Position: Server
Number of Tables: 16
Sales: $282.16
Tips: $62
Hours: 4.90
Total Wage: $20.65 per hour
Claudio, an immigrant server and driver from Brazil, is out on another vacation, so I get to cover two of his serving shifts this week. Sometime around Christmas, he went to Brazil for five weeks, and last month he went to New York for a week. This time, a friend has invited him on a paid Bahama cruise, because she recently broke up with her boyfriend. Yes, life is good at the Pizzeria.
P.M.
Position: Driver
Number of Deliveries: 7
Sales: $178.64
Tips: $28
Hours: 2.65
Total Wage: $18.57 per hour
I take an hour-long break outside, reading Slaughterhouse-Five ("Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time . . .") and intermittently napping by placing my head on a table before beginning my nighttime driving shift.
On my second delivery run of the night, I have a three-bagger spread out across our delivery zone. The first one is so far to the northwest that it falls on the border of our Encinitas store's zone. A cryptic note typed on the ticket reads: "GATE 1, CODE #1973, SECOND ON THE RIGHT"; "WHITE COTTAGE."
When I finally make it to El Camino Del Norte, I see an open gate with the address number on it, so I turn in. There are no other markings on the gate, so I have no idea if it's "gate 1" or not. I find myself in the middle of a massive, hilly, horse ranch, with houses dotting the property between large dirt corrals and white fencing. I cruise through the property on the lookout for the white cottage, but end up at a split without sighting it. I call, and the woman asks if I entered through gate 1. I tell her I have no idea, but I'm facing a horse racing track and there's a barn to my left with tall haystacks, and a tan house off in the distance. "I have no idea where you are," she says. How big is this property, and how many horse racing tracks can there be out here?
In a frustrated tone, I describe how I got to where I am, and she says, "No, no, you came through gate 3. You need to go back out and continue down the road to gate 1." I ask her if it's marked with a number, since gate 3 clearly wasn't. "Yes, and there are for sale signs in front of gate 1." Okay, I'm on my way. I turn back onto El Camino Del Norte and head west. I pass another gate, red brick with the address number but no gate number. How much farther can gate 1 be? I have two other deliveries with me, and I assume even when I get through gate 1, if I ever find it, I will still have to search for the cottage. People are going to be pissed on both ends of this run.
I finally see a gate with for sale signs out front. I pull up to the voice box, and I see a small #1 hanging from the box. Yeah, it's really marked clearly. I ring the house from the gate, and they tell me to look for the white cottage on the right. I drive up the road on the property, passing more barns and houses, and easily find the cottage. They are acres away from the property's racetrack, and maybe they've never even seen it. This must be some kind of subdivided dude ranch. I make it to the cottage and my other deliveries, and no one complains.
While driving home tonight, a truck towing a long horse trailer pulls out in front of me along El Camino Real and lumbers along the roads toward the Del Mar Racetrack at 25-35 m.p.h. Just my luck. But then I realize, since it's racing season, that the trailer probably contains expensive racehorses, upwards of $100,000 each, and I would drive that slow too if I had such precious, expensive cargo. But the truth is, according to this New York Times article, that racehorses fetch from one hundred thousand dollars to one million each, with an average at the Keeneland sale being $710, 247.
You know what the crazy thing is about those prices? They kill these horses all the time. It's the dirty secret of horse racing, highlighted only during seasons like this year's Del Mar races, where they've lost eight horses in the first nine days of racing. KPBS has a wonderful article you can read or listen to online, called, "Is Horse Racing Safe?" As I said, this phenomenon only gets highlighted in year's like this, when so many horses die so early on and surpass the average loss for the whole season, which is eight. I remember this happening several years ago, and the wealthy horse owners' argument was that they're really animal lovers, that it's not about the money.
Maybe the sport doesn't raise the ire of the public like dog fighting, because it's not being done by poor people, or in Michael Vick's case, rich black people. No, owners of racing horses, "the sport of kings," are no Johnny Appleseeds, a vegetarian who reportedly refused to ride horses. According to this article, "Johnny Appleseed, Orchardist," "If he witnessed or heard of the ill-treatment of a horse, he offered to buy the animal or to find a kinder owner elsewhere." Maybe all those rich, animal loving, horse owners could buy those expensive horses and free them on a thousand acre ranch to watch them run around. That would be a cool sight.
I try to imagine a NASCAR season where eight racers die in the first nine races. But there was so much outcry about the death of the beloved racer Dale Earnhardt in 2001, new safety features were added to every car. And those are people who choose to get behind the wheel of race cars and drive them 200 m.p.h.
Don't get me wrong, I've been to the horse races multiple years, and there's nothing more exciting than being on the rail and seeing a pack of horses stampede by at close to 40 m.p.h. But I can't rationalize killing that many animals for my own entertainment, and I really can't understand the egos and greed that motivate people to throw millions of dollars at horses they're willing to kill.
As I follow the horse trailer along Via De La Valle, watching it kick up the dirt left on the road by other trailers, I hope the horses inside have a safe ride and survive the season, and I wish the tips in my pocket were enough to create my own horse ranch: The Appleseed.
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