Gee I remember the funny people that used to go by. Girls around supper time looking for somebody to take them out to eat and they’d speak to my old man and he’d make some joke at them in French and they’d pat me on the head and go on. Once there was an American woman sitting with her kid daughter at the next table to us and they were both eating ices and I kept looking at the girl and she was awfully good looking and I smiled at her and she smiled at me but that was all that ever came of it because I looked for her mother and her every day and I made up ways that I was going to speak to her and I wondered if I got to know her if her mother would let me take her out to Auteuil or Tremblay but I never saw either of them again. Anyway I guess it wouldn’t have been any good anyway because looking back on it I remember the way I thought out would be best to speak to her was to say, “Pardon me, but perhaps I can give you a winner at Enghien today?” and after all maybe she would have thought I was a tout instead of really trying to give her a winner.
We’d sit at the Café de la Paix, my old man and me, and we had a big drag with the waiter because my old man drank whisky and it cost five francs and that meant a good tip when the saucers were counted up. My old man was drinking more than I’d ever seen him, but he wasn’t riding at all now and besides he said that whiskey kept his weight down. But I noticed he was putting it on all right just the same. He’d busted away from his old gang out at Maisons and seemed to like just sitting around on the boulevard with me. But he was dropping money every day at the track. He’d feel sort of doleful after the last race, if he’d lost on the day, until we’d get to our table and he’d have his first whiskey and then he’d be fine.
He’d be reading the Paris-Sport and he’d look over at me and say, “Where’s your girl Joe?” to kid me on account I had told him about the girl that day at the next table. And I’d get red but I liked being kidded about her. It gave me a good feeling. “Keep your eye peeled for her Joe.” he’d say, “She’ll be back.”
He’d ask me questions about things and some of the things I’d say he’d laugh. And then he’d get started talking about things. About riding down in Egypt, or at St. Moritz on the ice before my mother died, and about during the war when they had regular races down in the south of France without any purses, or betting or crowd or anything just to keep the breed up. Regular races with the jocks riding hell out of the horses. Gee I could listen to my old man talk by the hour, especially when he’d had a couple or so of drinks. He’d tell me about when he was a boy in Kentucky and going coon hunting and the old days in the states before everything went on the bum there. And he’d say, “Joe, when we’ve got a decent stake, you’re going back there to the States and go to school.”