The Triple
Crown Trophy is a modern three sided metal affair giving the particulars of the
three races won to achieve the award: The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, the
Belmont Stakes.
On a lazy
Sunday drive south of Tucson in the early 1990s, we ran into a one building shopping mall in a
barn shaped building off of highway AZ82.
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The nearby intersection in the middle of nowhere and surprisingly Arizona Wine Country in Elgin Arizona, is a pit stop, a gas station, and a strip mall with a café to get a burger and fries for lunch and the then barn shaped tourist trap on the side of the road.
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In there in a plexi-glass box mounted on the wall was the Triple Crown Trophy of Secretariat. A rather curious setting for that very famous but elusive prize. Found a story below to back up my tale of surprise in the very big sky county of Arizona.
The building
I understand has been converted into an INN and I don’t know where the trophy is
housed these days, but for a few minutes I was inches away from it and admiring
it. Such is life sometimes, full of little surprises.
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One day,
Margaret told me of a unique shopping mall she once saw in Connecticut. It was
a large barn converted into a group of shops. She wanted to build one like it
in Sonoita. So we did. She described it, and I sketched it out for the
architect.
Karl Eggers
of Five Star Construction in Nogales was selected to build it. It was a
shopping mall, first El Prado, then La Pradera, until Margaret died in November
1993. I managed the building, and many locals, including Wilma with her Lazy G
Western Wear” store were tenants.
Then Mike Wystrach bought it for an inn. So,
that’s the true story of Secretariat, Margaret Carmichael and Sonoita, as Dr.
Oates and a good many others requested.
There was
never any intention of the barn being a retirement home for Secretariat, not
ever.
I close on a
tender note. Shortly after the word was released that Secretariat had been, put
down, three lovely young ladies came into La Pradera , walked to the glass case
on the south wall that held Secretariat's Triple Crown trophy, laid three red
roses on top of the case, stood in silence a few moments, then turned and
walked out.
.
