Mars Cassidys Turkey Dinner: Famous Starter Tells How He and Others Fared on Thanksgiving Day May Years Ago, Daily Racing Form, 1917-12-04

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MARS CASSIDYS TURKEY DINNER Famous. Starter Tells How He and Others Fared on Thanksgiving Day Many Years Ago. New York, December 3. Starter Mars Cassidy can tell as many interesting tales of the turf as any man, nor docs he hesitate at making himself the .butt of some of his best jokes. And apropos to Thanksgiving and turkey, here is one Cassidy recently narrated to a hunch of the hoys: "It was twenty-five years ago, when some of the foremost trainers of today were racing ut Iron Hill and some other small tracks," he said. "These tracks were not under the sanction of the governing turf body of the east and Ave were called outlaws and barred from the big New York tracks. I had a small stable, and it had been tough picking for several weeks. I had an old darkey, who was foreman of the stable and also cook for the layout. His first assistant was an Indian that had leen with me for a long time. I Was so broke I hadnt paid any of my stable help for weeks, but they stuck on, waiting for the luck to turn; "On the day before Thanksgiving old Sain, the foreman and cook, asked if we were going to have turkey and I told him I didnt have one dollar to rub against another and that- grocer and butcher had shut down on the charge account. It didnt seem to worry the old m:n much, for he told me to go ahead and invite the gang around to Hlinner next evening and that it would be there for them. I didnt know how he was going to manage it, and knew it wouldnt do any good to be asking fool questions, so I went ithetid and invittd the bunch. "There was still one place where I had plenty of credit and that was a wet goods emporium in AAashington, so I sent iu an order for everything we needed in that line. "After we got through with the races we could smell that dinner by the time we got within a quarter of "a mile of the kitchen. When ten of us put our feet under that old pine table, there was a turkey at one end that was as big as one of those prize gobblers that go to the AAhite House every Thanksgiving. At the other end was a fine, fat shoat with a red apple in his mouth and scattered along between the turkey and the shoat there were all the trimmings that anybody would want with a dinner. - "AVe had all we wanted to eat for that time and I never, agked ahy fqolish quesiipris about where it came from. The next day, however, a pair of deputy .sheriffs were biitsuooping around the stables ahd said something about a farmer nearby having lost a couple of turkeys and two or three suckling pigs. They didnt find anything and then I asked Old Sam how about it. Then the did man had to grin, " AAhy, Mr. Mars he said, that Indian can outsteuT any nigger in the world. Ho jest dim right up to the top of that big old tree, pasthalf a dozen other turkeys roostin1 on the lower liinbs to git that, big old gohller. and harry a one of them ever as "much as made H flutter. . Dont worry about them ole sheriffs, dny would haftcr to dig down live feet under the groun to find a feather or u bone. " .


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1910s/drf1917120401/drf1917120401_2_6
Local Identifier: drf1917120401_2_6
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800