The Legend of Zippy Chippy

by William Thomas

  “I guarantee you that within a year, Zippy Chippy will earn more in retirement than he did on the track,” said the man who was once the film critic for the Boston Globe. First Felix and now Michael – when it comes to optimists, Zippy seems to attract them like a magnet.

  “We all told him,” said Marisa of her father. “Me, my mom, my brother, everybody, told him that Zippy Chippy going to Cabin Creek would be the best thing that could happen, but …”

  Felix’s immediate reaction was adamant: “Sell the Zippy horse? No way, Jose!” In his head, he knew that the sale of his buddy to this retirement farm was the best possible option for everyone involved. Zippy would be a happy retiree, romping in the spacious pastures on the outskirts of Saratoga Springs, three hours down the thruway from his Finger Lakes farm where the Monserrates could easily visit him. Above all, he knew the $5,000 sale price Michael was offering would go a long way to help keep his stable of horses operating. In keeping with his luckless history as a trainer, in the two years following Zippy’s last race, his other horses had presented him with fifty-four losses in a row. Coming up to seventy years of age, Felix did not have a whole lot to show for a half century in the racing game. Still, in his heart, he held on: “I love the Zippy horse. He’s been family for a long time. I don’t want to lose him. There is only one Zippy Chippy.” And with the Zipster permanently snipped, there could never be another. He could never assume the role of a breeder. Traditionally, studs and mares produce foals that are destined to enrich thoroughbred racing, not vaudeville.

  After several months and many changes of heart, Felix finally did the right thing by handing over his horse and halter to the gentle folks at Cabin Creek, where Zippy would do what he was born to do – act up, run around in crazy circles, eat treats, and pose for lots of photographs. His role would be to star in the Cabin Creek seniors’ brigade, which included such fine stakes winners as Thunder Rumble, Will’s Way, Cool N Collective, Midnight Secret, and Moonshadow Gold.

  In the early spring of 2010, after the longest three-hour drive of his career, Felix pulled into the driveway of Old Friends at Cabin Creek with Zippy in tow. After Zippy was backed out of his trailer, he took off running – “No, no, that way, Zippy. That way!” – over the rolling hills and green pastures of his new fenced-in home.

  Zippy was suddenly separated from the loves of his life – Marisa, Emily, and of course Felix, his favorite punching bag. Adored by hordes of fans, Zippy had thrived as the center of attention throughout his ten-year career, but he had shown disdain for the other horses, those speedy elitists who had barred him from the victory club. Now, here at Cabin Creek, he was surrounded by them – stakes winners and champions alike.

  At first he preferred to stay outside alone, refusing to be groomed. “It took a few days for him to get used to my voice,” recalled JoAnn Pepper, who operates the equine nursing home along with her husband, Mark and son, Cody. “You know, to figure out who was the boss.” (I’m guessing – him?)

  But then Zippy’s life took a sudden turn for the best. He fell in love. It was platonic, of course, and after a soft nose touch, some serious sniffing, three nudges, a bump, and two approving neighs, Zippy Chippy and a stocky, capable racer by the name of Red Down South became pasture pals for life.

  “Right there,” said JoAnn, pointing to what is now the farm’s logo, a photo of Zippy and Red meeting for the first time and gently caressing each other’s snout as if they were shaking hands. “In that moment they became best buddies forever.”

  The Peppers live at the top of a hill that looks out over the beautiful barn where over twenty retired racehorses reside. The barn is made of pine, with multiple peaks and a long front porch, and the stables are both huge and homey. The ninety-two-acre property is ringed by thick stands of leafy maples, and each retired resident has his own large, fenced-in paddock, with room galore to run and play and roll around in the dirt.

  Their paddocks separated by only a wooden fence, Thunder Rumble and Will’s Way boarded side by side. Both were champion high-stakes speedsters who had each won Saratoga’s prestigious Travers Stakes. They were great pals in retirement, yet once in a while, at some mutually agreed-upon signal, Thunder Rumble and Will’s Way would suddenly take off, running at full tilt the length of their fields, reliving their greatest triumphs just for the pure, unadulterated fun of it all. Free at last at Cabin Creek.

  During the busy summer meet at the nearby Saratoga Race Course, almost one thousand people a week come to visit the great racehorses of the past, especially the Not-So-Great One. “Oh, swell,” they say, coming down the path to the pens. “Okay, there’s Funny Cide and Behrens, but where’s that Zippy Chippy horse?”

  Most of these grassy, half-acre, square pens have shade trees. All have open protective sheds, or “run-ins,” where the horses go to feed and steer clear of bad weather. But only one is home to two geldings, and that’s where Zippy Chippy and his best friend for life, Red Down South, can be found. Protective of each other, they are absolutely inseparable. When he was about to leave on a summer road trip to the Old Friends farm in Kentucky, Zippy flatly refused to board his traveling trailer. Not two or twelve handlers were going to force him in. He threw a bloody fit, bucking and bolting until the only thing they could do was walk him around to try to calm him down. But when he saw Red Down South enter the trailer, Zippy hustled up the ramp all by himself.

  “They do everything together,” said JoAnn. “Zippy’s getting a little arthritic, and I think he prefers to stand around. But Red keeps him moving, keeps him walking. And that’s good for both of them.” After three deaths during the long, cold winter of 2015, Zippy is now the farm’s elder statesman.

  On a hot and sunny day in July 2010, Old Friends at Cabin Creek officially became “the Bobby Frankel Division,” after the legendary New York trainer who died too early in life. It was also Zippy Chippy’s debut as the farm’s most famous retiree, and five hundred people showed up for the outdoor dedication ceremony. And there he was, the “Cad of Cabin Creek,” in all his goofy glory: eyes narrowed and looking for trouble, with his scraggly tail flipping behind a well-rounded middle. Odd that infamy had trumped fame on this auspicious day, with all the great retired racehorses watching Zippy Chippy’s ceremony from their respective pens.

  Listed on the program as Zippy’s former owner, Felix Monserrate was right there beside him. Proudly, they posed for photographs, enjoying casual banter with fans. In the shade of the barn’s large, peaked entrance, a winner’s circle had been created with flags and flowers and bales of hay. Waiting for them inside was a lush and fragrant bed of roses, the symbol of victory used to adorn winners of the Kentucky Derby. This was special, a haloed place of triumph that Zippy and Felix had never gotten to enjoy together in their ten years of trying.

  A quick burst of rain earlier had left a rainbow arching over the farm and the surrounding woods. Horse lovers and handlers stood to the side or sat on folding chairs as Old Friends founder Michael Blowen addressed the crowd. Shorts, ball hats, and suspenders made up the dress code of the day. All smiled, a few sipped beer from plastic glasses, and most snapped as many photos as they possibly could of this triumphant reunion that would never be repeated. Off in the distance, horses vocalized their displeasure at being ignored. Felix held Zippy hard and tight to his body, knowing full well the horse was capable of turning this wonderful celebration into something that would end with sirens and a tranquilizer dart. Zippy was restless, constantly bellowing at Red Down South, whom he could clearly see in their fenced-in field a hundred yards away.

  It was a significant, almost historic moment when Felix Monserrate led Zippy Chippy into the Cabin Creek winner’s circle. After a hundred classes at the school of hard knocks, they were finally being recognized with an honorary degree. All went well for about five minutes of this barn-style pomp and circumstance, until Zippy had had enough. One last shout-out to Red that he was coming home, and Zippy proceeded to kick down the sign reading CABIN CR
EEK WINNER’S CIRCLE. Then he gave Felix a sideways glance as if to say, I don’t want to win that way. Not on a photo op.

  In what amounted to a noisy wake-up call to those gathered in fantasy farmland, Zippy reminded them that there were more important things in life than winning, and one of them was getting back to Red Down South at precisely the same time that the guy with the floppy hat and the armload of carrots arrived at their pen. Don’t eat ’em all, Red!

  And then Zippy took to swaying and jerking Felix around. His behavior was so bad, some in the crowd thought he might be staging a comeback.

  The Zippy and Felix Show was back on the air for one final episode. Displaying the infamous poor conduct that had gotten him banished from racetracks and exercise barns, the grumpy gelding was quickly escorted out of the winner’s circle before he could actually destroy it. Mission accomplished, he looked rather regal as he was led back to the open-air stall he shared with Red, where they could resume their usual nickering and snickering and pressing their heads lightly together. The boys were reunited at long last. With this defiant act, in what might be the lasting image that underscores his legacy, Zippy Chippy was now banned from his very own winner’s circle.

  As the ceremony concluded, people shook hands and exchanged addresses and pleasantries before sauntering off with their photos and Zippy Chippy ball caps. The Peppers picked up the pieces of the sign along with their best intentions, and you could almost hear Walter Cronkite say, “And that’s the way it is.”

  They make for an interesting pair of bedfellows, these two, the deep-brown Zippy and the chestnut Red Down South. Nine years the younger, Red has done something his pen-mate could only dream of: win a race. He only won twice in thirty-two starts, but he finished in the money often enough to earn a total of $116,650, and $3,645 per outing (Zippy’s career total was $30,834.). And yes, I’m sure Red lords that over the Zipster every chance he gets. I can just imagine Red Down South standing in front of Zippy and pawing the ground 30,834 times, then falling down laughing.

  With his sunny disposition, Red has a calming effect on the rambunctious Zippy, keeping his buddy in line. On the day I was visiting them in their paradise paddock at Cabin Creek, Zippy did something stupid that nobody noticed, and Red promptly bit him in the ass. After sulking under a shade tree for a while, Zippy came back to Red, all playful and loving again.

  The summer after they met, Zippy and Red went on the road, spending a couple of weeks at Michael Blowen’s Lexington farm, prancing around the property and showing off for visitors. Never more than a few feet apart, these two sassy seniors would race each other over and around the soft Kentucky knolls and then pull up to the fence, where well-wishers pushed treats into their faces.

  There’s a home video of the two of them, taken while they were relaxing at the Lexington farm. Their heads are bobbing up and down in anticipation as a guy approaches with his hands full of carrots. As he offers them up and across the top rail, Zippy’s head recoils, while Red Down South leans in and demolishes the food, green stems and all. Astonished, the guy in the video turns to his wife, who’s doing the filming, and says, “Jesus! Zippy doesn’t even want to come first at eating!”

  On the day of her visit, Pam Machuga, a fan of the Zipster, expressed great admiration for the two horses smiling at her from a distance. “These horses deserve respect. Work hard your whole life, this is what you should get – a big pasture with lots of love.” Standing apart from a tour group that had just arrived to fawn over Zippy and then Red, the longtime fan of horse racing added, “Think about regular, everyday people in life. We don’t always win, but we can at least get back up and keep going.”

  This picture is not lost on Michael Blowen. “I think more people can identify with a horse that loses all the time than a horse that wins all the time,” he said. “Because there are more losers in the world than winners.”

  Michael Blowen’s confidence in turning Zippy Chippy’s fame to fortune has paid off quite well. Funny Cide, who would eventually visit Zippy at Old Friends, earned $3.53 million in thirty-eight races. By contrast, Zippy earned perhaps $80,000 during his career, from second- and third-place finishes, a couple of sideshows, some celebrity appearance fees, and a movie option. So Michael Blowen’s bet on Zippy’s earning power was certainly ambitious. Having missed the exalted Triple Crown by a loss in the Belmont Stakes, Funny Cide may be the greatest horse ever to come to Cabin Creek, but make no mistake about it: the sounds of the cash register and the size of the souvenir bags leave little doubt that the infamous imp Zippy Chippy is the star of this show.

  Zippy’s never-give-up attitude finally paid off in the end. He is the undisputed leader of the pack at Old Friends, and he is now helping pay for Red Down South’s upkeep. As a matter of fact, Zippy’s huge popularity with visitors to Old Friends is helping raise the funds to care for all the great horses boarding there. Incredible but true: Zippy the Clown is now supporting the entire circus.

  In the end, Michael Blowen made the smart choice, and Felix Monserrate eventually came to a wise decision – Zippy Chippy was put out to pasture for what were to become the best years of his life. Fittingly, he earned the gold standard of retirement packages: room to roam, a buddy to play with, lots of visitors to fawn over him, and yes, carrots. A dignified retirement at the end of a courageous career was what everyone wanted for Zippy Chippy. And that he has in spades.

  The prediction of Michael Blowen, the guardian angel of old, discarded horses, quickly became a marvelous reality. As Zippy’s fame continued to flourish after his landmark one hundredth race, his faithful followers grew in numbers and displayed their loyalty in cash. A thousand people a week, and sometimes three hundred a day, come to pet him, feed him, buy his monogrammed merchandise, and pose for pictures worthy of their wallets. Yes, Zippy has earned more, much more, in retirement than he ever did racing.

  Besides the caps, T-shirts, and lucky charms, the best-selling Zippy souvenir is a coffee mug. Below a cartoon of Zippy Chippy screwing up a race are the words that sum up his career, words that will serve him well as an epitaph, and words we all could live by. Under the comical sketch of the silly, galloping Zipster are the words WINNERS DON’T ALWAYS FINISH FIRST.

  BETTING ON THE PONIES:

  THE ULTIMATE CHARITY AUCTION

  When I was twenty years old, I used to hang around with the wrong crowd. His name was Carvalho. He was older than me, shorter than me, and smarter than me, and one summer he introduced me to the track.

  As a university student, Carvalho had a summer job as a Canadian customs officer at the Peace Bridge, which connects Buffalo, New York, to Fort Erie, Ontario. When American owners and trainers brought their horses to race at Fort Erie Race Track, they had to first get past Carvalho. Government paperwork could take a few minutes or a few days, he’d say – what did they have in the way of betting tips?

  As a university student, instead of taking a summer job, I started a company in which I grossly underpaid high school students to paint houses. It was like a sweatshop operation, except they toiled out in the fresh air. I’d work with them in the mornings, then go to Fort Erie Race Track in the afternoons to bet the horses on which Carvalho had been given tips. We seldom won a race.

  But Carvalho had a “system,” and as he explained it to me, you had to stick to the system because it would pay off sooner or later. “Later” for me was September, by which time I had transferred all the profits from my painting business to the Fort Erie Race Track. I spent that following year operating a spark-splashing swing grinder at Atlas Steels in Welland, Ontario, to make enough money to go back to university.

  I mean, losing was one thing, but we once bet on a horse that went sideways across the track and up to the grandstand, at which point his jockey yelled into the crowd, “Which way did they go?” I tell ya, we bet on a horse that was so slow, his jockey carried a change of underwear! We were so good for business that if I wasn’t at the betting window for the first race, the racetrack woul
d send a hired car to my house. Seriously, it’s true what they say – a racehorse is an animal that can take a thousand people for a ride, all at the same time.

  And Carvalho? Like one of those amazing little ironies you read in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, he got a job as a paid tout, a handicapper of racehorses. That’s right, the guy whose luckiest day at the track was when he met somebody who lived on his street so he didn’t have to hitchhike home got a job in which they paid him to give advice to bettors. He wrote a column for the Daily Racing Form, the bible for North American pony players.

  But Carvahlo, he was funny. We’d go to the track together on weekends and in those days, Fort Erie Race Track charged an admission fee, except those who came late, say after work, could get into the seventh and eighth races for free. One day, tapped out after the seventh race, we were walking through the parking lot, pissed off and not speaking to each other as usual. Carvalho was slapping his thigh compulsively with that day’s program, which had cost two bucks to buy. An American in a new Cadillac pulled up beside us, rolled down the window, and said, “Hey, buddy, do you mind if I have that program?” Instantly, I knew this wasn’t going to end well for the moocher.

  Carvalho gave the car a long look, from the gleaming hood ornament to the shiny chrome back bumper, and finally said, “So how’d you pay for the Caddy? Collectin’ fuckin’ pop bottles?”

  We carried on toward my car and said nothing to each other for, oh, about six full seconds. Then I laughed so hard I really thought I’d pulled something near the base of my spleen.

  Lesson learned: No horse can disappear around the far turn faster than the money you bet on him. Knowing that you’ll lose it, take no more than twenty or forty dollars to the track, and have a wonderful afternoon playing with the ponies.