New Bern Diary, Fri-Sat

The wonderful thing about New Bern is that the kids and grandkids show up. We have invited everyone to Lake Lure, but no one came for two years. But they come to New Bern, so we keep our annual appointment the week prior to Memorial Day weekend, before the rates go up. This week is usually warm enough for summer activities, and we can still get a two bedroom condo with our timeshare points. Why they come is obvious:Devon and Ray love to sleep on a lumpy sleeper sofa in the living room while the poor grandparents suffer in the master suite, and the three children suffer upstairs in their own little kingdom, actually a loft with a window through which they an pitch their clothes, toys, and voices to their sleeping(?) mom and dad below. This trip Arie was bedded down in the upstairs closet when we arrived. The Reston folks arrived ahead of us this trip, as Dennis and I are both working people this year and didn't get away till after seven. Last year we were between jobs and arrived in plenty of time to have sloppy joes and frozen corn ready for the weary travelers, and the mere sight of sloppy joes sent Ray into food nirvana. Alas this year there was no food ready; we all ate on the road and arrived tired. Devon and I invented a drink that was much enjoyed over the next several days. It was a concoction of Smoking Loon cabernet sauvignon, orange juice and gingerale. So the guys drank beer, the girls drank wine-ade, and we all went to bed.
I awoke the next morning to the wonderful sound of my son in law making breakfast!!!!
Pancakes!Bacon! It was just the start of many wonderful meals cooked by Ray, paid for by Ray, or eaten by Ray. Not to omit the meal at BB Hurricanes, the previously mentioned worst restaurant in NC, which unfortunately is the only restaurant on the property. After breakfast, we all went over to the indoor pool, the kids remembered how to swim, we all sat in the hot tub and enjoyed the Sahara, which is what Trevor somewhat aptly called the sauna. In no time Trevor was jumping in and paddling to the deep end. Rachie swam with a pool noodle and her Grandma, and Arie clung to her mom for awhile, but later in the trip was noodling around the pool with help.We had scads of fun, horsing around and playing crab, manatee and shark with the kids. Later we played minigolf, went bike riding and made several trips back to the pool. Trevor took his grandma on a bike tour of the area, and we stopped to feed the geese and turtles at the lake. We also walked over to our studio condo which has just been vacated by our tenant of two years, and Dennis and Ray spent several hours hacking apart the ancient murphy bed and hauling the mattress and bed to the dump. Trevor found a beautiful model sailing ship, a square rigger which had been left in the condo. On the way back from the dump, the guys picked us up some pizzas at the Big Apple, the kids and their mom watched Lady and the Tramp in their kingdom upstairs, the menfolk watched some silly trash on the downstairs TV, and grandma went to bed at nine o clock. Too much wine-ade??

ahh, New Bern, part one

Almost heaven, North Carolina. Since moving to NC three years ago, we quickly discovered what we had been missing all these years: beaches wider and less crowded than Florida, mountain retreats just a couple of hours up the road, breathtaking fall scenery, laughably mild winters, yet occasional snowfalls, lots of opportunities to enjoy sitting by the fireside, long lingering springtimes bursting with color, from daffodils to azaleas and dogwood. And the mountains and beaches are no more than three hours from our doorstep. The dogwoods and azaleas are in our backyard. The fall spectacular is on our street. We have been to Asheville and Banner Elk and New Bern. Nothing compares to New Bern. Most people have never heard of New Bern, a town of about twenty three thousand people, sitting inland from the Atlantic at the convergence of the Trent and Neuse Rivers. Like Jacksonville, it is a town of wide rivers and gorgeous waterfront homes. And it is close enough to have the moderating effect of the ocean, the late day seabreezes and the comforting salty humidity. Unlike Jax, it is a small town with little industry, and the downtown has been converted to a few blocks of bed and breakfasts, antique and art stores, TWO trendy coffee bars, and the birthplace of Pepsi Cola enshrined on a corner. And let us not forget the Cow restaurant, specializing in all things bovine, and ice cream. And the toy store, independent, and full of serendipitous stuff. There are touristy places, the Tryon Palace which we have never bothered to enter with three kids six and under, several waterfront hotels, the Carolina Aquarium, down the road toward Morehead City, which we are sure to visit next year. The town is edged by the usual Southern ghetto of small shacks, pool halls, pawn shops, poverty. When they finish repairing the drawbridge into downtown, you can skirt the obvious, but right now the detour takes you through other folk's reality. Even Disney World has an underclass....
But our reality is Fairfield Harbour, part resort, part expensive waterfront bulkheaded deep harbour houses, part retirement village, part timeshare. This bit of middle class paradise is a couple of miles out of town, five miles down a country road, through an unguarded entance, past the golf courses and modular earthtoned condos, to the timeshare units a few steps from the rec center, the marina, and the worst restaurant in NC. Well, it can't ALL be good.

Eight Belles

When I was a teenager, and younger, my sister and I never missed the Kentucky Derby. We loved horses. And a televised horse race was just another opportunity to see that most magnificent of horses, the Thoroughbred, perform as God intended, not as the fleetest of foot, for that honor belonged to the Arabian, but as the horse with the most heart, the horse who could run the fastest and the longest. We were steeped in horse lore, we knew all about the great triple crown winners of a past golden era, War Admiral, Citation, and the legendary Man O War. We read every horse book ever published, The Black Stallion series,Smokey the Cow Horse, Misty of Chincoteague. All the great classics of horse literature had passed through our hands by the grace of the public library. A cigar company whose name escapes me held a contest every year, and the grand prize was a Thoroughbred horse. Every year we entered, half expecting to win and half wondering what we would do if we DID win. I wonder now if any suburban child ever won that large hungry temperamental equine, and kept it in a garage or a fenced quarter acre of backyard, alongside the swing set and the barbeque grill. We grew up in the sixties, that era of Secretariat and Northern Dancer, and we lived only a couple of hours from Ocala, where sweeping white fenced green fields still were home to champion race horses. Horse racing seemed to be a charming and charmed sport, and Derby winners retired to lives of ease after a few years of a glamorous life in the Sport of Kings. So I thought at the time.

As I grew older, I lost interest in horse racing. I still loved horses, but the reality of feeding and caring for a creature much larger than a collie held no appeal for me. My sister, however, never got over her infatuation with the undeniably beautiful creatures, and to this day has many more horses than can be reasonably expected to be "necessary." But they are not Thoroughbreds. Thoroughbreds cannot be pets. They have been bred for one reason only, to race. They are not saddle horses. The Thoroughbred is, sadly, a racing machine, a commodity to be bought and sold, a moneymaking enterprise on four powerful yet delicate legs.

As an adult, I rarely remember the date of the Derby.When I was still in Florida, my mother or my sister would call to remind me, and I would, for just a few minutes, get caught up in the excitement again. The year that Barbaro was expected to take the Triple Crown, I was as shocked and saddened as everyone by the "freak accident" that ended his chance for the ultimate horse racing prize, that ended his career, and eventually ended his life. To the great credit of his owner, extraordinary attempts were made to rehabilitate this huge hearted horse. Months went by while he gamely fought the painful onslaught of laminitis, and the veterinarians charged with the impossible task of saving the life of a horse with a shattered leg learned much and tried everything. But Barbaro died anyway.

Yesterday, at 6 pm, I flicked on the TV to catch the evening news. Dennis had run over to Carter Brothers to pickup two Saturday night special spaghetti dinners. I saw that I had not missed the Derby and spent a few minutes learning what horse was the favorite, who was the long shot, and who was the tall black filly with an actual chance to win. That was Eight Belles. Dennis returned with our dinner, I set up the
trays, and the jockeys mounted up and eased their engineered racing machines into the gates. And they were off! I was rooting for a horse named Adriano, only because he was ridden by Barbaro's jockey. But the favorite, an unbeaten colt named Big Brown, in only his fourth race, took the lead in the stretch and never looked back. He won the race by several lengths and I did not know who came in second. I was looking for Adriano, who had done poorly. But I was shocked by the behavior of the winning horse, who, in his trek to the winner's circle, seemed spooked. He even threw his jockey to the pavement. And then the cameras focused on a bizarre scene, a horse down and a horse ambulance hiding the horror. The television announcers hemmed and hawed, said that Eight Belles had gone down after finishing second, and that the jockey had been seen walking away. They tried to put a positive spin on the event, saying that quite often a horse will go down and it does not mean it is anything serious.Hmm, I thought, that's not true, especially after running second in the Kentucky Derby. And the jockey walking away, well that could only happen for one reason...his mount is severely injured, it is his fault, he was the "driver.' Sure enough, the track vet made the tragedy clear to millions. The horse had compound fractures of both forelegs and had been euthanized immediately. No months of whirlpool therapy for this lady. She had broken BOTH legs, AFTER the race. How could this happen? Was her genetic engineering flawed? Why did it happen? That one is easy. These animals are money makers. They don't have "heart." They have one purpose, and they are not in the driver's seat of their "purpose driven life." The horse who runs the fastest, the longest, without getting injured, will make the person in the driver's seat very wealthy. Thousands of these elegant, shy creatures do not have the right stuff. Only a few do. The multitude of injuries occurring every day in this "sport" are the result of bad genetic engineering. And it is all for profit. Sure,Barbaro's "family" loved and admired him: he was already a hero. And he had three good legs for awhile. Most horses injured at the track are euthanized and forgotten. But not this time. Millions of viewers saw this beautiful black filly die at the Kentucky Derby after racing beyond her endurance. I could not swallow my food.I could not speak. Finally, I started to sob. I don't know why. I could only think how SHE must have felt, almost catching that big brown colt, running fast and hard as always, and then suddenly, unspeakable pain, falling on the hard dirt track, heaving with exhaustion from the race and overwhelmed by fear when she could not stand. Confusion, then nothingness. Obliteration. No more. On the greatest day of her life. In our perspective.

The other perspective is from an unknown vantage point.This was not the greatest day of her life. The greatest day would occur in the future, when she could fulfill her purpose as a horse, an intelligent, emotional creature. This is not good stewardship of the earth. I know it seems trivial compared to war, famine, the evils done by man to man. I know I rarely sob when I see abandoned children in the Sudan, frightened women in Baghdad,victims of disease, starvation, and crime. But this was the Derby, a happy occasion, with American women in hats, of all things, and magnificent horses parading colors down the track. I did not want to see that ugly underbelly, that cruel sneer from the god of this religion, paramutuel betting. How ironic when they announced what the trifecta paid.
The dead horse paid off. The dead horse. Just a dead horse. I don't plan on ever watching the Derby or any Thoroughbred horse race again. I don't imagine the boycotting of tv viewing of racing by a single middle aged woman will make much of a statement to the world. I don't imagine I am being particularly altruistic.I just don't want to feel the shock and pain of a dying horse again.