The horse was born in 1932 in the Catskill Mountains on a small farm near Kinderhook, New York. Bessie Thurman was there at his birth,”That horse had hindsight, that’s what enabled him to run backwards. He knew things, thing that were to happen years down the road.” She tells the story of his unlikely beginnings:
“Great Depression, those were strange times, bathtub gin and giant gorillas climbing skyscrapers. He was born at the worst of the ’32 flood. His first steps on land, he tried to do the backstroke. He just kept going that way, backwards is what they call it, but for him it just made sense. Tried everything, a trainer from Albany, but nothing would make him run forwards.”
Bessie gave the horse to “Big” Zero Mosstail, a passing showman and trainer who named him Whoops. Big Zero took the horse to the Home for Backwards Kids so he could learn timing. The circus-loving kids rode reverse bicycles alongside Whoops. They felt safe and encouraged by this jovial horse, who knew that in this rigged world, your only chance, win or lose, was to embrace your quirks.
An acrobat at the Home took on the name “Li’l Zero” and became the backwards-talking jockey who rode Whoops competitively. Li’l’s catch phrase was, “Win to bound we are.” People were baffled and mesmerized by Li’l Zero, whose topsy-turvy speak presaged Yoda by decades.
With trainer Big Zero and jockey Li’l Zero, the “Two O’s of Whoops”, the horse against all odds entered the world of professional racing. Their first run was at Eureka Fields, near Kansas City. Crowds laughed to see him come out butt-forwards with Li’l Zero holding his tail, but when the announcer intoned those immortal words, “It’s Whoops by an Ass!” they stopped laughing and started cheering.
“One we are. Rider and horse.” Little Zero’s interview on the radio program Animal Crackers cinched it. America was backwards for Whoops. Whoops and Li’l appeared in movies like “A Day at the Races,” and all the best parties, but they never forget the backwards kids. Li’l Zero wore a soup pot on his head and pajama pants, whether they were winning the Kentucky Derby or getting a gold medal at the 1940 Olympics in Finland.
After the Olympics, Li’l and Whoops found themselves uncomfortably close to the War and tried to escape to Britain. Having gone the wrong way, they were stopped in Egypt by a gestapo officer who foolishly stood in front of the horse. A hard kick and they escaped, but Whoops and Li’l Zero had to separate to avoid capture.
On one of his many adventures during those years, Whoops fell for a mare at a kibbutz. Yaelli, an albino veterinarian, taught him Hebrew, a language written from right to left. Whoops and both Zeroes were reunited in Italy in 1948. Li’l Zero was working for the United Nations as a translator, which caused so much confusion that several wars were averted.
Big Zero and the horse returned to the Catskills to retire in 1950. They spent their elder years together, often grazing at the same buffet on the Lower East Side or out in the fields of the Hudson River Valley. The horse and trainer performed occasionally, including a Broadway run of Roof on the Fiddler. The wrote a mystical text, “Backwards Hindsight, A Crack In Time,” which will be the subject of the next article in this series.
Whoops lives on in dance crazes, free jazz, reality TV politicians, even in eastern spirituality. Timothy Leary, from another dimension, spoke fondly of the horse, “We didn’t really need LSD. We had Whoops.” Whoops lives in all of us who risk making asses of ourselves in courageous embrace of our true nature.
