The horses thundered by me in a blur. I was standing by the fence in the infield at Churchill Downs watching the 107th running of the Kentucky Derby. It was 1981 and I was a senior in college.
It wasn’t my first trip to the Derby. But it was my first time watching it from the infield. When I was 14, I went on a father-daughter trip to spend the day at Churchill Downs with my Dad and his friend Herm and Herm’s daughter Cheri.
“Show us your tits!” the guys yelled as my Chi-O sisters and I approached the entrance to the infield at 10 a.m. seven years later.
“Bite me!” my friend Sherry shouted back.
The Sherry I was with this time was a Wisconsin native — a prankster, rabble-rouser, and not afraid of anything or anybody. Our ringleader.
“Keep moving,” she commanded to us, pushing her way through the crowd. We made our way to the infield. It was already a teeming mass of people who were drinking beer and having a good time.
It was Sherry’s idea for us to go to the Derby that spring of my senior year at NU. Darlene, Toni, Judy, Lori, and I had been game. Except for Lori, we were all seniors – bored with school and itching to have an adventure.
“Where are we going to stay?” I asked.
“We don’t need to stay anywhere – we’ll just drive down there and drive back,” Sherry answered. We can even sleep in Darla’s car if we need to.”
So we made signs that said “Derby or Bust,” and “We’re Gonna Cure the Blues,” taped them to Darla’s Blues Mobile, and took off for Louisville.
In 1974, Dad, Herm, Cheri, and I drove there from Normal, IL, in Herm’s Cadillac. We stayed in a motel in Columbus, IN, on the way down.
My friends and I drank beer on that sunny day in the infield seven years later. We also drank real mint juleps that were too surgary and sweet.
“We made a friend!” Sherry gushed, as I peered up at her from down on the blanket, shielding my eyes from the sun.
“Yeah, a cute guy,” Darla intoned, spilling her beer on me. She was a music major who was studying to be a violin teacher. She had blonde hair, a toothy smile, and big, thick glasses and was also from Wisconsin.
“Where is he?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“He’s a camera man with a local TV station,” Sherry explained. “He’s working with a reporter who’s doing a piece on the infield for the 10 o’clock news. We’re going to be on TV!”
Turns out the cameraman was a 30-something skinny guy named Keith. He had nice hair and soft eyes. And he promised to get us on the 10 o’clock news.
“We took a walk in the infield that day,” Dad told me. “ Herm and I tried to shield you and Cheri from the most blatant display of alcohol, drugs, and risque messing around. As I recall, it was a short walk.”
That blatant display was exactly the story Keith and the reporter were assigned to get on my second trip to the Derby. And from what I could tell, there was plenty.
In the infield with my Chi-O sisters that day in 1981, we watched the people instead of the horses. At the end of the day, we were tired and not looking forward to making the six-hour drive back to Evanston.
“We have to stay to see the 10 o’clock news,” Sherry declared. “Let’s find a bar with a TV.”
“Okay, but then what?” I asked. “Are we going to drive back to Evanston?”
“Keith said we could stay with him,” she replied. “He lives on the second floor of a house and he said we could crash on his floor.”
Oh God, I thought, could we really do this? He seemed nice enough, but you never know. There were six of us and one of him, so the power odds were in our favor. His intentions seemed honorable – you know, help out some 21-year old college girls who were tired from partying all day and needed a place to crash.
How would I explain this to my mother?
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go find a bar, eat some food, watch the news, and then figure out what we’re going to do.”
When Dad, Herm, Cheri, and I left Churchill Downs, we drove several hours to the same hotel we’d stayed in on the way down in Columbus, IN. We ate dinner and went to bed. The next day, we got up and drove home.
Keith’s piece on the Derby infield was really good. I can’t remember it exactly, but I do recall that it was a humorous look at all the risqué messing around that was going on in the infield that day.
After the others fell asleep, I stayed up talking with Keith. I woke up the next morning feeling a bit fuzzy, with that arid, puky taste in my mouth that comes with drinking too much beer and eating greasy food.
“What happened between you two?” Sherry demanded, pulling me aside.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Nothing at all. We just talked.”
Now that I think about it all these years later, it was pretty stupid for us to have stayed overnight at a strange man’s house. We were really lucky that nothing bad happened to us.
We went with Keith that morning over to the television studio where he burned us a tape of the Derby segment, plus another great piece he’d done on a hot air balloon race. We said our goodbyes, promised to stay in touch, piled into the Bluesmobile, and drove back to Evanston.
I caught up with Darla and Judy at our 30th class reunion a while back. We reminisced about the Derby trip, and realized that now, as parents, we would come down hard on our kids if we found out they did what we did that weekend in May in 1981.
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What’s my story? I’m a healthcare and senior living design knowledge expert who writes and speaks frequently about trends and issues affecting these two industries. I’m also a strategic marketing consultant and content creator, working with companies and organizations who want to improve the quality of healthcare and senior living through the design of the physical environment. You can reach me at [email protected].