If they Had Tails

They Would be Chasing Them

Just a half mile from the Fort Monmouth east gate, a new Monmouth Park racetrack had been built to replace the one that had gone bankrupt and then become “Home of the Signal Corps” and would eventually dominate the county’s economy. I recall watching a horse cooling down after a race, during the summer of 1974 when I worked as a hot walker there. I was waiting for the horse while his groom hosed him off, when he left for a moment to put the hose away.

In those few seconds, the big steaming thoroughbred stepped on his lead and began to panic when he could not pull his head up. After a few tries he reared all the way up, with a dramatic flourish causing everyone in the barn to look my way as if it were my fault, because I was the closest one to him.

Nothing more happened: Heavy, his groom, grabbed the lead, and that was that. My job was to walk them, not capture them, or calm them down, or even feed them. There was no way I was rushing in to grab that lead. The thought of doing so never entered my mind. I was not scared, I was not shocked, but I had never seen a horse do anything like that.

I have seen humans do much of the same. I was working on a nonunion construction job finishing a commercial building in Austin, Texas in 1979. I was up on a ladder in an elevator shaft next to another carpenter’s helper whose name I did not know. We were passing a Hilti-gun to attach metal studs to beams. I saw him pointing the gun at his chest with the stud on the beam between him and the tool. I told him not to do it, but he ignored me, and in a few seconds that nail went through the beam and punctured him. I had never seen anyone try to do such a thing, but I knew this was stupid without any prior instruction. To the horse I had said nothing. I saw him bleeding through his shirt and made sure he got down to the ground. I was not sad that they fired him on the spot, but also aware that he should never have been there in the first place.

We had a dog that would chase its tail for a few seconds if you positioned it in a certain way. I was always trying new things. Unsupervised children will get into everything. Teens especially require almost constant supervision. I know this because we had next to none for way too much of the time. As a teen, I trained other teens to operate slicing machines. Part of my training included telling them they would cut themselves. I had, and so would all of them. None of them followed safe operating instructions for long, if at all. I didn’t. One cut got me paying attention, but I still did not use the machine properly at times.

How Americans can be convinced to purchase and consume products that will hurt them, or vote against their own self-interest or not at all, is something I think about often. I feel like that green kid in the barn again, watching that horse with his hoof on that lead. I was no horseman, nor did I ever aspire to be one. Heavy knew what he was doing. I do not own a slicer but often wish I had one. You can make good coleslaw with a slicer. I like that cabbage sliced extremely thin. It is difficult to get close to that cutting cabbage with a knife.

If Americans had tails, we would be chasing them. I am sure some find all this amusing, as well as profitable. I am not one of them. I felt bad for those horses; I felt bad for the groom. I never worked in a barn again. I was happier in the kitchen. I still am.

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NYC