Kentucky: May: Saturday
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, my Dad subscribed to Sports Illustrated. At one point - maybe the magazine’s 10th anniversary - it sent subscribers a coffee-table book called “The Wonderful World of Sport,’’ or some such.
Way back in the day, SI would do things like hire William Faulkner to write a piece for them, and in 1955, for the Kentucky Derby, it did just that.
Of course the piece, with the Faulkneresque title of “Kentucky:May:Saturday,” was included in the coffee-table book. I was a child, but I had heard of Faulkner, so I tried to read it, …
This saw Boone: the bluegrass, the virgin land rolling westward wave by dense wave from the Allegheny gaps, unmarked then, teeming with deer and buffalo about the salt licks and the limestone springs whose water in time would make the fine bourbon whiskey; and the wild men too -- the red men and the white ones too who had to be a little wild also to endure and survive and so mark the wilderness with the proofs of their tough survival -- Boonesborough, Owenstown, Harrod's and Harbuck's Stations; Kentucky: the dark and bloody ground.
What the hell, my nine- or 10-year old self thought, is this? I wasn’t ready for Faulkner. Yet. Patiently, whiskey obviously in hand, he waited.
It still amuses me that he made zero attempt to tone down the Faulkner-ness for a sports-fan audience, and SI (apparently) made zero attempt to rein him in.
Anyway, I came back to the piece years later, and remain astounded by its goofy, reverent, lyrical brilliance.
Today is Derby Day, and I have nothing for you on the race or horse racing, except to recommend you toast genius (with a mint julep, ideally) while reading “Kentucky:May:Saturday.’’