have their usefulness. When one would have to be destroyed, it would ruin my day, and really bring me down. One of the older jockeys told me, 'you'll have to get over that!’ I never could."
Carol nodded understandingly and Norman slicked back his hair. "Racing isn't only hard on horses; it's hard on jockeys too! I've had every bone in my body broken. In a race, nine times out of ten, you won't get hurt when your horse goes down, but if you're anywhere out in front, it's the other horses running over you that do the damage. And they can't help it, they're all bunched up and they're running so fast - you haven't got a chance. That’s how most jockeys get killed. When you're down on the ground there's nothing bigger than a horse coming at you! Every time you go out there on the track you run the chance of not coming back. Maybe you'll get killed, or crippled. I accidentally killed one of my jockey friends. My horse is the one that stepped on him, it couldn't be helped."
Norman spit and then hurried on, "It's mighty hard to keep riding after something like that! You've got to keep the bad incidents out of your thoughts, for once it starts working on your mind, and you’ll lose your courage. Some jockeys start 'hitting the bottle' because of happenings like that, and it puts them on a downhill run. When you get so you have to have a bottle to build up your nerve, you'd better quit! But, like I said, riding race horses isn't all a bed of roses, nothing worthwhile ever is."
There was a pause, and while we sat with Norman quietly contemplating the death of his friend, the sun set over the Funeral Mountains and the whole sky took on the color of a rose. Small yellow alfalfa butterflies continued to rise and fall around the blue blossoms on the plants that give them their name, busily using every shred of daylight to gather nectar.
The ranch hands had gone home for the day, and the alfalfa fields around us were ready to cut. Beyond the fields, stretching as far as the eye could see was the creosote and sagebrush of The Amargosa Desert. It seemed as though the whole world was waiting silently for Norman's story to resume.
Norman broke the silence with a sigh and a comment on the beauty surrounding around us, "If I spend the rest of my life here," he said, "I'll die a happy man!” Then patting his flat stomach with both hands, he declared, "Most folks don't know that to ride race horses you must be physically fit at all times; like a prize-fighter. It's the most strenuous job! You use every muscle in your body to ride a race horse."
"A horse can carry more weight and run faster if you are over his withers. So, you are up in your stirrups, over his withers, and you're helping the horse by picking him up and putting him down. It's tiresome. After a month of vacation and then a race I'd be exhausted from just one race. Physically and mentally it is stressful - the best horses can sometimes lose."
I got up and used a pair of tongs to lift the hot cans out of the potato water. Norman watched me closely, "The last twenty years that I rode I was getting a weight problem," he confessed. "I had to diet and do the steam box for three hours at a time. It makes you weak. One time I lost eight pounds in three hours! On the days I had to sweat off the weight, then race, I'd be trembling when the race was over and staggering around on legs that felt like rubber. I'd hardly be able to unsaddle my horse!"
I drained the water off of the potatoes, using a tin plate as a lid, and then began to mash the potatoes with a fork. Norman spit.
"Now, I can eat anything I want!" he boasted. "I like growing my own vegetable garden. Oh, I love fresh vegetables!” Then, as though the thought of food and diets led to the thought of girls, he changed the subject abruptly.
"There were a number of girl jockeys, for a while, but they are backing off. They just can't take a fall like a man can. If girls had been riding when I started, I would have quit riding. I'd have let my wife ride, and I'd have kept house!"
"I got married when I was twenty-six. I was riding in Omaha, Nebraska and met her at the track. Pretty! She was beautiful! And, she could ride jumping horses, cutting horses and roping horses."
"Two Hollywood scouts wanted her, but, she didn't want any part of the movies. I've never known anyone with such a nice personality. My wife was a great horse-woman, and she was the only lady I have ever loved. Now, at my age even if I met a rich woman, I don't think I'd want any part of it!"
"I lost my wife young. My daughter was just a baby. My girl turned out to be a good girl, though. You know why? I couldn't drag her around from track to track with me, so I took her home to my mother. That's why she turned out good. My mother died three years ago, and my daughter is living in Colorado. She has two boys and a girl. All grown."
"When I get to Heaven I want to see my wife, my Mom and Dad and my Aunt Millie...then all the horses I rode, and the dogs I knew!"
The potatoes were pretty well mashed. I added a big dollop of real butter to them, stirred them a bit and then set them aside. Leaning back in his chair, Norman called his small German shepherd back to him from where she had wandered off toward the burros. He patted her head as she laid it fondly on his knee. "Her name is Rin Tin Tin Number 13," he explained. "Someone dumped her here about three months ago. What kind of person would do that to a young, helpless animal?"
"I'd never do such a thing, and I never was a gambler. Though I've done about everything; smoked, chewed tobacco, and drank whiskey. It's nothing to brag about but I'll be seventy-three in a day or two and I feel good all the time. I rode race horses for a living, until I was fifty-nine (that's old for a jockey) and I loved it."
"My two favorite hobbies are still race horses and girls. They say in Kentucky 'pretty horses and fast women'. I say, 'fast horses and faster women,' I've always liked the girls. Ever since I was that high,” He gestured to the height of his bent knee.
"There wouldn't be much to live for without girls! When I was young I kind of liked the old mares, now that I'm getting old I like the fillies!” Norman grinned and we laughed together.
Carol sent a look my way, saying, 'Please don't let this conversation deteriorate any further.' and Norman must have intercepted the look because, he hastened to add, "It sounds like I'm a dirty old man but I'm not really, and I'm not an atheist either."
I cranked open the hot cans, poured the juice off the corn, and put servings of mashed potatoes, beef, gravy, and corn on three plates. Norman accepted a plate from my hand and reaffirmed his last statement.
"You'll never find a jockey who is an atheist! We all believe in God, because we face death every day. I believe in God and ten years ago I told my friends, 'I'm going to read the Bible. I have to know how all this, (he gestured toward the ripe fields and the rose colored sky) came to be.’ I've read the Bible many times since!"
CHAPTER SIX
I'm sure you've heard old stories of how some burros have helped their owners to find gold. We should have known better, but we left our burros behind when we went looking for gold in the Amargosa Desert. For that particular and peculiar prospecting trip we had to leave them behind, because we climbed into a chartered bus and went to visit the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump near Lathrup Wells, Nevada.
We had no more than gotten seated on the bus when security guards came onto the bus, examined our 'official invitations,' and pinned little badges to our flannel shirt collars to identify us and to alert us to any radiation. (There was not yet supposed to be any nuclear waste there, in fact Yucca Mountain had not even been approved as a waste site, but we were on The Nevada Test Site which is part of Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range.)
Nobody flunked the security test so with our little badges dangling from our shirts we were treated to a whole day of touring the government facilities and the summit of Yucca Mountain.
One of the first stops we made was out in the open on Jackass Flats where we listened to a female biologist, walking around in the back of a pickup truck in high heeled cowboy boots; give a talk on how the government is protecting wildlife in the area. I remember that the heels of her boots kept sliding into the grooves in the truck bed causing her to lurch sideways now and then as she performed. Most of what she had to say was about endangered tortoises.
Being a "jackass prospector" and standing there in a place called Jackass Flats, I was wondering