06 May 2007
Gold Cup
I'm in trouble this morning. It is my fault, and I dropped out of touch and off the net. I had a note which offered me free transportation and open bar at Great Meadow out in Loudoun County for the running of the Virginia Gold Cup.
There was plenty of work stacked up to do, and I should have done it. Instead, I made a split-second decision that left me dazed and only partially coherent by mid-afternoon.
It is not the Royal Meet at Ascot, though some of the hats aspire to that. The Gold Cup is supposed to be about six horse races; steeplechase, if you are to be precise, and culminating in the triumph of the Spring.
The Queen of England was not going to attend, though for once she was close enough. She was at Churchill Downs in the Kentucky Bluegrass Country watching the biggest horse race of the year. But the Royalty of the Virginia Hunt Country were out at Great Meadow for the celebration of the new season.
Not that I could see anything more than the crowd on Patron Hill, where you could see the start and finish line. I was with the Judge over at University Row, a scene of chaos that only tangentially had anything at all to do with the ponies.
I have attended this race many times. Last year the skies were blue and the temperature was warm, and I was with real equestrians. They were appalled at the bacchanal, and I was disconcerted to meet my older son in the tent, between the fifth and sixth races, deep in the afternoon. The sun and the beer had taken their toll, and he owlishly congratulated me on my seersucker suit and bow tie.
The Judge said he liked the look, too, though he couldn't wear it himself. He actually remembers a Virginia in which the country practitioners of the legal craft wore the real rumpled things without irony. Besides, he said, he had read the book Sophie's Choice, and would forever associate the mangled phrase that Sophie used for “seersucker” with alternate life-styles. He just was not going to go there.
The young men wear the wrinkled fabric with high irony and wild ties. Some accompany the jacket and tie with cargo shorts. Others imitate the old garb of the South with a languid Jay Crew look of indolence. You have to remember, though, that the men (and boys) are just the backdrop for the ladies.
In fact, I became uncomfortably aware that I have attained that position in life I never quite imaged. When the Judge told me he had a free ticket, I thought raced through the closet and grabbed what came to mind. In my slightly rumbled seersucker, white shoes, bowtie, walrus moustache and Panama hat, I have become a prop for other people's pictures.
This is the Spring fashion show, and every lady present is ready to show the sundress and the fantastic hat. It is a celebration that is quite breathtaking, since strapless is almost de rigueur, and the hems are high and the shoes to die for.
When it is warm enough, that is. Last year it was perfect weather, and from what they told me under the dripping tent, the weather guessers here in Washington had predicted a nice day this year as well.
It was not a bad day to be wearing a comfortable suit and jacket, under an awning to keep out the rain. Accordingly, bare shoulders were not an optimal way to greet the chill wind from the west, and the fashion had rapidly changed from sundress to Boyfriend Sport Jacket. More creatively, some young women had appropriated the tablecloths as wraps.
There was food at University Row, not quite the quality of the feasts at the corporately-sponsored tents closer to Patron's Hill, but sufficient to the crowd that packed under the white awnings. Paratroopers from a paramilitary contracting concern dropped in under the gray skies, performing their low-show in deference to the weather. Many could not look up, and did not appear to care.
It being Cinco de Mayo, there was a proliferation of bright straw sombreros in the crowd, slowly wilting.
The noise was deafening, and I could not hear the phone ring in the holster on my belt.
Periodically, horses would appear in the infield, flashing past with pounding hooves and bright silks on the riders. The crowd would look up with vague interest. That wasn't the point, after all. It is about the fashion, and the season.
Even if it is a few weeks late in arriving this year.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com