Those of you who have persevered in reading these essays will know that from time to time the titles involve curve balls, changes of pace, and, occasionally, a foofoo ball. This essay will not be called “Love Affairs” , but rather “Affairs of Love” for reasons that will become clear as the sections develop. If all goes well, I propose to tell you about my love affair with Chevrolet automobiles and with a jockey’s love of his horse, all of which are included here together with a reference to “dislove,” which is my neologism for a current divorce suit taking place.
Rick Wagoner, the President of General Motors, recently made a commercial at the company’s driving grounds in which he predicted that one day we would all be driving cars with hydrogen engines. Mr. Wagoner is also the man who came a little late to the party because he is suggesting that his line of Chevrolet cars is a line of fuel savers. Unhappily, General Motors did not develop hybrid cars so they are stuck with gasoline engines and claim that their economy reaches well beyond 20 miles per gallon. When pigs learn to whistle and wear lipstick, I will begin to believe the economy claims for American automobiles. On the other hand, before Mr. Wagoner was born, my first car was a 1931 Chevrolet coupe and I have no idea whatsoever as to its fuel economy. In those days, when gasoline was being sold for 20 to 25 cents per gallon, no one seemed to worry about fuel economy. That of course is not the case today.
I had a love affair with that 1931 Chevrolet coupe which had a little trunk that was filled mostly with the spare tire. Sportier models of that car had a rumble seat where my trunk was located, but I only paid $50 for that car and a rumble seat was out of the question. It was a six-cylinder engine with the cylinders arranged in a straight line as opposed to being in a V shape. Henry Ford introduced V-8 engines in 1932, but it was quite a while before General Motors adopted that way to arrange their engines. They stuck with straight sixes and straight eights for years, until after the Second World War.
I drove that Chevy to work and occasionally when I courted the girls. It had a drawback in that the linings on the brake drums tended to harden, which produced a rumbling sound when the brakes were applied. On my first date with Flora Hoevel, in about 1939 or 1940, the brakes made their rumbling sound, which embarrassed me. But Flora thought it was very entertaining. As it turns out, I did not become entangled with Flora, which is probably all to the good because I found much later that Flora had produced nine children. There are nine positions on the normal baseball team. Flora produced enough kids to populate all of them. But by the time she accomplished that feat, I was long since gone.
That may have been the happiest car I ever owned. It gave me no trouble and when I was enticed by a bigger later model used Chevy, I sold that car to Tallis Lockos for the same $50 that I had paid for it in the beginning. There was no heater or any air conditioning and the windows had to be rolled up with a handle on the inside of the door. But like a first love, that car has an outsized claim on my affections. If I were able to have a discussion with Mr. Wagoner of General Motors, I would encourage him to build cars as dependable as that 1931 Chevrolet coupe. But Mr. Wagoner is off dealing with hydrogen-powered engines which will not be produced until we all go broke buying $5 a gallon gasoline. There is much to say for simplicity in automobiles, and the 1931 Chevy coupe was simple but it worked. And it still retains a claim on my heart.
From that love affair, we now turn to a case of “dislove.” I am fully aware that there are English language purists who will dispute my use of the neologism dislove but when they hear the brief story of Dina Matos McGreevey, I suspect that they will become believers in dislove.
Dina Matos is a member of a prominent Portuguese family in Newark, New Jersey. Somewhere along the line our future governor, who is now our past governor, Mr. James E. McGreevey, courted Dina Matos and they were eventually married. In one of my previous essays, you will recall that Dina and her prospective husband were involved in a triangle which included the chauffeur, which led them to celebrate their accomplishments at a chain of restaurants called TGI Friday’s eating establishments.
As time went forward, James E. McGreevey became the Governor of New Jersey and served about two years, until he appointed an Israeli citizen as the state national security director. It also developed that the Israeli citizen was a gay lover of none other than James E. McGreevey. The governor called a press conference at which he announced that he was a “gay American” and resigned. His wife at the time, Dina Matos, stood by him in the background and seemed to be greatly surprised by this disclosure.
There is now a daughter of about six years from this marriage. A year or so ago, Dina filed a divorce suit based largely on the thought that the Governor misled her on his being gay. I suspect that many newspaper writers were not surprised by his gayness, because it had been hinted at for years. In any event, after another year or more had passed, the divorce suit came to trial. Dina wishes to extract large amounts of alimony from the former Governor because she claims that he is a celebrity. It is the contention of Dina and her lawyer that the former Governor should undertake a speaking tour where the fees would rival those paid to Bill Clinton. The facts of the matter are that McGreevey has written a book which more or less flopped and there seems to be no call whatsoever for him to speak to people.
McGreevey is now a student at an Episcopal seminary where he hopes to become a priest who will be involved in ministering to the prison population. If he is ever ordained, the job that he is seeking pays around $47 or $48,000 per year. So when Dina asks for a huge settlement of her suit, McGreevey replies, “I am a poor seminary student who is broke.” Dina seeks a million dollar payment plus alimony from her former husband.
On this score, I am inclined to believe the former governor because he now lives with a wealthy lover who pays his legal bills and living expenses while he attends the seminary. But nonetheless Dina wants to extract wheelbarrow loads of money from good old Jim.
Divorce suits are never happy affairs. In this one, it was saddest that in one year Dina spent $26,000 for clothing for herself and her child. There was a dress that she liked and to match the dress with a pair of shoes cost around $500. Apparently Dina bought the shoes. So Dina is a spendthrift.
Further questioning established that she owes her lawyer around $250,000 for the divorce suit and that her home in Plainfield has not been paid for and it carries about a $600,000 price tag. So you see, the McGreeveys, man and woman, are being supported by someone else. Apparently her lawyer has the illusion that at the end of this trial there will be a big payoff. I suspect that he is in it for the publicity involved and that any realist will recognize that in the end there will be no payoff from the seminary student of the Episcopal faith.
So the McGreevey love affair has turned into an exercise in dislove. Dina Matos, in her appearances on the stand, is presenting a woman who has been scorned, who wishes to extract vengeance from her husband or soon-to-be former husband. When the judge delivers the verdict in the McGreevey-Matos trial, I suspect that the judge may be influenced by Dina squirting away $26,000 on clothing for herself and her little daughter. Divorces are always unhappy events but in this case Dina Matos has gone out of her way to make this trial an example of plain horridness. But perhaps what it shows is that when lovers split, a situation of dislove takes over which will take many years to dissipate.
Now having dealt with Dina and her divorce problems, let us turn to a happier subject, yesterday’s race at the Belmont Stakes in Long Island. Coming into the race the favorite was a horse named Big Brown. That horse is a big burly horse who won his first six races with great ease. For example in one of the other races of the Triple Crown, either the Kentucky Derby or the race at Pimlico, he defeated the eventual winner of the Belmont Stakes by 23 or 28 lengths. Newspaper accounts say that some 93,000 people attended the Belmont Stakes and that they bet more than $5 million on Big Brown to win, even at odds which were quoted as one to four. Please note that this is not four to one odds, it is one to four. This means that when a bettor lays down his four dollars, if he wins the bet, he will collect only one dollar additional. But as it turns out, disaster lay ahead in the Belmont Stakes and the bettors lost their bets.
June is often a brutal month for heat on the eastern seaboard and in this case the Belmont Stakes were run in 93 heat. Perhaps this explains the disastrous performance by Big Brown but that is only one supposition. When the race started, Big Brown made his bid to dominate the field. But his jockey, Kent Desormeaux, said that within a few yards of the starting gate, “I had no horse.” Kent could have used his whip to flail Big Brown in an effort to make him run faster but because he “had no horse” Kent showed his love for the horse and he let the rest of the field pass him by. Big Brown, who was the overwhelming favorite to win that race, finished dead last. The race was won by Da’ Tara, a horse that had been beaten by Big Brown by 20 or more lengths in a previous race.
The jockey showed his love for Big Brown. Instead of punishing him to try to make him run faster, which he could not do, he saved the horse for another day. Big Brown has won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness at Pimlico, which is two-thirds of the triple crown. There has not been a winner of the full triple crown since 1978. What happens now is that Big Brown, from this time forward, will lead a life of love. He may race again from time to time but in racing terms, Big Brown will be retired to stud. When the owners of a thoroughbred mare wish to have her impregnated by Big Brown, they will pay the owners of Big Brown a tremendous fee and then bring the mare to Big Brown. From that point on, if all goes well, the rest will happen naturally. But thoroughbred horses are highly strung creatures and it may take some time to get the mating dance completed.
If Big Brown is an accomplished lover, and if he is fertile, a pregnancy will take place. If, on the other hand, he is infertile, he will be accused of “shooting blanks.” It goes without saying that a horse on a stud farm who shoots blanks is a candidate for the glue factory or for those who subscribe to the belief that horse meat steaks are beneficial to their diets. But whether or not Big Brown shoots blanks or is a successful lover, we will just have to wait and see.
And so there you have two cases of love and one of dislove. I still yearn for my 1931 Chevrolet at times, and I am sure that Big Brown will always yearn for winning the Belmont Stakes in 2008. But those are just pipe dreams at this point. It is also probably a pipe dream that James McGreevey and Dina Matos will ever reunite. But no matter how you cut it, this modest little essay has been worthwhile in that it has produced the neologism of dislove. Obviously that is a worthy accomplishment.
E. E. CARR
June 8, 2008
Essay 319
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Kevin’s commentary: I’m glad the horse can’t understand that he’s in a “either get it up or die” situation that he’s in. I feel like that’s even more pressure than a racetrack would be. Could you preform, so to speak, with that hanging over you?
On a more intelligent subject: I did not know my grandfather on my Dad’s side well; he passed away when I was young. However I did know that he and Pop had at least one thing in common, in that they knew their ways around a vehicle. Pop worked at the filling station, and Dado worked at GM. That said the trend I noticed in the lives of these two gentlemen is that they switched cars much more frequently than they switched jobs. This seems backwards to me, as I’ve worked a good deal of jobs and internships now but have only ever owned one vehicle. It was a very dependable vehicle and my family just recently sold it. I wonder though what accounted for the huge turnover in cars of Pop’s times. Hopefully he can clarify this matter somewhat.
More on horses and studs here.
For an essay inspired by “I had no horse,” read here.