"I was away about a year," he said. "But when the races turned back to the fairgrounds in New Orleans, I took a ride out just to see 'em. The first sniff of a stable and I was back again, 24 hours a day." He took a deep breath of air and exhaled slowly. "The smell of manure is great to me. It's like fresh air; that's how used to it I am."

IRVING has a pregnant wife and three children in New Orleans. He is home 130 days of the year, between October and March. His wife used to be upset about his being away from home so much, but she hasn't bothered him for the last two years. "She gets pregnant every time I'm home now, and that keeps her mind occupied," he explained.

"Being away from home so long makes me shut out the world," he continued. "The one thing is to make money. When I do good, I have a party, and everybody does good. When I do bad, I might ask 'em for a buck, and they better not refuse 'cause one day I just might walk up with three grand and give 'em a hundred."

Irving looked at his old pink shirt and dirt-stained dungarees. "Don't think we're low-down 'cause we're all tattered," he said. "If you deal with shit, you got to be shit. When I step outta here with a three-or-four-hundred-dollar outfit, I'm just as good as Mr. Rockefeller way up there." And he pointed off somewhere beyond the haybins and the horse stalls.

Irving makes $125 a week ($115 after taxes), and he sends home about $80. "I work for a bet on my horses," he said. "It's a guessing-and-waiting game, but I bet my horse whether he's ready or not. I always keep two dollars in my pocket to bet on my horse."

He had made $800 on a $50 bet the night before. "Once in Chicago I won $2,000 on a couple of bets," he said. "But I was arguing with my wife. And when I dropped the tickets in my pocket, I missed. Someone picked 'em up and cashed 'em, though-some stooper. That's what I call 'em."

There is a certain hostility between the grooms and the jockeys. "The rider don't make the race," Irving said. "The horse makes the rider, the trainer, and the owner. The jocks do exactly what the trainer says. They get all the glory; we get all the crap."

"Sometimes a jock'll pull a horse," he continued. "If the groom finds out, the jock might get a punch in the mouth. Racing is like dice: you roll craps and you're out; you roll seven or eleven and you're a winner."

"A jock comes down here when he's 17 'cause some guy says he can ride, and he thinks he's another Eddie Arcaro," Irving said. "A jock isn't born; he's made by a trainer and a racehorse."

"When that little jock makes the big time, he don't remember the groom who said, 'Drop your arms' or 'Don't pull the horse; he's got a tender mouth.' Three years from then if you go up to him for a buck, he might say, 'Get outta my face.'"

Irving admires girl jockeys, however. "Barbara Jo Rubin has as much heart as men have. In New Orleans, she took the stake. She outslicked Robert L. Boyd, the slick himself. She let him go out there, took him off the pace at the eighth pole, crowded him at the sixteenth, and beat him at the wire."

"Racing's fast, it's hard, and it's what I want," he finished.

Unkie walked in and told Irving to hurry up with his work. "You're gonna get him fired!" Unkie said to me. I apologized and hurried back to the track.

The sign on the big board said the track was fast. I loked up at the cloudy sky. Twenty-four American flags whipped in the wind at the top of the grandstand, and eleven more flapped in semi-circle in the parking lot. It was early; the big crowds hadn't come yet.

By noon the stands were beginning to fill up. Old men and young boys were hawking the Record American, the Herald Traveler, and WilsonWaldo's tip cards at makeshift newsstands underneath the grandstand. I bought a program and walked outside to look at the track.