Laughing in the Hills

  At ten o’clock I arrived here at this Cape del Isleo and anchored, as did the caravels. After having eaten, I went ashore, and there was there no village but only a single house, in which I found no one, so that I believe that they had fled in terror, because in the house were all their household goods. I allowed nothing to be touched, but only went with these captains and people to examine the island. If the others, which have been already seen, are very lovely and green and fertile, this is much more so, and has large and very green trees. There are here very extensive lagoons, and by them and around them are wonderful woods, and here and in the whole island all is as green and the vegetation is as that of Andalusia in April. The singing of little birds is such that it seems that a man could never wish to leave this place; the flocks of parrots darken the sun …

  —Christopher Columbus

  October 21, 1492

  Afterword

  I read several books during my stay at the Terrace, and a few, other than those mentioned in the text, proved especially useful: Horizon magazine’s Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Renaissance, the National Geographic Society’s The Renaissance, Maker of Modern Man, McGraw-Hill’s The Age of the Renaissance, and Lucas-Dubreton’s Daily Life in the Time of the Medici provided excellent background material; Michael Levey’s High Renaissance started me thinking about Cellini’s saltcellar; Donald Weinstein’s Savonarola and Florence led me away from a more traditional interpretation of the friar’s life; Josephine Burroughs’s essay on Ficino and Paul Oskar Kristeller’s on Pico (both in Cassirer, Kristeller, and Randall’s The Renaissance Philosophy of Man) contributed to my understanding of those writers’ works; and Francis Yates’s Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and D. P. Walker’s Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella gave me a firm grounding in my approach to Renaissance magic.

  Three books among the many I read about horses and racing should also be cited: Donald Braider’s The Life, History and Magic of the Horse, Roger Longrigg’s The History of Horse Racing, and Zarn, Heller, and Collins’s book/pamphlet “Wild, Free-Roaming Horses—Status of Present Knowledge,” published by the Department of the Interior. I learned about Albany’s history from the Police and Fire Employees’ Civil Service Club’s The Story of the City of Albany, and about Costonoans from Alfred Kroeber’s work and also from Charles Bohakel’s Indians of Contra Costa County. The press and media guides published annually by Golden Gate Fields told me what I needed to know about the track.

  I owe thanks to Golden Gate’s Clifford Goodrich for granting me access; Ellen Burnett, former racing secretary, for answering questions and digging up statistical matter; Gene Brucker, University of California, for advice on and criticism of my reading of the Renaissance; Amanda Vaill, for her editorial enthusiasm and skill; and Elaine Markson for her long-standing commitment.

  Although this is a book of nonfiction, I have in two or three places invented names for people who slipped by too fast to be pinned down, or who for other reasons deserve their anonymity.

  II

  A final note on the flux: The Home Stretch has changed ownership and many of the memorabilia formerly on display have disappeared; the dam, Warm Springs in Sonoma County, is nearing completion; and the management at Golden Gate, after losing over a million dollars in 1979, has hired a consultant to redesign the racing strip and a new track superintendent to maintain it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bill Barich is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction. Amazon lists Laughing in the Hills among its ten best sports book of the twentieth century, while Sports Illustrated calls it one of the 100 best of all time. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and a literary laureate of the San Francisco Public Library, having lived in the Bay Area for many years before moving to Dublin.