My Dad
I took this photo of my dad many years ago at Lansdowne Park (which later became Lansdowne Shopping Mall) in Richmond, BC. Almost every photo of my dad has a cigarette, a "roll-your-own", hanging from the corner of his mouth. Even photos I took of him when he fell asleep in his living room chair, there would be a cigarette butt in the corner of his mouth. Besides being a trainer of racehorses, a fantastic chef, an excellent baker and one hell of a card player, he was a very intelligent man with very little education - Grade 9, which as odd as it seems to me now, was most likely more than the equivalent of my Grade 12. He was a quiet man and very strong as I recall, even at the age of about 60, which he is in the photo, he was still able to lift a bale of three-wired, Washington state, Timothy hay and stack it over his head. I only felt his hand deal out punishment to me twice and I have to say, it was well-deserved. The first time was when a friend of mine and I stole 20 dollars from his mom's purse and the last time was when I said something about my step mom. Waiting for my first licking, I think was actually worse than the actual spanking I received. The second time, he was so fast, one moment I was sitting at the kitchen table and the next, I found myself across the room on the floor sitting against the cupboards. I never really got to know my dad until I worked with him at the racetrack on pretty much a daily basis for many years because his jobs often took him away from home for many weeks or he worked the night shifts as a baker. When I married at the age, just under 29, in Lethbridge, Alta, my new wife Doreen and I honeymooned in Vancouver.for a week and it was the last time I saw him alive - he died Christmas day of that year. I was lucky to have such a father and although I see specks of him within me, I wish overall that I was more like him.
Although I'm not certain the jockey's name is Arnold Johnson, I definitely know that the horse's name is Rough Road, one of dad's favourites and mine as well. The high spirited gelding was what a person might call a "working man's" horse; he almost always brought home a pay check at the end of a race. "Roughy" as we affectionately called him was a chestnut, with a desire to win his races on any kind of rated track - from fast to muddy, you would always see him make his move for the front when the horses were rounding the final turn and heading into the home stretch. There were many photo finishes taken with his nose barely ahead of the second horse when he reached the finish wire. In a way, even when the odds were stacked against him, like my dad, you could always count on him to give his very best and I thank you dad on this Father's Day for all that you gave me over the years.
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