My Hunt Cup Runneth Over

Off a road and off another road...shopping strips, gas stations and drug stores disappear.

I stare out and see a horizon of blue and green and empty of what depresses me.

Having said that, I try to avoid looking at Andy's hat.

It's tailgating but this isn't parking at the Firecracker 500 where all come to watch a left hand turn.

There is such beauty in seeing a man or woman on a horse.  Unlike most of traditions that are forgotten, the elegance of the pairing, I'm positive, will last forever.

I'll be dead forever but today I'm alive and I will suck all this in like a Partagas Lusitania.

It's a small crowd - Is that possible?  Off the radar where crowds come only to  promenade their Lilly P and get drunk while they selfie.

Pretentious free, it's all amazingly simple.  Granted, the ethnic diversity is limited but it's so soulful.

A windswept soul. I once asked a tax attorney, what business could  a man deduct everything and keep outta jail.  "Horses," he said.

He added it went back to the early 19th century when business had a lot to do with horses.

And the laws just never changed.  But people do.

Our horses are bits of plastic and steel but we can still fly a flag.

Still, can you ever look this good in a Toyota? Personally, I don't think so.

I love watching rich old white people.

Mostly because it beats watching poor white people.  They like watching a 500 mile left turn.

When I bring a camera, I try to shoot what no one else is shooting. In this case -- the race.

For me, I love the sound I first heard at Keeneland almost 20 years ago.  Hoof on turf and I know it sounds like it did 200 years ago -- 500 years ago -- 1,000 years ago.  A forever soundtrack.

Sometimes I just want to close my eyes and listen to the horses, the wind, the cheering...It is traveling back in time when there was so much elegance despite poor plumbing and dentistry.

Special thanks to the Main Line Sportsman for the invitation & inspiration of the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup

My Time Machine: The Peacock Caffe'

The Peacock Caffe, NYC, 1958,  Nick DeWolf photographs used with permission

Esquire's post Saturday featured a photograph taken at The Peacock Caffe' (1946-2000) in Greenwich Village. A reader commented that the owner kept that same Esquire photo at the cash register.  I did some research and discover the Peacock closed in 2000. 

I don't know what I'm looking for, but I know why I came.  I hope to connect to a place. To these people in the photographs.  Usually, what was, is now; TD bank, Starbucks, Duane Reade. You wish the walls could talk.  But just to see the place is amazing.  I'm in the greatest city in the world with every sort of museum, store, restaurant, park, you name it....but I go to places that aren't there anymore.

I stand at 24 Greenwich Street.  Where these people stood 54 years ago.  To join them or, at least be close to them, and to know they were here. NYC movie locations are about famous people pretending.  The Peacock, that night back in 1958, was about ordinary people living.

"Someone Make a Time Machine Already" 1961 Fall Weekend In New York

Friday Night with a Debutante: "Skim the roofs in a helicopter and a suede-cloth suit"

Friday Night with a Poetess: "She's in the clouds anyway, so take her for a walk in an all-weather coat"

Saturday Before Dark: "A pull-over for a ferry ride --"

"A suit of tweed takes you to a twilight concert"

Saturday Night: "For an elegant evening (and Barbara Bel Geddes backstage), a vested blue serge --"

"For a casual one, a sweater, but dressier"

Sunday- The Week End's End: A Donegal tweed jacket..."

...or a wool sport coat will see the day out." The Peacock Caffe'

Esquire Magazine, September, 1961  (click on image to enlarge)

Nicely written & shot without credit to writer or photographer.  A contrast to today's fashion spreads of actors and rappers with half naked women, extruded  by LA,  holding their crotch or flipping the bird while credits go to every strap hanger and coke-pourer in the room.

The old Esquire was a big mamma-jamma.  It's hard to describe what reading one was like when I was 10 years old.  Not only because I didn't understand a whole helluva lot of it  -- It was almost taller than I was.  But like reading Shakespeare, you don't always need to understand every word to get the gist of what's happening in the play.

It's good to be a man.