Saturday’s Kentucky Derby was very exciting with three horses crossing the finish line neck-in-neck with the winner not chosen until photographs of the wire were closely examined.  My Gramps would have loved it.  For a significant portion of his life he was a horse trainer.  He loved horses and it showed.  He was well known and respected among the ranks of the trainers along the east coast of America.  Although he wasn’t my biological grandfather, as a kid, he was the only one I knew and I loved him just as much as if he were.  I’ll always remember him as a kind and generous man.  Although I missed the prime of his career in horse racing, when I was old enough I would tag along with him to some of the race tracks that still existed in the 1950s.  I’ll never forget the unique smell that the stables at horse tracks had.  I think it was a combination of horse sweat and liniment that the trainers would rub on their tired legs.  It wasn’t a nasty smell, just special.  One that you never get anywhere else.  And the majesty of the animals was also special.  These thoroughbreds were highly skilled athletes who deserved to be treated as such.  Gramps taught me that as well as how to muck their stalls and feed and water them, which I was happy to do every chance I got.  Anything to be around them and with my Gramps.  Sadly, the popularity of the sport was diminishing and many tracks were shutting down.  Today there are very few left compared to their heyday in the 1920s and 30s, and there is a scarcity in the number of people who still attend them.  Our current fast-paced lifestyle and the legalization of betting on all manners of sports over your phone or computer (along with flashing lights and noisy bells to make it seem exciting) has removed the uniqueness of going to a horse track to simply bet on horses.  Gramps, whose real name was George Tanneyhill, took the changes all in stride however, and in the end he worked with horses every chance he got.  Below is a picture of my Gramps holding a horse he trained named “Juniors Pet” who at the time had just ran at a horse track in Maryland (which today is only used for stock car races).  Juniors Pet won his race that day as shown in the bottom half of the picture.  The lady, who is standing alongside the winning trainer (my Gramps) and the winning jockey, was my Mother.  Times were simpler back then.  I miss them terribly – both the times as well as my Mother and my Gramps.