Sample Feature Article:
I became cosmopolitan at age eighteen. It was then, while driving Derby limousines for ABC Sports that I came to walk among, dine with, and be companion to celebrity. 1980 was the year that Dan Fogelberg released, "Run For the Roses." The song would be that year’s anthem and I was to be the personal chauffer to the man who penned and recorded a song that we had made a hit. We all knew it was something immortal.
There is no shortage of exuberance here; none of the passive falseness of superimposed celebration. The Kentucky Derby is a festival out of time. It is a May Day ritual on the highest stages of evolution. And, we are the revelers.
My best friend that year was Doug White of O.D. White and Sons Funeral Home. His family had for years held the contract to supply Derby Limos for ABC, and each spring hired a stable of extra drivers. There was for us, as there is for folks throughout our community, a Second Coming of opportunity. Then, as now, extra money could be made through revelry. Then, as now, we could all brush shoulders with the gods who decended on our city.
Mint Julips are our Dionysian wine. Equus' thunder rumbles for weeks, building in a choreographed frenzy toward these two minutes of extacy; these two minutes when our hearts are joined. They pound in the perpetual power of each passing hoof.
I picked him up at the airport. He was a tired, average looking man lurking behind the anonimity of expensive sunglasses and a new hair cut. No doubt he had changed his look for the upcoming national broadcast of his hit song. He had brought his girlfriend with him, and they wasted no time in directing me to a horse farm to the east. It seems he was going to indulge in royal celebration by bestowing on her the gift of an Arabian mare.
There is no mechanical Indianapoline roar to drown the horse breath and hoof-clattered rush. No gasoline fumes to mask the smell of sweat, dust, and leather. Here, we participate with the beast in the primal thrill of the chase. And, here Tradition, the standard bearer of the thread of time, lives out its Passion Play.
Days and nights soon blurred as trips to the country gave way to nightclub hopping. We passed straight through jam sessions in the hotel lounge into breakfast. More than once I was called on to seek out good food and lively entertainment. "I need a private table for Mr. Fogleberg" became a mantra so rehearsed that I was at times sure my life was one extended state of déjà vu. Frantic interview appointments bumped against restaurants, clubs, and finally, the broadcast deadline. I drove to The Red Barn at The University of Louisville where Dan (as I was calling him now) was to play The Song and the whirlwind came to a stop.
Then came my chance. I knew my services would not be needed for at least a couple of hours. So, like any red-blooded Louisville boy, I drove the Limo to my girlfriend’s house. There were major points to be scored. The smell of celebrity hung on the clothes I had worn for the last two days and a night. And, to her, it was as if I had come in a cloud of James Bond pheromones. Spring and summer were celebrated in true teenage fashion. I returned to my post in the nick of time and the whirlwind resumed.
The future may be made or lost, and not only at the track. Our entire community is reawakened and it's fortunes reborn. Shopkeepers mark a second Christmas. The sun has returned to his sanctuary and from the moist womb of spring, summer nears full term.
Children of Louisville rejoice! Fire up those weenies and watch the fireworks. Join in the race of a lifetime and mark the thread that binds us to the past. Join in the song that vibrates along this thread into the future. Our lives are all different. Our hopes and dreams fill myriad points of diffusion along the human spectrum. But, we are all a part of this day. It is our heritage and our birthright.
