Ashes to Ashes: Plotnik Reminisces About Blue Water and Jockeys in Green Silks

This morning's mail brings a delightful note from Helmsman Finch, who is in Maui visiting her family. The occasion was an opportunity to scatter her Mom's ashes in the ocean near her favorite island, where she and Finchie's dad had a home they went to every year for many, many years. The Congregational minister took the ash-scattering friends and family out in an outrigger and Perilous Pauline's ashes were delivered into the deep. Plotnik is sure there were lots of laughs as well as stories to be told.

Plotnik remembers Pauline, though he did not know her well, and he is touched by this gesture. It immediately makes him think about his mother, who to this day still talks about her days as a tour guide for travelers taking the Matson Ocean Liner 'Lurline' from the West Coast to Hawaii, in the early 1950s when this was still possible. Every time Plottie talks to Mummy P., he hears another new story.

This last trip to Stiletto, Mummy P. told Plottie about the Hawaiian musicians who were always hired to play romantic Hawaiian music and dance the hula for adoring tourists, but who secretly hated Hawaiian music and couldn't stand dancing the hula. What they loved was jazz. So after hours, after the tourists had been tucked snug in their beds, the local boys would sneak Mummy P. into the underground jazz clubs in mysterious Honolulu, where they would drink it up and listen to the music they loved. Plotnik is sure his mom enjoyed being the only haole in the club and he's sure they all loved having her there too.

That leads to Geoffrey Scott. He and his wife Mary were best friends in Stiletto City with Mummy Plotnik and Harold, Plotnik's first stepfather. Geoff and Mary were racetrack junkies. They owned (pricey) Turf Club tickets at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, and the racing seasons were spaced so that when one track finished its year, the other track began its own. Geoff and Mary went to the track every day and, whenever they could, Mummy P. and Harold went along with them.

Plotnik remembers going with them as a small boy -- that's when he learned what picking winners really involves -- he noticed that if he, at only eight years old, took a guess that Bright Boopie was going to win the Fifth Race, and then he told any of the grizzled old timers in their green racing sunshades about his choice, they would first laugh at him, and then half of them would run to the ticket window and put $10 bucks on the nose on Bright Boopie: "The boy might know something."

(This probably had to do with the fact that the FIRST time Plottie went to the track, at maybe six years old, he picked SIX winners. (Out of eight races.) This was because he loved one jockey's name -- Shoemaker. Billy Shoemaker was one of the most famous and successful jockeys of all time, and his name was one little Plottie could recognize. So every time Harold or Geoffrey asked Plottie who he liked in the upcoming race, Plot looked at the form for the jockey's name. When he saw Shoemaker, he said: "This one." Six out of eight is unheard of, see. Plotnik's legend began right there.)

Plotnik loved the track then and still loves everything about it today, the colorful silks on the jockeys, the sound of the horses' hooves as they thunder around the clubhouse turn, the amazing unmuting of hopeful crowd noise, filling the air as the race pounds down to the finish line and excitement turns into an explosion at the wire! -- followed two seconds later by the collective slump-shouldered downward-falling disappointment groan: Awwwww-w-w-w-w-w-w.

There's nothing quite like it. Plotnik has learned his lesson, though. Someday ask him to tell you about his brief flirtation with professional handicapping at Aqueduct Raceway in New York.

Anyway -- Harold died, and then Geoff followed. Perhaps Mary did not keep the Turf Club seats, Plotnik doesn't know. But Geoff's ashes needed to be scattered, and Mary knew where they had to go: Geoff wanted to spend eternity at the track.

So one morning, before the First Race, Mary drove down to Hollywood Park, intending to distribute the ashes on the track itself, but then realized she couldn't go through with it. It was just too filled with memories in there -- and the whole thing probably seemed a little silly to her.

So she did the next best thing. Outside the entrance turnstiles there was a small, circular flower garden. The touts -- the guys who sell the day's handicap sheets -- stood around it hustling their wares. Mary walked over and deposited Geoffrey into the flowers. Then she went home. They rang the bell and the horses ran around the track, just like always, only Geoff could hear them better now, from the snapdragon patch in front of Hollywood Park.