Diane Claggett met my mom in 1971 and it was sister-hood at first sight. Both blonde, slim horse-girls, both had Adventist ancestors they had escaped and both full of fun and open to foolin' around. They drank and flirted and smoked pot and went every other week to an endurance race, a long distance horse race, through the season - which in California is all year - switching to the southern deserts in the winter. Diane was a little wilder than my mom, Diane defied conventions when it a was popular time to do so. She had an Indian side that she cultivated - more than half her friends were old Indians and in her later years she went by the apt name, Running Deer.
In 1976 she entered a horse race across the country, following the old pony express route (a telling detail as I will explain in a bit) my Jr. year in high school. Diane came in 2nd, beaten by a days by old Verle Norton and his pair of mules. Verle was an old friend from the same endurance-race, social circles that Diane moved in but she always muttered under her breath at the loss, "this was supposed to be a *horse* race." Mules are much tougher in the long run, especially on pavement which was much of the course. My ma had always been horse-mad and endurance racing is the epitome of the sport, if you ask me. First of all, any sort of mere horse show is not for a true horse-lover. Horses aren't good for how they look, horses are good for how they go. And a horse race around an enclosed track isn't really pragmatic. How many people need to get around an enclosed track quickly? It's just another show, in the end. The only true test is time over distance - real distance, up and down, across rivers and through the heat of the day and the chill of the night. At least 50 miles and preferably a 100. Preferably by far, the Western States 100 - The Tevis Cup, The grand daddy of them all, the race over the Sierras that followed the old Pony Express Rt, before there was an I-80. Squaw Valley to Auburn. When Diane introduced my mom to that race, my ma took to it like Ronnie Reagen took to politics. She won in 81 and again in 82, the first person to win it twice in a row, on Fritz the one-eyed Wonder. But this story isn't about that, or my mom, it's about Diane, and one of her many Beau's - The Doc. She hung around with the Doc quite a bit, She and Smokey. Sheesh, there's another character- Smokey Killen. Around 85 years old, tall and lean with a ropy neck and adam's apple, my dad always shook his head whenever he thought about it, this hot little morsel and she takes this scrawny old man as a lover but Smokey had a couple of things going for him, one he was rich, retired Insurance Exec with homes in Vail and Puerto Vallarda and second he loved Diane like the dickens, followed her everywhere and always had a camper for her to crash in. And lotsa good booze. I guess if a woman's got a soft spot in her heart for cowboys, it don't diminish with age. Doc hung around a lot, as I mentioned, he also was in love with Diane. He was just as old, but he was better-looking and kept hopes up. He always claimed to be be a millionaire but he sure didn't live like a millionaire. Doc's claim was he'd cashed out his assets from his medical practice and turned them into gold. then one drunken night, stashed it all, buried it somewhere which he couldn't recall the next morning. What a funny thing, to have hidden great wealth from yourself. My brother and his son, my nephew Luke, went searching for it recently - late last summer. I didn't know about it then because they didn't tell me. Luke just grinned, "We're going to look for gold" , at my wondering look as they got in brother Ron's Acura, loaded with Luke's new top-of-the-line metal detector. I found out this morning what they were doing that time because the news report<http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0227-gold-coins-20140227,0,843659.story#axzz2uYBeGtkt>came out that the gold had been found. Nobody knows about old Doc anymore. The couple who found it are newly moved up from the Bay Area and it don't matter anyway. Doc is long dead, a definite case of losers, weepers. Diane drops by most every other week. She likes to go to church with my mom now, both are back to the Adventism of their youth. I'm not sure you could call that a case of finders, keepers but I am glad that couple found that gold. I don't think Doc cared about it that much or he'd have tried harder to find it instead of wasting time trailing around Diane and Smokey. Or maybe he discover with Smokey, that when you retire, you don't have to be rich anymore and being poor is more fun - fewer responsibilities. I"m convinced of it. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
