple crown winner in June the year before played a part. Spending a lot of his time at Fairmount Park following the Harbor View second stringers during law school nights played a part. He traveled to Oaklawn to watching racing many times on the winter weekends that he could get out of town and away from law school. And then one day, with his final semester to go, he up and disappeared from the world he knew and from his folks. And he went straight to the back side of Churchill Downs and chased a dream of being as close to racing as he could get under the twin spires. He reiterated that similar to racing, his partying in law school probably limited his opportunities.  But he found where he wanted to bee!

For years, I questioned him leaving school and the life he led. When you look at it now, he really wasn't that crazy. He lived a life that's as unique as his wit, his writing, and his ability to make people around him laugh, if they were smart enough to understand his jokes. Having made it through law school, and no longer practicing, I understand some of his life's meanderings fairly well from that perspective.

This post needs editing from the guy that got hooked on 40 hours a week at an international law firm working overnights as proofreader rather than living on the backside as he started to get older. This post will never hold up to his journalistic abilities but I hope it captures the life of our friend on the board sprinkled with details many never may have known. He was beyond highly intelligent, a Phipps stable aficionado, a Mets Fan, a Jets fan, and forever nostalgic about Saratoga. I missed much about him but he was the Genuine Article.

I must note that Alan and 'bee went to a Nets game together once upon a time and both of them told me about that night.  It must have been a heck of a conversation between those two. Thus, I note they were, in fact, friends as they both fall to the fate of Father Time in close proximity.  I'm sure the smiles and jokes are endless between these two brilliant minds.

It is on my list to watch the Pete Rose HBO special he described the last time I heard his voice and his laugh in FrankD's car via Bluetooth as we drove down a hill next to Lake George.  It would seem to be a sort of tribute to what he found so entertaining. I have no idea what I will do with his yellowed, stretched Flint Stables Tshirt. But I will keep it in perpetuity. If I ever disappear, I'd probably take it with me as a reminder that it represents a certain Timeless Magic that is now gone . . .

[trackjohn]

A terrific tribute Richie...

John

[johnnym]

Wow Fairmount that is excellent.

[Fairmount1]

Thanks to Jerry for making it all fit on one post after I encountered troubles with posting it due to length and/or cutting and pasting.  So apologies for the errors and typos (I can\'t seem to edit it either).  But hoping the essence of it comes through.  

Thanks again TGJB for the assist.