There's a nursery rhyme, you should
have in the back of your mind by the time
we get to the end of this poem and it goes.
Ding, dong bell pussy's in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Tommy Lynn.
Who took her out?
Little Johnny Stout.
What a naughty boy is that to try to drown poor pussycat who
never did him any harm but killed the mice in his father's
barn.
OK, that's the one my speaker has in mind at the end.
"The horses run back to their stalls."
"It's another sorry tale about class in America,
I'm sure you're right, but you have
to imagine how proud we were.
Your grandfather painted a banner
that hung from Wascher's Pub to Dianis's grocery
across the street.
Reigh Count, Kentucky Derby winner, 1928.
And washtubs filled with French champagne.
I was far too young to be up at the stables
myself, of course, it took me years
to understand they must have meant in bottles
in the washtubs, with ice.
His racing colors were yellow and black,
like the yellow cabs, which is how Mr Hertz first
made the money that built the barns that bred the horses,
bred at last this perfect horse, our 120 seconds
of flat out earth-borne bliss.
He bought the Arlington Racetrack then
and Jens got a job that for once in his life
allowed him to pay the mortgage and the doctors too,
but he talked the loose way even good men talk sometimes
and old Hertz was obliged to let him go.
It was August, when the cab strike in Chicago got so ugly.
Somebody must have tipped them off,
since we learned later on that the Count and the trainer who
slept in his stall had been moved to another barn.
I'll never forget the morning after--
ash in the air all the way to town and the smell
of those poor animals, who never harmed a soul.
There's a nursery rhyme that goes like that, isn't there?
Never did us any harm.
I think it's about tormenting a cat."