When did Buk first go to the racetrack?
I have been a regular horseplayer for more than 50 years. I have been a reader of Bukowski for 46 years. The intersection of those passions has led me to research Bukowski’s racetrack poetry over the past 12 years, and more intensively since I retired a couple of years ago.
Lately, I have been wondering when Bukowski started going to the track. If many of the biographers are to be believed (Cherkovski, Malone, Miles, Sounes), Bukowski’s introduction to the track was in the spring of 1955. Their source appears to be Part IV of the 1982 publication
Horsemeat. The bukowski.net
timeline provides evidence that Bukowski’s recollection was off target and, consequently, the biographers get the year wrong. The timeline refers to an 8-25-1954 letter to Whim Burnett. Bukowski wrote: “Late last April my belly broke open and I had hemorrhages right, left and upsidedown. They put me in the charity ward of the General Hospital and socked me with seven pints of blood in 24 hours.”
Horsemeat credits Jane Cooney Baker with introducing Bukowski to the track as a suitable distraction, a way to waste time and take his mind off the drinking: “they told me that if I ever took another drink I would be dead.”
‘We’ll play the horses,’ she said.
‘Horses?’
Yeah, they run and you bet on them.’
She found some money on the boulevard. We went out. I had 3 winners, one of them paid over 50 bucks. It seemed very easy.
This sort of success on your first day at the track is not impossible. However, we know Bukowski was not beyond self-mythologizing. Notably, he lists the number of winners but names no horses. I have spent a lot of time reconciling horses, jockeys, and track events named by Bukowski with horse racing records from Equibase, the
Daily Racing Form, and the Keeneland Library. Bukowski’s recollections of horses and races are frequently specific and, while not perfect, they are accurate more often than not.
All this leads me to wonder whether Bukowski actually first ventured to the track in 1953.
The uncollected 1991 poem “Hymn From the Hurricane of the Blinking Eye,” (collected as “Hymn From the Hurricane” in
Open All Night) is specific:
“name of the first horse I ever bet was Royal Serenade who won so long ago,
Johnny Longden and I are still alive.”
Royal Serenade was a real racehorse. And he raced in California. And Hall of Fame jockey Johnny Longden was his rider. And he raced only in 1953.
If Bukowski knew next to nothing about the track until 1954, it is hard to credit that he would know the name of a horse who never raced beyond August 1953, let alone name it as the first horse he ever bet.
Royal Serenade was a good one. Bred in Ireland, the horse spent his first three seasons racing in England where he was the champion sprinter at three and four. He was purchased by the Canadian racing partnership Alberta Ranches in 1952 and brought to the US. He won six races from 12 starts in California, including the 1953 Hollywood Gold Cup.
If we believe the poetic claim that Royal Serenade was his first bet, then Bukowski’s
Horsemeat claim about his first day at the track is flimsy. On only one of Royal Serenade’s twelve racing days was there a horse that “paid over 50 bucks.” Badge of Valor paid $175.20 in winning the 8th race at Santa Anita on January 15, 1953. Another came close. Strip paid $49.60 on February 12, 1953. In both those instances, Royal Serenade was in the 7th race on an eight-race card. No chance to pick three winners.
If there’s any day when it was possible for Bukowski to have placed his first bet on Royal Serenade, and have picked three winners, and have one of them paying off big (though not over 50 bucks), it was June 5, 1953, at Hollywood Park. Royal Serenade ran last in the 5th race. The winners of the remaining three races paid $10.20, $4.20, and $34.00. To hit on those would be a resounding finish to a first day at the track. As any seasoned horseplayer knows, winning at the racetrack just isn’t ever “very easy.” One could forgive Bukowski if that $34 winner inflated to “over 50 bucks” when writing
Horsemeat almost 30 years after the event.
I conclude that the
Horsemeat account is better understood as poetic invention than reliable biography.
I do think there’s an argument for Bukowski’s introduction to the track occurring in 1953. Maybe it was June 5th. Of course, we’ll never know. As he said himself in the uncollected 1992 poem, “The Gamblers”: “when there’s a story about the track, they / always get it wrong.”
What do you all think?
