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Auction leaves only memories

More than a century of memories were auctioned off Thursday at Playfair Race Course, a prelude to demolition of the fourth-oldest racing venue in the country.

It was a sad farewell for horse owners, trainers, jockeys, track workers and fans.

"This is our lifestyle," said horse owner and trainer Tyann Dymack Ackerman of Sandpoint, Idaho, "and it's gone."

Some of the hundreds who showed up Thursday left with really good deals. The inside rail around the track, which cost $250,000 several years ago, sold to a Nebraska quarter horse racing operator for $25,000.

But most just came to see the place where, on any given day, the wealthy and the poor alike could become a little less wealthy or a little less poor.

Jack Pring, whose Appleway Leasing Corp. has owned the Playfair property since 1981, launched the auction by recalling the day - 20 years ago Thursday - that he opened the track to a 101-day season.

"We didn't own the racetrack, just the deed to it," said Jack's son, Brad. "It was the people's racetrack."

People like Janet Gookstetter, a former owner and trainer.

Her father, who came to Spokane in 1928, brought her to Playfair when she was a kid, she said, "and I just fell in love with the place."

She also fell in love with her husband, John, at the track. He worked for Playfair, shoeing horses.

"We came here today, for the memories," said Janet Gookstetter, who owned such horses as Sh-Bon in 1958 and Awinnerformary, who became a 20-race winner.

Others came back to buy a few memories.

Colleen Kagele, who used to work at Playfair, paid $375 for 43 jockey silks she planned to resell on E-Bay. Maybe she would keep a couple for herself.

Former jockey Vince Ward bid successfully on a stack of framed photo finishes "because I'm in 'em."

And there he was, crossing the finish line first on thoroughbreds Tina Baby and Mac McDonald.

Bob Lightfoot - the former Playfair clerk of the scales, identifier, clocker, assistant racing secretary and steward - came away with one of many framed photos that sold Thursday for about $60 each.

He said he trained horses for 28 years and owned several winners.

"The nicest," he said, "was Light My Fire, who never got beat here that year - was it 1973 or '74?"

Of Playfair he said, "I'm sorry to see it go."

The first race at the site, which was the original Spokane Interstate Fair, was on Sept. 10, 1901, according to The Spokesman- Review archives. It has been called Playfair since 1935.

Easterners who came to Spokane likened Playfair to Chicago's Wrigley Field because the seats are so close to the action, said Tom Blaine, a horse owner and breeder.

But with the advent of other forms of legalized gambling in the state, the writing was on the wall for Spokane horse racing, which stopped in December 2000.

"When the state started the lottery, it turned its back on racing," Blaine said.

Jack Pring, who operated Playfair himself for eight seasons and employed up to 300 people there, has since leased the track to five individuals or groups. None of them could make a go of it, he said Wednesday.

The last operator was Las Vegas real estate broker Eric Nelson, who in June 2003 asked the Washington Horse Racing Commission to rescind his license.

Brad Pring said Thursday he could not say what the future of Playfair's 66.5 acres might be. The Spokesman-Review has reported that the county has identified the property as a potential site for a new sewage treatment plant.

"It's like everything else, good things come to an end," said Bill Guindon, who raised and raced horses for 36 years.

Thursday, he bought the Playfair Race Course sign hanging from the grandstand at the finish line for $175. As he unscrewed it from the planking, people strolling on the track below shouted their names or the names of their parents to him. They, too, were racing people.

"The people that have been through here - it's really heartbreaking for a lot of us," said Char Province of Greenacres, who once worked for trainers and warmed up horses in the mornings before races.

"I hate to see the thing go down like this," said Jim Seabeck, the former Spokane Stockyards owner. He spoke just moments before the Playfair starting gate, built by starter Clay Pruett, sold at auction for $8,500.

Seabeck, a horse owner and breeder, said he won more than 300 races at Playfair, which he called the oldest horse track west of the Mississippi.

"I won all the big races they had here," he said.

But while Playfair held some good memories on Thursday, it also had some good deals. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Reinland Auctioneers and Liquidators had emptied 1,500 lots, with more to go. Auctioneer Tom Reinland expected the sales to continue into the evening.

One of the biggest spenders was Brian Becker, operator of Hastings Exposition and Racing in Hastings, Neb. Besides wowing the crowd with the purchase of the inside rail around the track, he bought all the track lights for $17,000 and picked up all 14 sections of the wrought- iron rail inside the Paddock Lounge for $650 apiece.

Other shoppers were content with office furniture and cash registers, restaurant and bar equipment and the antique pool table inside the jockeys' room.

The track water truck sold for $2,800 and two big International Harvester tractors went for more than $4,000 each.

But there were some items too precious to sell.

The bronze head of Turbulator - the horse that became the icon of Spokane racing - was donated to the county and will be displayed at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center.

Brad Pring said he still has Turbulator's silks, which he will offer up to complete the display. The best photos and the race videotapes went to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, he said.

On Wednesday, as Playfair was opened for pre-auction inspections by the public, a couple of old hands traded stories about the place.

Ray Ham broke horses in Montana before taking a job as outrider at Playfair in 1956.

"And I don't even like horse racing," said Ham, who has seen too many beautiful animals end up at Spokane Rendering after breaking their legs.

But that didn't stop him from working for Playfair for 25 years.

"A guy will do anything for money," he said.

Sitting next to him in the Paddock Lounge, former track superintendent Dave Nelson said it was "a damn shame the place is going to get leveled."

He said he spent "a lot of time down here and met a lot of good people." Now he runs a ranch near St. Maries, Idaho.

"Well, it's history now," Ham said. "It'll never be no more."

Copyright 2004 Cowles Publishing Company
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