Derby

I’m not a fan of horse racing, as a sport or an industry.

I live in Central Kentucky, a region known for horse racing, Bourbon, and basketball. Of the three, I can tolerate basketball. (Although I prefer watching the women’s team to watching the men.)

That being said, The Kentucky Derby, run on the first Saturday in May, is a big deal here. Derby Day is a holiday, with related events like parades and festivals held all over the region for a week leading up to it.

Children have Derby events at school. The day school in my neighborhood has a stick horse Derby in the park.

Derby parties abound. Derby Eve parties, and parties to watch the race. There are two in my neighborhood alone. They are everywhere.

Party menus include Burgoo, Mint Juleps, and that ubiquitous pie.

People dress up for Derby. They wear hats. Glorious hats.

Kentuckians collect silver Julep cups and display them on their dining room shelves.

The local news covers Derby Day from sunrise to sunset. Kentucky pays attention to the celebrities in town for the event.

When I was growing up, we went to a Derby party in Louisville, at the home of family friends every single year. It was at that party I first tasted kohlrabi and Ranch dressing (OMG, delicious.) They made their Burgoo in a big cast iron pot (think: cauldron) outside, warm and fragrant in the spring air, but they made it with squirrel meat, so I never tried it.

I ate the hell out of that pie, though. (Imagine the gooey sweetness of pecan pie with the addition of baked chocolate chips, cold or warm, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or plain, standing in front of the refrigerator at 1:00 a.m.)

The thing about the Derby party was the energy of it, the elevation. And I still feel that energy lift on Derby Day in Kentucky, despite my feelings about horse racing.

Years ago, when I was living in New York, and my best friend had also moved to New York, we decided to have a Derby party, at which we would be the only guests.

I was living in the suburbs at that time and she was living in Queens.

We felt so far away from our home state, and as Derby approached we were swept with a longing for our roots, an odd sensation for me as I had left Kentucky thinking my leaving would be permanent. I had never felt I fit in in Kentucky. It was where I was from, but not where I wanted to live out my life.

I packed an overnight bag and took the train to Queens where Mandy and I walked around the corner from her apartment to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to acquire food for our two-person party.

The fact that we were going to a KFC in Queens, New York on Derby Day was somehow…hilarious?…to us. And also…beautiful?

We wore two of her vintage feathered hats and in the glaring May sunshine, we thought surely people see that we were Kentuckians honoring a specialness about us, about our place of origin. We were Kentuckians untethered. New Yorkers now, but unable to disconnect completely from the wreaths of red roses and buoyancy of Derby Day.

Didn’t it show on us? Seep from our pores?

Alcohol certainly did.

Neither of us drink anymore, but at the time, we drank freely. For Derby, we made Mint Juleps.

And we watched the race, homesick when the crowd sang our horrible state anthem. (It is a ghastly song that should be retired forever, never to be heard or sung again, but hearing it that day, floating across the drunken miles to us, tears welled in our eyes.)

And we ate chicken and drank whisky muddled with sugar and mint, and after the race, we turned on the radio and sang and danced. Just the two of us in an apartment in Queens.

In our frenzy we decided we needed to hear the song Black Betty, so we called the station to make the request, which is something you could do in those days. There was an actual DJ sitting in a booth and you could call the station and talk to this person and request they play things.

He said he’d already played it and we were stunned. How was it possible that he’d already played this obscure Ram Jam song from 1977?

It was because of the movie Blow. It was on the soundtrack.

Monarchos won the Derby that year with the second fastest winning time and overall third fastest time in the race's history.

I’d been in New York for nine years. I was in my final months there, though I’m not sure I realized it at the time. I was three years post graduate degree and working at a small elementary school in Manhattan. We were four months away from 9/11.

Perhaps my bittersweet feelings about Kentucky that day were also bittersweet feelings about New York, and about my life itself, decades passing by and dreams unmet. Perhaps it was the sensation of youth slipping away.

Now here I am at Derby time again, in Kentucky. I don’t miss parties, or drinking, but I like to hear the sound of my niebhors’ parties, the voices, the music. I like being adjacent to the party energy.

I’ve been back in Kentucky for a long time but the things we do when we are young stay with us, the choices we make.

This morning, I sipped my coffee in bed and watched England crown a king. The fashion was flawless.

Downstairs, I saw a large rabbit sitting on the sidewalk outside my front door.

It’s spring. The Flower Moon is full in Scorpio.

I’m burning lavender incense and shuffling through decades of my life like a deck of tarot cards. Some of the edges are soft now, the corners bent, but I can still read with it. It’s infused with my energy and shimmers in my hands.