Kendrick Carmouche’s education began when he was a little boy sitting alongside his father as they drove in the pre-dawn mist through southwest Louisiana. They talked balance, pace and soft hands. They talked horses.
Sylvester Carmouche was a jockey. A good one.
He won nearly 700 races at big-time tracks like the Fairgrounds in New Orleans and Louisiana Downs near Shreveport. As Kendrick was growing up, however, the Carmouches were vagabonds, traveling to bush tracks cut from sugar-cane fields and fronted by honky-tonks with names like The Quarter Pole and Cajun Downs.
Sylvester Carmouche had lost his license to ride at the sanctioned racetracks after pulling an audacious, ill-advised stunt during a fog-shrouded race.