Derby Daze gone by…

May 1980, it was my second year at the Kentucky Derby and I still had yet to see a horse. I was 21 and selling t-shirts of my own design and printing out of a box just outside of Churchill Downs, where 130,000-plus high-society and low-brow types once again descended upon sleepy little Louisville, just as they had for the previous 105 years.

As I had done the year prior, I rode along with a Columbus pal who had a cargo van full of suede halter tops and big belt buckles. We’d similarly shared the ride to the Indy 500 for a couple of years, and in fact it was my 1978 Indy t-shirt experience that spurred me to create my trademark slogan for that sports spectacle – “To hell with racecars – I came to party!”

Saying “horses” in place of “racecars” for the Derby shirts, combined with an appropriately irreverent graphic of a drunken donkey, did just the trick. At $5 a pop (yes, that’s RETAIL in 1980), I’d sell out in four hours if weather cooperated.

I remember in 1980 the weather thankfully did, and by mid-day had a trucker wallet and white cutoffs full of cash to prove it. Thanks to a now long gone sportswear industry rag, I was also commissioned to photograph and interview other t-shirt vendors for a feature story, if possible. That Cinci based magazine turned up when I was recently recalling the tale of its then associate editor, a friend from my days in Athens, Laurie Lennard. Not long after Laurie published my Derby coverage, she took off for NYC as a booker for Letterman. No telling if those two had a thing going, but I did hear later she moved to LA, represented Chris Elliott, and married and divorced Larry David, who, showing just how dark humor can be, still badmouths her on late night talk shows some three years later. You might know her as the Oscar-winning producer of “An Inconvenient Truth,” or, if you listen to Rush, she’s that Gulfstream Liberal in a Prius that will burn up half a tank of gas chasing a Hummer from Brentwood to Seal Beach, just so she can flip off the driver before driving back to Van Nuys to take the jet and the dog back to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend.

But my Friday eve cabernet causes me to digress. Back at this 1980 Derby, I was trying to make an extra buck off my artwork whilst staying alive on the restless streets outside the infamous infield gate. There’s nothing like pitching sleeping bags on the cold metal floor of the Ford Econoline, mere yards from biker fights, frat boys chanting “Skin to win!,” and hearing the ceaseless wail of sirens responding to a hit-and-run or drug deals gone wild through the neon lit night. Eventually, thankfully, the tinkling, crunching sound of endless empty Miller High Life cans being kicked along by throngs harkens the peaceful chaos of dawn on “race day” in Louisville.

Once I sold off my wares to the surviving bikers and puking frat rats, I took a look around the “other side of the track,” so to speak – the main gates. What a change of scenery. Stretch limos as far as the eye could see, politicians and their “nieces” in spiked heels and obnoxious hats, an endless stream of debutantes and their engraved crystal mint juleps and, hey – that’s The Champ – Muhammad Ali – looking my way! I think he kind of snickered at my t-shirt. Might have been our matching white straw hats. Cool.

I remember this, it was one heckuva party – the 106th Kentucky Derby, 30 years ago tomorrow. Hope The Champ makes it. I may watch it on the bigscreen, for old times sake. And to finally see a horse. Whaddya wager, somebody’s selling some t-shirts?