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A man of dreams
By Margo J. Lloyd It's funny, I can hear him come whistling down the road, to work, to my barn, but he's gone and so is the track (Longacres). I see his smile, the one that makes you believe. John Garner was born and orphaned at 11 in Alabama, at a time when life was bleak for an orphaned black child. He never was schooled and didn't read. Math was a foreign language to him. How it happened, I don't know, but he found horses and Fred Hooper's farm. He took care of horses I could only dream of. He traveled in boxcars to tracks with them. To some it may seem an insult; to those of us who love horses, we know it is a privilege to share space with them. He traveled the country and time passed. He worked for people I would eventually know. He worked for a barn where Berwick Jones was a foreman. He worked for Mindy Willis' dad, and then he came to Washington with Kathy Walsh. I had been training a couple of years when I was hired to train a horse that had bowed the year before. She was a nice horse and trained well, with her tendon, tight and cold. When I ran her she rebowed, I was sick at heart. When I got back to my barn, there was John waiting with ice and a cast for the horse. He was like that, he just did it. He started work for me, at my farm, the following winter. He ended up working for me on and off for the next four years. John smoked and Al (my husband) had told him not to smoke in the barn or tackroom. Once when Al was going somewhere, he stopped at the barn and opened the tack room door. There was John, work done, with two heaters on, watching TV, and SMOKING! He looked at Al and Al at he. ... Uh-oh! That was the last time he was caught. I'm not saying John was sneaky, but he liked having his way. Years later we moved the couch in the tack room and there was a mouse nest (hey, it's a barn) made of old cigarette butts. He had been tossing the old put-out butts behind the couch. We laughed when we found them. Anyone who knows me knows I am a realist, not prone to dreaming, in a game of dreams, racing. John, he was a dream weaver, that's for sure. The people I trained for loved him. They would stand in front of their horse's stall, John would be in there rubbing their horse's legs and talking and smiling. If their horse had run well or won, he would have them believing it was Secretariat. I would lean back and watch and listen, I would start half believing too. John used to want to play the radio on full volume on Sundays, playing gospel; he said it was his services. I would tolerate it for a while until it got to me, all loud and everyone trying to talk over it. Clients would come often on Sundays, to watch their horses go, and eat breakfast in the cafe. So with the gospel going full blast and everything, it made for a confusing morning. I would turn it off, then we would spend 10 minutes arguing over my turning it off. One time, after I claimed a horse, I heard John talking to someone about how good it was when women weren't allowed on the track. I was angry at hearing this, so I asked him, "Did you like riding in the back of the bus in Alabama?" He knew where I was going with this analogy, and wasn't going to walk into the trap. He answered, "Didn't bother me!" Actually, knowing him, it was probably true. A child's view of segregation I am sure was different from Rosa Parks. Children are used to doing what adults tell them to do. An orphaned black child would have more important things to worry about like food and shelter. The battle for civil rights could be fought by others. John was an alcholic. He would go long periods of time without drinking, then he would start up again. He would start coming to work late, and I would hear him come whistling down the road to the racetrack barn. He would round the corner, and say, "Mornin' Sugar!" Then he would chuckle. I would answer, "I'm not your 'Sugar' and you are LATE!" He would say, "LATE?" incredulously. I knew that he would be fired soon. It happened before and it would happen again. I had, at times, tried to get John to learn to read. He refused. I wanted to help him with his drinking problem, but this he refused too. He had his reasons so I didn't push it. John is gone now, he died of cancer. I know he is somewhere smiling and rubbing the legs of Secretariat, Ruffian, and all the good horses of times gone by. I hope someday I will hear that whistle and see that smile and be told, "Mornin' Sugar." Instead of a reprimand, I will give him a hug and tell him, "I missed you, John." I, too, will believe those dreams. |