Journey: Rediscovering a Sense of Place
As a little girl growing up in Shelbyville, Kentucky, I was blessed. Of course, I didn’t realize it then. I was stuck in my own impenetrable snow globe of selfishness and security, only paying attention to what was going on in “my world.” I took for granted a lot of things, as most kids and adolescents do, including the beauty of my childhood home. I remember complaining about living “out in the country” when I thought it would be much cooler to live in a subdivision where you could ride your bike to someone’s house and spend the night. We lived in a spacious, five-bedroom tudor next door to my only grandmother, my dad’s mom. She spoiled us with frothy, homemade grape juice in the summers and offered us a convenient place to “run away from home,” whenever we wanted. We moved there to keep her company a year after my grandfather died. He left unexpectedly and too soon at the age of 65– on my dad’s birthday, August 3. Ironically, one of my grandmother's brothers died a day apart from my grandfather. The weight of her grief was too heavy for her to carry by herself. She spent nearly 10 years as a widow, but never lonely. We ran barefoot to her house nearly everyday and she abundantly blessed us with her passion for feeding others both food and love. A worn out path along our driveway and hers provided a perfect place to ride my 10-speed and let my imagination blossom, while the wind blew through my feathered bangs (yes, it was the late 70's and early 80’s).
There was a black barn stuffed with hay bales just beyond her house. It hosted countless games of hide and seek between me and my younger brothers. The thrill of hiding head-to-toe in the hay was worth the itchy price we paid for being the last one found. I can still hear the creak of the barn door sliding open as sunlight filled its shadows and I held my breath under the hay. A small pond full of croaking bull frogs and box turtles was nestled behind the barn, alongside a broken down shed that we were all too scared to explore. A large, winding oak tree in my grandmother’s backyard offered an easy two-step climb into the comfortable crook of its base, ideal for retreating when life wasn’t going my way. On more challenging days, it was also a good test of courage among its higher branches.
A white three-planked fence separated our property from an adjoining horse farm, and every morning I would look out our second floor bathroom window to see which horses were in the field. Like any good “country girl,” I could saddle that fence in two seconds flat to get a better view of the thoroughbreds grazing. That fence served as a divider between my backyard of boredom and the bluegrass fields of fantasy. There’s no telling how many hours I spent on that fence, losing myself in the beauty of watching the horses. It was my place of refuge and my portal into another world, outside myself. Straddling those two-by-fours, I was humbled into the beginnings of considering life wasn’t all about me. Looking back now, I realize it was my sense of place.
The family who managed the horse farm lived a couple houses down the road. The manager's daughter, Jennifer, invited me to come by one night when a mare was giving birth. I’ll never forget it. Ever. (Thank you, Jennifer.) The miracle that slipped onto that pile of hay, lanky and slimy, opened a whole world inside my brain that night. The way its mother cleaned him and his first attempt to stand on wobbly knees still brings stallion-sized tears to my eyes. From that moment on, I felt a special connection to those horses, especially in the spring when mamas and foals would grace me with the opportunity to reach a shaky hand over the fence for a stroke of their manes and to feel the warmth of their breath escaping from their nostrils.
On the first Saturday in May each year I celebrated the beauty, strength and athleticism of those ponies as if they were among the selected field of entries for the Kentucky Derby. I did what any other self-respecting Kentuckian would. I memorized every word to Dan Folgerberg’s “Run for the Roses,” and Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home.” Derby Day was (and is) like a national holiday where I grew up. In fact, schools in Louisville are closed the day before in honor of Oaks Day, named for the fillies-only race held that Friday. The fastest two minutes in sports is celebrated for two weeks via the Kentucky Derby Festival, complete with bed, balloon and steamboat races, concerts and one of the biggest fireworks displays in the nation. On Derby Day, in my childhood home, I remember the television would stay on the same channel from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. We drew names from a “pot” and boisterously cheered on “our horses” as if it we had bet $1,000 across the board at a ticket booth at the track instead of simply donating $1 to the pot and picking a random name out of a hat.
Everyone from central Kentucky, whether they lived with horses in their backyard or not, can tell you that the Run for the Roses is part of who they are. Watching those three-year-old thoroughbreds compete in front of the whole world is simply “our thing.” Some of us watch it on television in our family rooms, and some of us might be lucky enough to mingle with celebrities on Millionaire’s Row at Churchill Downs. The Kentucky Derby is part of who we are. It’s our collective sense of place.
I was blessed with having a close friend whose parents had box seats for the Derby, and she invited me to join her on several occasions. We wore big hats and heels and enjoyed the privileged view of watching the horses barrel around the third turn as they raced for the finish line. We held our tickets in the air and jumped up and down in that tiny box made for six, certain our $2 bet was going to make us rich. The spring before my husband and I were married we went with about 20 friends to the “infield” -- the interior portion of the track where people bring blankets and indulge in a day-long celebration, wearing tennis shoes and shorts (and sometimes less). It’s certainly not a glamorous experience, but it’s definitely an interesting one. We placed an exacta bet for my mom that year and won $800. It poured rain toward the end of the day and we ran through the soaking wetness back to the buses that would transport us to my friends’ Highlands area apartment, thinking we were the luckiest people on earth. (My mom graciously invested the money she won into the wedding just a couple weeks later.) I’ll never forget that Derby, with the excitement of marrying my college sweetheart, surrounded by friends who shared our passion for all things Derby. A few years later, I was hired to shoot photos in the President’s Room at Churchill Downs, where all the winners came to take a photo with the president after each race. It was packed with celebrities who took advantage of the balcony view of the paddock. With a camera draped around my neck, I had the opportunity to interact with people like Dennis Hopper, Burt Bacharach, Susan Lucci, Woody Harrelson and others. It was a friendly group, especially as the day progressed and a few more Mint Juleps were consumed. As the “hired help,” however, I stayed soberly on task and captured the images I was there to shoot, experiencing the Derby through a celebrity’s outsider view and realizing that we had something pretty special going on in my portion of the Bluegrass State.
Only one of my children was born in Louisville, Kentucky. The other two entered into the world in the western and northern parts of the state. As the family of a basketball coach, we’ve moved around a lot. Each year, however, we’ve hosted a Derby party of sorts, even here in Georgia. Over the years, we've had stick horse races with the kids and made Derby hats out of newspaper. Sometimes we’ve had a house full of people and other times it’s just been a handful to celebrate. Some of them have never heard of the concept of “win, place and show.” It doesn’t matter. We decorate just the same. We throw chocolate and bourbon into what most people refer to as pecan pie and devour it, heated and a la mode. My dad still spots us a few dollars and draws each of us names of Derby horses in his office pot back home. He calls us the day before to tell us our picks so we can already begin rooting for them.
Our children have grown up with us celebrating the Derby through our eyes. Although we’ve lived in Louisville a couple of times throughout our 24 years together, my husband and I had never taken them to Churchill Downs. I decided it was time to show them in person what all the fuss was about with a trip to the Kentucky Derby Museum the next time I went home. Earlier this fall I had written a story on horse racing for the Greater Louisville Relocation Guide and spoke with the communications director for the museum. I asked her about a video I had remembered seeing there as a child, The Greatest Race. She told me that the updated version of the trademark production is now shown on a 360-degree screen. With Kentucky Derby winner American Pharoah taking the Triple Crown in 2015, they had also added a new exhibit in his honor, celebrating an achievement that hadn’t been accomplished by another horse since Affirmed in 1978. I made a promise to her to bring my kids there to experience it.
A week before Thanksgiving we were in Kentucky, cheering on my husband’s basketball team and celebrating the holiday a little early with family in Shelbyville. That Monday, I made good on my promise. My kiddos finally were able to see those famous twin spires for themselves. We started with a 30-minute walking tour of the legendary Churchill Downs racetrack where our guide explained the behind-the-scenes perspective of horse racing and the must-see places on Derby Day. She talked about legendary Secretariat and how he had a 22-pound heart when the average size of a race horse’s heart is just seven pounds. No horse, she said, has ever come close to his record. I also found out that three fillies had won the Derby over the years, the first being “Regret” in 1915, Genuine Risk in 1980 and Winning Colors in 1988. The latter two of the three I remember, but for some reason I was most proud of hearing about Regret winning during a time where women couldn’t even vote.
After our tour, we saddled up on swiveling stools in the theater and experienced the 360-degree video. I watched the kids’ faces as they stared up, wide-eyed and captivated by the sound of thundering hooves resonating throughout the theater and the heartfelt interviews with jockeys and trainers whose livelihoods depended on their horses. The glamour, beauty and romance of the Kentucky Derby was eloquently captured in The Greatest Race as I suspected it would be, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t tear up at the playing of My Old Kentucky Home toward the end.
We enjoyed the rest of our museum experience visiting a retired race horse named Populist Politics (whose bloodline includes the legendary Secretariat) and watching the kids try out the interactive exhibits. The horses weren’t running that day we visited, but we took pictures in front of the twin spires just the same. It was a glimpse into what I refer to as their Kentucky heritage, and come Derby Day this year, as we decorate the house and choose our horses out of the pot, my hope is that they’ll feel that connection to this tradition a little more.
As for the white three-planked fence, it’s still there. It’s someone else’s fence now. My parents moved into a subdivision shortly before I graduated from college. (My youngest brother was able to ride his bike to friends’ houses after all.) A memory like that, however, is best left visited only within your mind. My kids have the photos I took of those horses beyond the fence. It was the first experience I ever had with a camera, and I made my first photo album and wrote cutlines for each image I took. A few years later, Santa brought me a Nikon SLR camera and I toted it to Western Kentucky University where I majored in photojournalism. Those ponies not only inspired me to step outside of my own world, but they inspired a life-long fascination with capturing moments through a lens. That fence served as my sense of place, but it also provided a sense of purpose for me in life – as a storyteller through images.
I’m glad to have shared my heritage with my daughters during our trip to Kentucky. I pray that they’ll embrace their own senses of place as my husband and I provide opportunities for them to grow. I know their “places” will be different from my own. My hope, however, is that when they are grown and out on their own and the first Saturday of May rolls around each year, they’ll break out the recipe for a knock-off Derby Pie recipe (or order the real thing from Kern's Kitchen), round up their friends and cheer on their horses just the same.
For more information about the Kentucky Derby Museum, visit www.kentuckyderbymuseum.org. To see a photo of an official Derby pie, visit www.www.derbypie.com.