Every spring, in early March, there would come an afternoon when I’d arrive home from Gilman School [Md.] and find a pile of insulated, waffle-patterned underwear–top and bottom–old turtlenecks, wool sweaters, Irish wool cap, yellow rain pants and yellow rain jacket balled up on the worn steps to the attic, and they’d be soaked with sweat.

There’d be a rich, lively, gamey scent to the sweaty clothes, spiced with a hot rubbery smell given off by the heated rain suit, and there’d be the barnyard aroma of hot, steamy wool. As the spring lengthened, the sweat-soaked clothes would appear more often, signaling the beginning of another steeplechase season.

The carefree having-my-father-at-home of the winter, the watching him slice the lamb and ladle out the potatoes at dinner, the playing checkers with him by the fire at night while Mom played the piano, the joking around and bringing the miniature pony my sister Sue Sue was riding and training into the house or into the back seat of the car, would be over. So would the early morning drive on Saturday and Sunday down to Hydes, Md., with him, just the two of us, talking, then working with the horses and ponies in the vast fields. The driving home with him and talking about our day’s work was winding down; it was ending.

His full Irish face would begin to narrow as he stoked the fires deep inside that drove him. He’d stop eating. He’d work in layers of clothes, melting off the muscle on his neck, shoulders, thighs and calves, honing the 165-pound body of a middleweight fighter down to 155, 150, 145, 140–to his limit,136.

By late March my father would be off early Monday morning at 80 miles an hour to Belmont Park for the week. And everything in our lives got hotter, sharper, and more brilliant, as Pop fought his weight, as his nerves got touchier, as we read about him on the front pages of the sports section of the New York Times and the Herald Tribune, saw his picture in the Morning Telegraph and The Chronicle of the Horse, as he drifted away from us to his other love, to his gift, race-riding.

When he could, he drove home to Maryland. He drove fast, dodging cops, arriving in the evening. No more playing checkers at night. He had to arise at 3 in the morning to make it to the barn at Belmont Park by 6. Sometimes I’d hear him start the car, in the dark, outside my window, and I’d wish I were going with him. Mom grew more tense. She worried about his driving.

One night, he pushed his new car too hard when making a turn 2 miles from our house. I saw the car the next day, lying there on its back like a turtle, its dark underbelly of pipes and metal parts oddly exposed, vulnerable. No one said much about it. It was a mystery to me, what had happened.

Following Spring’s Warmth
On the weekends, the spring race meets would commence, featuring steeplechase races over hurdles, brush, and timber. The season started with a couple of what Emmett Grayson called “pint-to-pints,” more formally called “point-to-points.”

Pop and his brother, D.M. “Mikey” Smithwick, perhaps went to a few of the ones in Virginia–Casanova, Rappahannock, and Piedmont–just to school the horses. Soon, as the afternoon sun brightened and the ice and snow melted, the hunt meets sanctioned by the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association began.

The NSHA races started down in the Carolinas in March, at Camden and Aiken in South Carolina, at Tryon in North Carolina, and then, following the warming of spring, moved up into Virginia.

Pop would’ve been going down to the Carolina race meets in late March, but the first big race meet we’d attend as a family was the Middleburg hunt meet, in Virginia, and I couldn’t wait to go. I loved helping Pop carry his tack bag from the car to the jocks’ room–a private dressing space covered over by a tin roof nailed onto some tall posts with rough-hewn fence boards fastened to the sides. The jocks’ room was the inner sanctum. Only the riders were allowed in, and, of course, no women. Riders. Jumping riders. Steeplechase jockeys.

Mission To Middleburg
On the morning of April 15, 1961, Mom and I went for a cross-country school before we headed to Middleburg to watch Pop ride. Mom was on Fini; I was on Queenie; and she led, trotting, cantering, and galloping through the woods, over logs, and across creeks. We jumped one chicken coop after another, but I envisioned each as one of the fences over which Pop would be riding a horse called Valley Hart that afternoon.

Heading home, we jumped panels in board fences where the top rail had been lowered, and small post and rail fences. Queenie was my timber horse, my Valley Hart, and I was the jockey.

Soon, I was up in my room changing into clean khakis, a clean blue long-sleeve shirt, and pulling a wool sports jacket out of the gigantic, towering armoire. I pulled out my shoeshine kit and was sitting in the swivel chair, starting to work on the shoes, when I heard the sound of a car slowing as it came through the tunnel of trees on Manor Road and then the wheels crunching and skidding on the gravel of the driveway. With a newspaper spread across my lap, as Pop had taught me, and a shoe wedged between my legs, I stretched forward, looked out thewindow, and watched the car as it neared the house. I looked carefully to see whether Pop had all the windows up and was in his sweating outfit, which would mean he’d drive down in a “hot car” and we’d go with Mom; or, if he had the windows open and the air was flowing through, which would mean his weight was in good shape and we would all drive down together.

The car continued past, the passenger window all the way down and Pop’s elbow sticking out. I felt a lift of excitement. As Pop’s car coasted to a stop, his foot skidded on the moving ground and he was out. He walked fast to the kitchen. I could hear him talking to Mom, and then he was trotting up the front steps.

Soon we were off to the races, Pop at the wheel, a little on edge, pushing it, passing cars, accelerating, judging the passing of long lines of cars just right, down to a hairline. He had a ride on a maiden in the first race, post time for which was 1:30.

Twenty miles outside of Middleburg, we got in a traffic jam. It was getting a little late, and the needle on the speedometer was creeping higher and higher on the crescent dial of the Ford and then down and to the right as Pop pulled the car into the lane of oncoming traffic and flew by the long line of race-going cars. Our car was a P-39 fighter like the ones my uncle, Col. Edward B. Whitman, Jr. flew during World War II. Our car was a P-39 fighter like Uncle Ned’s, and Pop was the pilot, Pop was the captain: When we were on our way to the races, we were on a mission, and we were going to complete it.

We slowed and drove through the village of Middleburg, and soon we were at the gates of the Glenwood Park Course for the Middleburg races and bumping across the cattle guard to park alongside other cars with “Owners, Trainers, and Riders Parking” stickers in the windshields.

Autograph Hound
A young country boy, dressed in blue jeans and a heavy checkered work shirt rolled up at the sleeves, a few inches taller and a few years older than I, and holding a fistful of programs, approached the car. Mom got some cash, bought a couple of programs, and handed one to me.

I walked back to Pop, behind the car.

Our tweed jackets lay across the top of his tack bag. He handed me mine and I slipped it on. He pulled his on. Pop was always well dressed at the races, even if just to walk to the jocks’ room. He reached into the trunk with one hand, grabbed the two handles of his worn leather tack bag–a duffle bag filled with his saddles and gear and 10 pounds of thin, dollar bill-sized slivers of lead–lifted the bag out, and set it on the ground.

The boy with the programs was now awkwardly hovering around us. He was wearing a stiff new pair of lace-up riding boots. The light tan leather was darkened with dirt and sweat on the inside of the ankles, and the inside of the calves of his blue jeans was frayed and sweat stained. He stepped forward, holding a program open to the first race.

“Mr. Smithwick, would you autograph my program, please, sir?” he asked, pronouncing our name correctly, the Irish way, without the “w,” so that it sounded like “Smithick.”

“Sure, jock,” Pop said, looking the boy in the eye.

The boy beamed at Pop’s recognition of his riding ambition.

“Where’d you like me to sign it?” Pop asked, taking the pen. The boy pointed to the spot where Pop was listed to ride Alezan in the first race. Pop bent forward, signed his name, and handed back the program and pen. “Nice-looking boots. How many did you get on this morning?”

“Three,” the boy said, grinning.

“Keep it up. Maybe I’ll see you here in a pair of silks in a year or two.”

The boy looked up at him. “I hope so, Mr. Smithwick. Do you think you’ll win many today?”

Pop leaned forward and gripped the handle on his side of the bag; I leaned forward, gripped my handle, and we both lifted up. “No, won’t win many today,” he told the boy, “but I might do all right in the fourth.”

The boy flipped the pages of his program to the fourth race, the timber race. Pop gave me a wink and together, he walking with those short, quick strides and leaning down toward me to make his handle the height of my handle and I having to half-jog to keep up, we carried the bag along a tractor path through the trees on top of the hill toward the jocks’ room.

Into the jocks’ room. This wasn’t Belmont Park. There was a rusty tin roof over our heads, and worn, weathered fence boards made up the walls. About a dozen riders were packed under the tin roof. Some were shirtless, pulling off pants, pulling on nylon britches, exposing their veined, sinewy, muscled torsos. They were organizing their spots from which to operate for the rest of the day–setting two or three saddles on the fence, hanging their elastic over-girths and under-girths over the saddles, laying the rubber pads and brightly colored wool pommel pads, and the freshly cleaned-and-saddle-soaped yokes across the two- to eight-pound saddles.

We set our tack bag down in a corner. Pop started changing into his britches, T-shirt, and stock and pulling on his boots. He asked me to rig up his middleweight saddle for the first race. He was doing 153. I took out a freshly saddle-soaped pair of stirrup leathers and sat down on the ground beside Joe Aitcheson. Joe was focused on adjusting the straps to the shoulder pads he wore. He hadn’t pulled on a T-shirt yet, and I snuck a look at the tattoo he had on his bicep. He didn’t have long, sinewy muscles like Pop. His muscles were sharply delineated and accentuated. They popped and rippled as he moved the pads around. He looked up at me for a second, “You taking care of your dad’s tack for him today?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

“He’s a lucky man to have you helping out. Wish I had a son to help me.” This made me feel great. Joe always said something to me, in a calm and gentle voice that made me feel good.

Not only was Joe one of the top up-and-coming riders, I knew that he had also served a tour or two with the Navy and had been a champion Navy boxer. Joe was sincere.

There was no small talk with him, no wasted movement. He was a mystery to many people, seeming to live totally in his own disciplined world.
We relaxed for a moment while riders rushed in and out of the jocks’ room, changing their equipment. Pop studied his program. I looked over mine. Then he closed his program and said, “You ready, Bud?”

“I’m ready,” I said, and we both rose to go.

Better Than Being President
“Did you know that the President was here?” Pop asked me.

“The President?”

“Yes, the President of the United States.”

“I heard that the Kennedys are here, but I haven’t seen any of them.”

“Well, President Kennedy was here earlier.”

He explained that he had walked down to the rail, away from everybody, to watch a race. He had been leaning on the rail, watching the race, when he realized the man leaning on the rail beside him was President Kennedy. They watched the race together, JFK asking a question or two.

After the race, Pop asked the President if he was going to stay for the next race. JFK had sighed, said he’d love to. His wife could stay for the rest of the afternoon, but he had to get back to the office; he had some work to attend to.

Pop seemed to be pointing out to me that maybe it wasn’t so bad having a career as a steeplechase jockey after all; even the President of the United States couldn’t get an afternoon away from work and the problems of the country to spend a day at the races. We got up, weighed out, and walked to the paddock.

Pop rode the hell out of Valley Hart that afternoon, winning by 1 1/2 lengths.

I stood outside a fenced-in area and watched as Jacqueline Kennedy presented my father the trophy. She, young, black-haired, fit; he, young, black-haired, fit; both of them grinning and holding the huge, ornate silver trophy together and looking like they’d live forever.

I Loved It
During some springs, it could be hot and dry and the ground brick-hard at Middleburg. Or, it could be chilly and drizzling and the going deep and muddy and every time Pop walked back from riding a race he’d be splattered with mud–unless he were on a frontrunner that “stayed.”

He could rate a rank frontrunner better than anyone; he could get him out there on the lead, drop the reins, and let the horse coast along. With another rider, the horse would be pulling, struggling to go faster, and using up all his energy.

I didn’t care what the weather was–so long as I was out in it.

If the sun’s beams were warming my face or sheets of rain were stinging my eyes, I loved it.

If I was hot and wearing a shirt and tie with my sleeves rolled up and the sweat was rolling down my sides, or if I had on boots and a wool sweater and rain slicker and wool cap and smelled like a damn sheep yard, I loved it.

If Pop was winning race after race, and people were betting more and more on him, and he was smiling and happy and lucky and nothing could go wrong and men I barely knew would jog up alongside me and try to pick up a gambling tip. I loved it.

If the sun was blocked by clouds and the big horse–Mako or The Sport or Bon Nouvel–didn’t run like he was supposed to and someone like Kenny Field, who sometimes bragged when he got away with bending the rules, cut Pop off going into the last hurdle and almost caused him to fall, and we just didn’t seem to get to the winner’s circle, I loved it.

If Pop had lost too much weight too fast and was starting to get cramps, I still loved it. I would run out into the sea of cars and spectators to find a cup of hot bouillon or chicken soup with a spoonful of salt.

No matter what, I loved it. On the days when we were on a roll and in and out of the winner’s circle and the cameras were clicking and we were smiling and the pile of trophies was mounting up and at the end of the afternoon, walking back to the jocks’ room, we were exhausted, drained, and the spectators were sheepishly asking Pop for his autograph and he was stopping and signing a few of their programs, well, I thought, this was living, this was the good life, this is it.

Reprinted from Racing My Father, to be published in May, with permission from Eclipse Press (www.exclusivelyequine.com).