The Ghost Horse Read online

  Within just a few days, the strain of being a new owner (and a penniless one, at that), combined with the burden of his day job, began to wear on Tim’s prickly personality. One morning he got into a disagreement with a younger worker over access to the barn’s laundry facility. It was a silly argument—Tim chewing out the kid because he was always monopolizing the washing machine, filling the room with horse bandages, cluttering things up. Really, though, it was just Tim blowing off steam as he did periodically, especially when the pressure in his life mounted.

  Tebbutt, accustomed to his friend’s occasional outbursts, tried to diffuse the situation—Timmy, come on, give the kid a break; he’s just trying to do his job—which Tim interpreted not merely as benign diplomatic posturing, but a significant act of betrayal. He cursed at the kid, cursed at Tebbutt, threw a saddle down the shedrow, told them all to go fuck themselves, and stormed out of the barn, vowing never to return.

  “He had a meltdown,” Tebbutt recalled with a laugh. “It’s not like it hadn’t happened before.”

  Tim agreed.

  “Yeah, I quit,” he said. “Hell, I quit John a half dozen times at least. I was just so burned out and tired. All that galloping, training, riding. I was doing everything. And now I had a horse of my own. It was too much. By this point I hadn’t even done anything with the horse, maybe a little jog, put the tack on her. But that’s it. I knew she needed work, I was worried about the bills, and I was disgusted with my job. I was totally worn out and too tired to even take care of my own horse. I don’t like cheating on a horse. When you start cheating on your horse for someone else’s horse, you’re in trouble. So I had a blowup and said, ‘See you later.’”

  As for the new horse in the barn …

  “You take her,” Tim told Tebbutt as he walked away. “She’s all yours.”

  Tebbutt just shrugged. He’d seen this act before and knew Tim would come around eventually. So he cared for the horse for more than a week, in anticipation of the inevitable phone call. When it came, Tim informed Tebbutt that he had moved to Ocala, where he was working for another Finger Lakes–based trainer name Dave Markgraf.

  “He had about fifty head in Ocala,” Snyder said of Markgraf. “His main exercise boy had just gone to jail on a DWI, so he needed someone right away, and I needed the money. He gave me five hundred bucks cash to get started and I went to work the next morning. Then it turned out the kid was on his third DWI, so he wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon, and they asked me to stay on for a while. They told me I could ship my horse up from Delray, and they’d give me a stall for her as long as I was working there. I did him a favor by training his horses in a pinch; he did me a favor by giving me free stall space.”

  So, less than two weeks after she had arrived at Tebbutt’s barn, the filly was on her way back to Ocala.

  “I had no idea what to make of her when she left,” Tebbutt said. “I wasn’t even sure I’d ever see her again. She was Timmy’s horse, and all she’d done was walk along the shedrow. She was way out of balance—her feet needed more work—but she was so big and strong. Timmy’s a good horseman—I figured he’d get her to the races eventually. At that level, if you can break your maiden, win forty-five hundred bucks, then turn around and sell the horse, you’ve done okay. She seemed like that kind of horse.”

  Whatever kind of horse she was, or would become, she very nearly did it under the guidance of another owner and trainer. If not for Tim’s eruption and subsequent departure, he might well have surrendered possession of the filly in a more permanent manner. You see, ironically, Tim’s volatile nature, which had caused him so many problems in the past, may have prevented him from parting ways with the horse before ever finding out how talented she really was.

  Not more than a couple days after Tim left for Ocala, two young men showed up at the Delray Training Center, flush with money and a new truck, and an empty trailer in need of cargo. They stopped by Tebbutt’s barn and became smitten with the big unnamed filly.

  “How much?” they asked.

  Tebbutt shrugged, explained that the horse wasn’t for sale, and that he wasn’t even the owner—though he certainly could have claimed otherwise, given the circumstances of Snyder’s departure. After all, Tim had told him to keep the filly.

  The two young men persisted, said they would consider going as high as fifteen thousand dollars. They asked if they could take the filly out of her stall, watch her walk around a bit. Tebbutt did not waver. For that, Tim Snyder will be forever grateful.

  “I missed that boat, fortunately,” Tim would later acknowledge. “If I’d been there, I might have sold her. I had no attachment to her at all. I was in Ocala, my horse was up near Miami. I was broke and kicking myself for buying a horse. I was living in my car, didn’t even have money for gas. That’s how things were going. If I’d known that I could have maybe quadrupled my investment? I’d have gotten rid of her.”

  In the meantime, there was the issue of providing the filly with a proper name; given that she was now officially a three-year-old, this part of the process was long overdue. Then again, it was the fate of horses deemed ill-suited to the track to linger in limbo for months if not years, awaiting the care of an owner who had sufficient confidence in the animal to invest in the accoutrements of training, which included registering the horse’s official moniker with The Jockey Club.

  The naming of thoroughbred racehorses is a process steeped in tradition and protocol. Typically, an owner will choose a name that pays homage to the foal’s lineage (if the bloodline is worth noting) while perhaps reflecting its individuality—something about its owner, perhaps, or its appearance. Thus, the son of Bold Bidder is named Spectacular Bid; the offspring of Fool-Me-Not and What a Pleasure is named Foolish Pleasure.

  At the lower end of the sport, where breeding is more muddled and purchase prices significantly lower, owners are less inclined to remain tethered to tradition. In much the same way that a family pet might be identified, forty-five-hundred-dollar race horses are often named through a combination of whimsy and hunch.

  And so, improbably enough, the bay filly out of Drewman and Ennuhway became …

  Lisa’s Booby Trap.

  Here is where the story takes a decidedly unromantic turn. But Snyder is nothing if not honest, and he tells the tale of Lisa’s Booby Trap without a hint of regret or apology. A widower rebounding from years of grief and loneliness—a widower who has lived most of his life in the margins of society—does what he can to get through the day. Sometimes, in the case of Tim Snyder, that meant hanging out at a South Florida gentlemen’s club with a cringe-inducing name: The Booby Trap, which catered to the racing crowd at nearby Calder Racetrack, where Tim and John Tebbutt were sometimes visitors.

  “It was right down the street,” Snyder said of the club. “We’d go to Calder maybe twice a week to visit the tack shop, and then we’d go to The Booby Trap. If you were one of the track guys, all you had to do was stop in and take a seat at the bar, and they’d give you a sandwich—roast beef, pastrami … whatever. Sandwiches so big and sloppy you couldn’t eat the whole thing. With fries and cole slaw. We could eat practically for free—just had to throw the girls a few bucks every once in a while.”

  Snyder shrugged. “Some people don’t like that part of the story. What am I supposed to do—lie?”

  Added John Tebbutt: “Everybody gets lonely. It’s not a crime. And anyway, they had a free lunch at The Booby Trap, the lunches were delicious, and two out of three girls were cute.”

  Tebbutt laughed.

  “Of course, the third one you’d kind of have to put your sandwich down and leave. But we spent some time there. Nothing wrong with that.”

  In the beginning, Tim wryly tried to name his new horse solely after the club; upon discovering that “Booby Trap” had already been registered with the Jockey Club, he added “Lisa” to the front. Thus was born Lisa’s Booby Trap. If anyone is offended by that juxtaposition, well … rest assured that Snyder’s wife w
ould have gotten the joke.

  “Wouldn’t have bothered her in the least,” Tebbutt said.

  Tebbutt actually wasn’t involved in the naming of the horse. He and Tim had discussed various options, but then Tim bolted for Ocala, and the filly soon followed, leaving Tebbutt in the dark. It was while in Ocala that a bit of research revealed the disappointing news that Booby Trap had already been taken, leaving Tim scratching his head for a suitable name. Stumped, he began soliciting suggestions. His in-laws recommended naming the filly after their daughter. She loved horses, after all, and wouldn’t this be a good way to honor her memory.

  “How about Lisa’s Pride?” Carol offered.

  “Ah, I don’t know,” Tim responded. “Maybe.”

  He thought about naming the horse after his daughter or grandson, but for some reason discarded those options, as well. It was almost as though he didn’t want to burden the horse with a name that might provoke any sort of reverence or expectation. In all likelihood the filly would meet the fate of just about every other horse he’d owned: it would run a few times, maybe hit the board, maybe not, and be passed on to someone else. You name a horse after one of your grandkids, or your beloved deceased wife, and you’re sort of obligated to hang onto it for a while.

  Tim liked the looks of the filly. He thought she had some potential. But he was hardly in love with the horse. It wasn’t his nature to allow such connections to distract him from the job at hand. Under the circumstances, a more frivolous or irreverent name seemed appropriate. So Tim settled on Lisa’s Booby Trap, a choice that was, not surprisingly, available for the taking, according to Jockey Club records. He paid the seventy-five-dollar registration fee and went back to work. It wasn’t until some two months later, when he returned to New York, that Tim introduced the filly to his in-laws.

  “Frank, Carol … I’d like you to meet Lisa’s Booby Trap.”

  They were not amused.

  “My husband was a little upset,” Carol said. “I wasn’t really mad, but I did think it was kind of odd. I guess it works, though. I mean, that’s Timmy.”

  It’s Carol Calley’s nature to be diplomatic and nonconfrontational. She is, by all accounts, a sweet-tempered, patient, and generous woman. So her recollection of the story, according to Tim, is somewhat suspect.

  “They hated the name,” Tim said. “Just hated it. And my father-in-law was real mad about it for a while.”

  Well, who could blame him? Really—who names a horse after his dead wife and … a strip club?

  “Look, I liked the strip joint, and the strip joint’s name was taken,” Tim argued logically, if not altogether convincingly. “So I put my wife’s name in front of it. I agree that Booby Trap is a very tricky name. But I figured most people wouldn’t even know what it meant.”

  Nor would they have a chance to pass judgment since, in all likelihood, the horse would never amount to anything more than a Finger Lakes claimer. Tim insists that it never once occurred to him that combining “Lisa” with “Bobby Trap” might be construed as disrespectful to the memory of his wife. In retrospect, he can see how others might have viewed it that way.

  He also doesn’t give a shit.

  “How she got her name is the truth,” Tim said. “I’m not fabricating anything, I’m not trying to justify anything. It’s my business, my horse, my wife who died. That’s the way I named her, that’s what I wanted. I wasn’t going to adjust the name for anyone else.”

  In the coming months, as the saga of Lisa’s Booby Trap went national, writers and broadcasters would fumble awkwardly for the right words as they struggled to project just the right combination of romance and fantasy the story seemed to entail, if not demand. More often than not, they would fail utterly, for how could they tug cheaply at the heartstrings while describing the exploits of a grieving trainer who combined the names of his dead wife and his favorite strip joint when christening his new horse?

  It boggled the mind as it taxed the dexterity of sportswriters across the land. Some chose to simply ignore the less savory aspects of the story. For example, the esteemed Blood-Horse magazine said this about Lisa’s Booby Trap in the summer of 2010: “The 3-year-old filly is trained and owned by Timothy Snyder, who named her for his wife who died of cancer in 2003.”

  True enough … but not exactly accurate. Of course, those who strove for accuracy risked jarring juxtaposition at the least, unintentional dark humor at the worst. From the Daily Racing Form: “Lisa’s Booby Trap was named by Snyder for his wife Lisa, who died of [cervical] cancer in 2003, and for a gentlemen’s club, The Booby Trap that he used to frequent in south Florida.”

  What?

  A cathartic story should be neatly wrapped and presented, uncluttered by complications of the heart and the vagaries of life. Ideally, it should be a Hallmark card: you open it up, let the sentimentality wash over you, have a good cry, and forget about it almost instantly.

  The story of Lisa’s Booby Trap could not easily be shoehorned into this classification, but that didn’t stop people from trying. And the very fact that it was more complicated, more interesting, and ultimately more human provoked a broad range of reactions—from confusion to bemusement to outright anger. This was particularly true among those who for one reason or another—personal conflicts, jealousy, a tumultuous business history—were not fans of Tim Snyder.

  “He’s a strange guy,” said John Shaw. “I mean, anybody who names a horse after a strip club … and then you hear him talk … Donny [Hunt] tells me the story, and he said Snyder only named it Lisa because he figured if he named it after his wife, that his mother-in-law would chip in some money toward the horse.”

  As for Don Hunt, he too is somewhat skeptical about the story. But then, for all the dewy romanticism associated with their sport, horsemen can be a crusty, cynical lot.

  “Tim’s wife was a nice person,” Hunt said. “I liked her. She was a hard worker. But they struggled when they were together. I think people are making more out of this than they should.”

  As for the name?

  “Believe me, anybody else you’d scratch your head,” Hunt observed. “With Tim … it sort of fits.”

  Even those who know Tim best found his choice of names quizzical, although not out of character. But they are fiercely defensive of his relationship with Lisa, as well as the success he would ultimately find with the horse that bore her name. It is also true that some of them, including his mother-in-law and sister, provided financial assistance to Tim while he was in Florida in the weeks and month shortly after he purchased the filly who would become Lisa’s Booby Trap. Like John Tebbutt, they know Tim well, and they begrudge him nothing.

  “Some people don’t understand Tim or why he named this horse the way he did,” Cheryl Hall explained. “That’s because they grew up in a normal household.”

  Neither Tim nor Cheryl had that luxury, so when he called his sister and explained that he would not be choosing some genteel, faux-bourgeois name for his new filly, nor a simple, elegant name intended only to honor some family member, she was not surprised.

  “I got the name,” Tim told her.

  “Oh, yeah? What is it?”

  “Lisa’s Booby Trap!”

  At first, Cheryl didn’t know what to make of the name.

  “Obviously I understood the first part,” she recalled. “Lisa was his wife. That part was good. But then he told me about The Booby Trap, and how it was this place where he went for lunch. I thought it was silly, but harmless. To be honest with you, I think he went there more for the lunch than the boobies. Tim is not a guy who frequented strip joints his whole life; he’s a guy who knew how to find a free meal. And you have to understand—to a guy like Tim, it wouldn’t matter if he named the horse after a church or a titty bar. No difference. He’s accepting of all things. He also truly does not give a crap what people think.”

  Although John Tebbutt’s midday excursions to The Booby Trap with Tim partially inspired the horse’s new name, it wasn’t until
a few months later, when Tim showed up at Finger Lakes, that Tebbutt learned exactly what had happened.

  “I thought it was a great name,” he said. “A little odd, yeah, but funny. And exactly the kind of thing Tim would do. Of course, when I told my wife about it, she said, ‘If you ever do that to me I’ll come back from the grave and kill you.’”

  It was at Finger Lakes that Tebbutt fully reconnected with his old friend, whose journey from Florida, with new horse in tow, had been more than a little rocky.

  “In March, about a month before I came back north, a horse flipped over on me at the barn,” Tim said. “At first they thought I was having a heart attack—it hurt that bad. Took them fifteen minutes to get me off the ground. Turned out I got a swollen liver and three broken ribs, and no insurance to cover it. Man, I was sick.”

  At the time Snyder was living out of his car, with T-Bone as his constant companion (and if ever a dog seemed a perfect match for its owner, this was it). While recuperating he managed to secure the use of a trailer, provided by his employer, but for the better part of three weeks he could barely get out of bed.

  “I was totally laid up. Never did see a doctor, just sweated it out,” Tim said. “But I still took care of my horse. Had a young Mexican exercise rider who helped me out. That kid was a lifesaver. I don’t even know his name. I think it was Jesus—that week, anyway. A lot of those kids are amazing. First thing they do when they get to this country is learn how to ride. They’re small and ambitious and they ain’t afraid to work. They’re tough as hell and they can survive on practically nothing. I didn’t have much money, but I paid him what I could.”