2nd Series Chronicles of a broke horse trainer "Charlie and Beaner"

Author, Ed McCarty

Ed McCarty’s hometown is Mountain View, Missouri. Ed considers his faith and wife the most important to him. Ed lives a very active and amazing life. Life has taken him from learning how to train Fox Trotters with his granddad, training and racing Thoroughbred horses, Equine Dentistry, to successfully running a huge trail riding operation. His journey

to retirement has inspired his love for storytelling.

Ed is sharing his love of horses, life experiences and connections in these intriguing fun short stories. We are happy to provide these great stories from HorseN Around with Mister Ed, through HoofNit ™ Podcast.

HoofNit™ Podcast is brought to you by Everything Horses and Livestock® News, Podcast, and magazine.

Enjoy the R ead…

The following story is second in a series of stories titled "CHRONICLES OF A BROKE HORSE TRAINER". They are based on fact with the names changed in most cases. A few of the facts may be slightly enhanced by the memory of an old man.

CHARLIE AND BEANER

In the horse world, and especially in the horse racing world, the groom is an integral part of any success attained by the stable. In fact, at the larger tracks and in the large, more successful operations being a groom is considered a profession and the good grooms command a great amount of respect. At the small to medium sized tracks, grooms tend to be a steppingstone job or a pickup job in route to some other profession. This isn’t always the case though. There are those grooms who prefer to not be tied down and tend to wander from track to track and from trainer to trainer. Such is the case with Charlie. I met Charlie in 1988 at an old racetrack in Illinois called Cahokia Downs. At one time this was a highly regarded track which was eventually replaced by Fairmont Park in nearby Collinsville, IL. Fairmont retained ownership of Cahokia and used it as an overflow track for stabling and a training track in the off season. For those of us based out of Fairmont Park, we would stable on the main track with most of our horses and usually have a few overflow horses on Cahokia. Fairmont ran from early April through October so if you chose to stay through the winter, all your horses had to go home for the winter or move to Cahokia. Cahokia was not the most comfortable training facility since all the buildings were old cinder block buildings. It tended to feel a lot colder inside than outside on a cold winter’s day. The day I met Charlie was one of those days! I had about six horses on Cahokia Downs in mid-December on one of those days when you spend most of your time breaking out frozen water buckets to keep fresh water in front of your horses. I was on about my third trip to the barn when I was approached by a scruffy looking little old guy with a noticeable limp and a desperate plea of “would you happen to have any work?” Since there was virtually nobody around the barns who didn’t have to be there in this kind of weather, my first questio n was “ W here in the world did you come from?” He proceeded to explain that him and a baby kitten he had found half frozen were living in one of the 10 x 10 cinder block rooms in the old jockey’s quarters. They were existing with some old horse blankets that served as both pillow and blanket on an old army cot. Their cooking utensils consisted of one crock pot, a couple of big spoons and whatever they could find for a bowl. Since buying cat food would have been considered a luxury on Charlie’s budget, the ba by kitten

was living on whatever Charlie ate. For the last few days, it had been a pot of pinto beans and a box of saltine crackers. Thus, the kitten was forever stuck with the name of Beaner.

I gave Charlie a job primarily to keep me from making all of the frozen water trips to the barn and bought him enough groceries to keep him and Beaner from totally starving for the near future. Over the next few days, I came to realize that once you got past Charlie’s surliness and general grumpiness, he was one of the better horsemen I had ever encountered. I took care of him and Beaner through the winter and he joined me on the main track on Fairmont as my lead groom. He proved to be quite an asset, but I quickly learned that he could get me in more trouble in 10 minutes than I could get out of in a week if I allowed him to interact with clients or with officials in the racing office. He willingly accepted these terms, and we developed a friendship and a working relationship which was to last for the next eight years. For the first three years of the relationship, I thought I had learned a lot about Charlie until I found out that the last name which he had been using for those three years wasn’t even his. It seems as if he had gotten into a “minor” altercation at a racetrack in Florida about three and a half years before which resulted in him being charged with attempted murder for running a man out of his shed row with a pitchfork after the man had insulted his dog. In true fashion of a nomad groom, he simply loaded his gear in his old station wagon and headed for different parts of the country under a different name. Charlie was his real first name. His last name came from who knows where and his social security number belonged to a deceased brother who had lived in Oklahoma. After a little research I found out that the charges had actually been dropped in Florida and it was a mere formality to get his name cleared and allow him to go back to using his real name and social security number. There were a few questions about the three years when he didn’t seem to exist but probably due to his fairly low status in life everyone simply seemed to accept the fact that he was back to his real name. Charlie had a couple of idiosyncrasies that you had to accept if you were going to work with him. One was that the only place he would sleep was in a tack room in the shed row with the horses. We made a trip to Kentucky shortly after we began working together and I mentioned to him that there was a nice little motel just outside the gate of the racetrack and I would be more than happy to get him a room since we were only going to be there for two

nights. He proceeded to explain to me that if he couldn’t get a tack room near the horses then he was going to set up a cot right in front of our stall and that is where he would sleep. We couldn’t get a tack room with just one horse at the track, so he slept on a cot in front of the horse stall. From then on, I never questioned his sleeping arrangements.

The other thing you had to accept about Charlie was that where he went, Beaner went. His sleeping arrangements consisted of his army cot in a tack room with about a 13-inch TV at the end of the cot. When the horses were bedded down for the night, Charlie would break out a six pack of beer, lay back on the cot and watch TV while he depleted the six pack. He kept a little dish beside the cot in which he would pour a teaspoon or so of beer for Beaner. This would continue until they both ran of beer and fell asleep. Without fail, Charlie would be up no later than five o’clock the next morning feeding horses and preparing for the training schedule of the day. Beaner, after a belly full of beer the night before would remain on the cot with the TV left on for him and watch TV through presumably blurry eyes until he chose to venture out of the tack room. By the time training for the morning was done, Beaner was ready for some real food and him and Charlie would proceed with their daily routine. As I stated earlier, Charlie was as good at reading and diagnosing a problem with a horse as anyone I had ever worked with. His one fault was that he was not very forthcoming with his diagnosis. I was reputed to be pretty good at diagnosing problems in the front legs and shoulder of a horse but there were times that problems in the backend totally baffled me. On numerous occasions I would walk a horse up and down the shed row trying to find a lameness with Charlie sitting on a bale of hay casually observing. Out of pure frustration I would finally say “Charlie, do you see anything in this horse?” The answer was usually something to the order of “I was wondering when you were ever going to a sk. The first time you walked him down the shed row, it was obvious that is the right hock.” I guess you could say he was a “silent partner” or maybe he just wanted to make sure that he received proper recognition for his diagnosis.

After about eight years of a more on than off partnership Charlie’s wanderlust got the best of him and he left for Louisiana. He had worked there some years before and in fact, that is where he got his limp. He had been in a bad car wreck while working in Louisiana and had a rod placed in his right thigh bone. As it turned out the right leg was slightly shorter than the left leg

and he to ld me repeatedly over the years that he dearly loved Cajun Country but don’t ever trust a Cajun Doctor with a tape measure. I heard through the grapevine a few years later that Beaner had gotten into some herbicide that they had sprayed around the perimeter of Delta Downs and died. Coincidentally Charlie died about a year later. At times he was a hard man to work with but in the long run, he proved to be a hard man to do without.