By Gregory Clark, January 3, 1931.
Lou Marsh all his life has looked as if he were going some place.
Even when he is only walking from the sporting department to the composing room he looks as if he were getting a kick out of it.
And all my life I have wished I could be going with Lou wherever he was going. But I knew my legs wouldn’t hold out.
The other afternoon Lou went charging by with a little cigar butt wedged in the corner of his jaw and looking even more than ordinarily marshy. And twenty years of silence went bust.
“Hey, Lou, how about taking me?”
Lou halted. He halts like a collision.
“How much money you got?” asked Lou.
“About ten dollars1,” said I weakly.
“Come on,” said Lou, charging for the elevator.
Out we galloped to the street, around a corner and into Lou’s car, where it was parked under a “Strictly No Parking” sign.
He drives the way he writes. Lou is largely responsible for the state of traffic in downtown Toronto. The swells he leaves last for hours.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Dufferin,” said Lou. “Harness races. We are going to buy a pool.”
“There isn’t any racing this time of year,” said I.
“Isn’t there?” said Lou. “There isn’t any racing any other time of year, you mean.”
“What kind of racing is it?” I asked, bracing my feet against the floorboards.
“Harness racing. Trottin’ races, pacers. On ice. On slush. In the mud. Big fat man sitting on a little wee bicycle down under the horse’s tail. All races run in heats.”
“What are heats?”
“Sections,” said Lou. “Like tripe. You pick a horse. It runs four races. Comes second each time and yet can still win the race. You get to like a horse that way. Fall in love with a horse.”
“I never knew about this,” said I.
“Lots of people don’t,” said Lou. “But lots of people don’t know about rasslin’.”
“I agree with you about rasslin’,” I said. “Rasslin’ is terrible.”
“Rasslin’ is the greatest sport in world,” said Lou.
“But—but,” I stammered, “I thought you—”
“Sure,” said Lou. “I changed my mind. Good to change your mind every once in a while. Like your shirt. It’s cleaner and it feels better.”
With a swish and a swoop we pulled up at Dufferin race track, bumped over the curb and pulled up on the boulevard.
Dufferin race track2 is a little merry-go-round track from a country fair dropped down right in the heart of Toronto. Its grandstand is a little grandstand exactly like the one at Birdseye Center. Its betting enclosures are fussy little barn-beamed stables without paint or varnish. Its judge’s stand is on this side, the crowd side, of the track, so that you can holler up to the judges if you are so minded. It is a little bit of home in the heart of the big city to thousands of lonely people from up-country.
And in the winter, when the trottin’ races are on, it is more like Coboconk or Omemee than ever.
A Hunch on Commodore Fish
If the ground in front of the grandstand gets muddy they just bring the straw out of the stables In wheelbarrows and make a sweet-smelling path of it so that you can get your overshoes or storm rubbers and maybe the back of your overalls into as near a homelike condition as possible. Lou said that was atmosphere. I don’t know what he meant.
Lou led me up to the gate, where a fellow in an old beaver coat was standing guard, taking your cash money.
“I’m the lieutenant-governor,” said Lou. “and this is my aide de cong.”
Lou crashes more gates than One-Eyed Connelly3.
“I never heard of you.” said the gateman, grinning and letting us past.
The boys who follow the trotting races are certainly worlds removed from the crowd you see at the common race tracks. There are no foreigners at the trottin’ races, no sports, no young brokers and no spats. The old beaver and coon coats are the only touch of the elegant. Plenty of peak caps with ear-flaps. Plenty of woolen mufflers. Pale faces, which are the majority at the Woodbine, cause you to go up to them, even if they are perfect strangers, and ask how they have been keeping lately.
It’s old home week when there is trottin’ at Dufferin.
The races hadn’t started when Lou and I got there, but there were several horses warming up on the track. Not the pretty sleek effeminate horses you see at the running races, but plain horses, just a little on the skinny side, with steam coming off them, sitting down behind them, on little gigs made with bicycle tire wheels, big fat men wearing rubber suits.
“Lou,” said I, “look at the gait of those horses!”
“Pacers and trotters,” said Lou. “Some roll like a woozy sailor. Action like a tandem bike, both legs together. A pacer puts both his right legs forward at the same time, then both his left. A trotter hits on all four corners alternately. But it’s a fast gait either way. They can sure pick ’em up and set ’em down fast when they’re let.”
He took me by the elbow add rushed me down past the grandstand to the little sheds at the north end where I could hear voices yelling.
In the gloom of the beamed sheds, with only rusty old braziers warming the air, a tight packed crowd was gathered around a sort of booth raised up, where men were chalking figures on a blackboard.
“That’s just Ching Hare takin’ bets on the heat,” said Lou, shoving me through the jam. “Come on down and buy a pool. That’s where you get some real gamblin’.”
At the back end of the sheds a pudgy little man with a hard hat over one eye, his coat open and thrown back and his hands jammed down into cross pockets in his pants, with watch-chain dangling across the bulge, was singing something. He was one of the sportiest, most charming little men you ever saw.
“Come—on,” he sang, “don’t—let—the—wheels—of—commerce stand—still! Who’ll buy—the—rest—of—this—pool? Take off your leather vests. Don’t—tell—me—that—you—are—going—to—let—a–chance—like—Bingo Boy—pass—by—for—a—buck—don’t—tell—me… Bingo Boy—Bingo Boy—best—horse—in—the—race… I just sold Molasses—there’s a sweet thing for you—for fifty for one if you like Bingo Boy. It’s the chance of your blooming life.”
Lou was studying his card.
“Look at that,” he said. “That one.”
I saw the name: “Commodore Fish.”
“A pure hunch,” said Lou. “Commodore for me, since I’m the admiral of the sea flea fleet. And fish for you. We’ll buy the pool on him.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“These fellows are selling pools,” said Lou. “When he finishes selling the pool he is on now we’ll up and say we will buy the pool on Commodore Fish—that’s in the third race—for twenty dollars. Then he will sell the other five horses in the race for whatever he can get. Maybe he will sell the other horses for two dollars each. That makes the pool thirty bucks. If our horse wins we take the whole pool.”
“That’s a lot simpler than ordinary betting,” said l.
“Simpler in more ways than you think,” said Lou.
Mingling With the Real Ammonia Boys
He listened while the quaint little man, who never took his hands out of his cross pockets, finished persuading the boys standing around to take up the rest of the horses in the pool he was selling. He had to lump the last three horses in one bunch and he sold them for two dollars the lot. The fellow who bought them had three chances for two dollars to win the race.
Then Lou stepped up.
“I’ll pay $20 for Commodore Fish in the third race,” said he.
“Twenty—dollars—on—the—Fish horse—in—the—third,” droned the little man. “I’ll get you thirty against that.” And right away several of the boys spoke up and took other horses in that race. The whole pool quickly came to fifty-six dollars.
“Not so good,” said Lou. I don’t like that. The boys don’t seem to like Commodore Fish. They jumped at our twenty.”
“Here’s my ten now,” said I.
“Listen,” said Lou, “Get out there and walk around the crowd and see what you can hear. Whenever you get close to anybody that smells strong of horse stay by him. The horsier they smell, the more they know. Some of them sleep with these skins. See if any of the real ammonia boys have anything good to say for Commodore Fish.”
I went out and mingled with the crowd.
I watched them run a heat. Instead of lining the horses up at a barrier they wheel them back, let them take off to a running start, and if they are in good order as they come past the judge’s stand the starter, yelling through a megaphone, shouts, “Go!”
it isn’t a good start, which happens three times out four, the starter up in the hencoop on stilts, hammers a little bell and the horses with their little buggies wheel around, go back down the track and try again.
It is the most personal sort of race.
“Come up that pole horse,” roars the starter as the horses come hurrying up for the running start.
But the pole horse always seems to be in trouble. It never does the right thing. But about the fourth or fifth try the starter gets tired and lets the race go anyway.
And while all these false starts are being made you hang over the rail studying the beasts and can get a good idea of which is the good one. Then you can run to the betting shed and get a bet up even after the horses have left the starting line.
I found one very horsey old man in a worn beaver coat.
“What about Commodore Fish in the third race?” I asked him.
“What about it?” demanded the old gent.
“Is he any good?”
“He’s the best horse in the race.” said the old chap, spitting brown. “He’s the best horse on the track, what’s more. I ought to know, cause I own him.”
So I hurried and told Lou.
Lou came and watched the heats with me.
“What do the horses wear all those garters and things for?” I asked Lou.
“To tickle them,” said Lou, “and make them step out smarter.”
“They’ve got a lot of junk on them,” said l.
“Everything but a windshield wiper,” said Lou. “Which is the thing they need most.”
It was very slushy that day.
A Swell Ride Anyway
One of the horses had a kind of billiard cue tied up along his neck and sticking up beside his head.
“That’s the pole horse, I suppose,” said l.
“Sure,” said Lou. He wears that billiard cue as a sign to the boys that he is shooting in this race.”
The fifth start was all jammed up, with Commodore Fish rushing three lengths ahead of everybody.
“If you don’t keep back of the pole horse I’ll attend to you.” roared the starter. “The next time you cone down in front I’ll set you down!”
The sixth start, Commodore Fish bounded away four lengths ahead of the field.
“Out!” roared the starter.
“Just a minute,” growled Lou, grabbing me by the slack of my chest. “Old man, I’m going to drive that hoss.”
And with a bound Lou was over the fence, dragging me out amongst the wheeling, plunging horses and little hissing wheels.
“Get out of your pew,” said Lou, jamming his Borsalino down over his ears. The driver in the messy rubber overalls got down with a grunt.
“Charley Snow says I’m to team him,” said Lou as he leaped into the seat of the tiny buggy. Charley Snow was the starter, so there was no argument.
“Get up there behind me,” said Lou to me, grimly. “Get some kind of a holt of me and hang on.”
“What’s the idea?” I whinnied.
“My neck’s to short to be a good trottin’ driver,” said Lou. “You perch there and tell me how they’re coming behind me. I’m going away on the Bill Daly.”
The horse wheeled. There a cloud of horses, slush, spray, snorting, yelling, and in wild howling rush we were away on Lou’s Bill Daly—whatever that is.
Away on the Bill Daly
A wild yell.
It sounded like “go.”
I heard no bell.
And all I could see was a blur of fence, a great cloud of slush behind me, and I hooked my heels into Lou’s pockets, slang my arms under his, and let her go.
We were yards ahead. Then all the other horses faded from view. We were going to win by a lap.
“Wow!” I howled into Lou’s ear. “Let her go!”
“How they coming?” shouted Lou., with the slush slashing past his head as he laid the gad. We were throwing up a bow wave like a coal barge cleaving a wake like a destroyer.
“They’re a mile back,” I yelled.
I felt the curve of the second turn. Then I felt Lou straighten up and heave on the reins. I looked over his entirely ruined shoulder. Ahead of us, on the home stretch, the other horses in the heat were just breaking away on the start.
Lou hauled Commodore Fish to a lope.
“Did you hear any bell?” he demanded grimly.
“l did not,” said l, angrily.
“Why didn’t you tell me they weren’t behind us?” roared Lou.
“I couldn’t see for the slush,” said I. “Anyway, I thought we were winning.”
Lou pulled the Fish horse up at the stables, where the old gent in the worn beaver coat and the fat man in the soiled rubber suit were waiting for us.
“Your ears,” said the old gent, kindly, “has got to be more or less trained to hear that bell.”
“If this guy hadn’t been betting against us in that pool,” said Lou, “he could have won the race.”
“He’s my son,” said the old gent, “and we allus splits our winnings.”
Lou was plastered with slush, hat and all. I was not much better off, on my exposed side.
“Well,” said Lou. “it was a swell ride anyway, wasn’t it?”
“It was great.”
“You couldn’t run out and hop on a bangtail lake that down at the Woodbine,” said Lou.
“Not with all those swells there,” said I.
“That’s why I like trottin’ races,” said Lou. “Something personal and intimate and easy going about it.”
“You’re covered with slush,” said I. “Your outside clothes are ruined.”
“And we lost ten bucks each,” said Lou.
“I paid you mine,” said l.
“Sure. But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“It’s been swell,” said I.
“I’ll take you lots of places if you like,” said Lou.
“That will be great,” said I, scraping off some of the slush. It had oats in it.
But once every thirty or forty years is often enough to go places with Lou.
When I see him going by with that look on his face from now on I am going to have an engagement.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of those pre-Greg-Jim stories with a different partner, this time Lou Marsh, one of the pioneers of sports journalism in Canada, working at the Toronto Star for 43 years. In 1931 he was the sports editor, a position he held until his death in 1936.
- $10 in 1931 would be $210 in 2025. ↩︎
- Dufferin Park Racetrack was a racetrack for thoroughbred horse races located on Dufferin Street in Toronto. It was demolished in 1955 and its stakes races moved to Woodbine Racetrack as part of a consolidation of racetracks in the Toronto area. ↩︎
- James “one-eyed” Connelly, “The World’s Most Notorious Gate Crasher” spent 40 years sneaking into boxing matches, baseball games, and political conventions. ↩︎
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