My Absent Friend

By “J. T.” Feld

It was 1978 when I first laid eyes on Cliff Guilliams.

He was a big fella with a large mustache, loud husky drawl and hairy legs hanging out of grey polyester coach’s shorts.

“I’m Cliff Guilliams,” he said to me in the Ellis Park pressbox. “If you need anything around here, I can get it for you.”

We spent the summer together – playing softball for the Pete’s Supper Club team, downing martinis and Galiano stingers made by the late Joey Polaski, having barbecues with Jack Valentine and his wife Robey and bettin’ on horses like fiends.

We worshiped at the feet of Daily Racing Form teletype man Jerry Fork and Evansville Courier-Journal turf writer Don Bernhardt on a daily basis, soaking in their knowledge and advice like sponges. Two better mentors, God never created.

It was one of the best of times of our lives.

Cliff’s love of horse racing blossomed at Ellis Park, his local track and first love. He and some of his “boys” from Bosse High in Evansville would sneak out to the track during hell week, bet a few races and then head back to practice.

He was one of the youngest owners at Ellis, acquiring the dough for his claiming stable by clipping grocery store coupons, and cashing them in at his father’s Star Market. Rustic Knave was his stable star and I’ll never forget the look on Cliff’s face when the old claimer romped home to win a conditioned claimer on a hot Kentucky afternoon. For him, winning a race at Ellis was better than winning the Derby.

We stayed in touch for a while, but with me in California and Cliff in Kentucky, it was a note or a phone call, at first once a week, then once a month, then once a year, then once in a while.

Seven years ago, I moved back to Kentucky and for a while it was like stepping back in time – a reunion of the Pete’s Supper Club softball team and a bunch of my old friends. Bernie Hettel was the state steward, “Cadillac” Jack Middleton was a placing judge, Jack Valentine was the Equibase trackman, Cliff was in my old spot, making the charts and I was writing barn notes and press releases for Keeneland.

Cliff even held a day for our team at Ellis Park in 2002, commemorating our softball championship 25 years previous. We presented a blanket with the track motto, “Excitement ’78,” and our team motto, “God I Love It,” to the winner of the feature, smoked cigars and drank bourbon in the press box, and in general had a marvelous time.

Two weeks later, Joey died in a swimming pool accident. It was a shock to us all.

In 2004, Cliff was in the limelight, when Robert LaPenta’s The Cliff’s Edge, a colt named in his honor, was on the Derby trail. Winner of the Toyota Blue Grass (G1) at Keeneland, Cliff enjoyed the Kentucky Derby experience first hand, in a way few men ever have the opportunity to do. He was like a kid in a candy store for three weeks and his passion for racing was rejuvenated.

Sunday morning, Cliff didn’t show up at the spot where he’d meet Jack to carpool to Keeneland. This was an event of cataclismic propotions. Something was definitely awry. Cliff is a guy you can count on, not somebody who plays hookie to go crappie fishing. It was one of those times when you hope your friend was arrested for DUI because the other reason is unacceptable.

Turns out, Cliff died in his sleep in a hotel room.

Momba’s Toyota Blue Grass would be the last race Cliff ever wrote about.

This really sucks.

Racing didn’t need to lose one of the few good guys left, Ellis Park didn’t need to lose their best ambassador by 31 lengths and Jack and I didn’t need to lose our magnificent friend.

On top of it all, Cliff just got married for the first time, a couple of weeks ago, at the tender age of 52.

“She’s an amazing woman, J.T.,” he said to me last week. “And she loves to drink martinis.”

I couldn’t wait to meet her. She must be so sad.

It won’t be the same in the Keeneland pressbox without Cliff’s diatribes on the state of our sport, his stories of Joe Hirsch and Woody Stephens, his worried outlook about Ellis Park and the chance they may not run this summer, having a cocktail with him from his personal liquor cabinet after a long day at the races or his blowing cigar smoke through the vents to piss off Lexington Herald-Leader racing scribe Mary Jean Wall.

My last memory of Cliff will be his walking jauntily down the pressbox aisle, chart in hand, sporting his new green Toyota Blue Grass cap and his usual, “See ya’ tomorrow, J.T.”

I wish Cliff was a better handicapper. I’d really like to make a final call to an absent friend.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.