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Randy Johnson had the job of stapling the parking space numbers to the stakes holding the trash boxes in the infield.
Posted on Sat, Mar. 29, 2008
Carolina Cup | Never a waste of space
By MARJORIE RIDDLE - mriddle@thestate.com
For Camden resident Jack Magee, heading to spaces A48 and A49 at the Carolina Cup is much like coming home.
That’s because for the past 33 years — exactly half his life — he has set up there, with family and friends, to tailgate and enjoy one of spring’s great traditions.
“I grew up around horses,” he said. “It’s in your blood I guess. ... I see friends I’ve known a long time and meet new ones from those old friends.”
Magee inherited his two spaces from his father, John Joseph Magee, a horse jockey who became a trainer after a bad fall in 1949. Some of the horse owners the elder Magee worked with gave him the spaces in 1974.
Such spaces at the event, which today attracts nearly 70,000 attendees, are coveted.
“If you let (the spaces) go, you don’t get them back,” Magee said. “If you miss paying one year, you’re out of luck the next year.”
Magee said he will pass the spaces on to his 34-year-old son Jody, in a few years.
“It’s sentimental,” said Magee’s wife, Carolyn, who’s attended the races with her husband since they met in 1982. “We feel like keeping up with the tradition his mom and dad had.”
On race day, the Magees — along with as many as 24 friends — sit on their pickup truck and eat deviled eggs, marinated mushrooms and potato salad. They wash it down with beer, Bloody Marys and soft drinks.
And, of course, they watch the races — and the crowds.
“I like to look at the clothes people wear,” Jack Magee said. “I once saw a man in a full tux with a top hat and tails, and the next guy walking by had on Bermuda shorts and bare feet.”
A handful of people wear the same thing every year, his wife added: “We don’t know their names, but we know their Cup outfit.”
Jack Magee approached the late Sen. Strom Thurmond at a race in the early 1980s with a grin on his face and a ceramic cup shaped like a female breast in his hand.
He wanted to show the cup to Thurmond, Carolyn Magee said.
“Two Secret Service men fell in behind him (when I approached him),” Jack Magee said. “But I just shook his hand, turned around and walked off.”
Thurmond didn’t acknowledge the cup, he added.
Over the years, the Magees have seen some innovative uses for items, including a coffin college kids used as a cooler for beer.
“There’s always someone up there that’ll do something you don’t expect,” Jack Magee said.
Magee has missed only a handful of the steeplechase races. Even a heart transplant eight months prior to the 1998 Carolina Cup couldn’t keep him away.
Every race has its own charm.
“We’ll keep going as long as we’re able,” Jack Magee declared.
Reach Riddle at (803) 771-8435.
