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With few exceptions cars and the many vans in general parking sport Maryland license plates. The picnickers range in style and status from Al and Peg Bundy to Niles and the invisible Maris Crane. Couples resembling the Bundys are underdressed, even for a field, and often wear what social critic Paul Fussell calls "legible clothing"--that which bears a manufacturer's name and/or logo. Persons resembling the Cranes are inclined to overdress and to have fine-boned children with names like Iris, Ariel, and Trevor. Dogs in general parking run toward golden and Labrador retrievers. Picnic provisions include fried chicken, various salads from pasta to fruit, undistinguished wine, six packs of beer, bottled water, and more than a few bags of Doritos. Most of the above is served on "disposable china." Many of the picnickers bring tables, table cloths, and chairs, and a few dutifully haul a silk flower along to stand self-consciously sentinel in a vase in the middle of the table. Here and there a car radio or a portable tape player provides a soundtrack for a group of picnickers, most of whom prefer country music or the kind of rock that was popular a few decades and chins ago. The odd, bleating folksinger droning on about some injustice to women, children, or trees can also be heard; and, even more curiously, a pugnacious rapper, no doubt preaching revolution against the dominant culture--which is hosting today's gathering and is milling about just over that dandelion-studded hill.

To pass the hours between the opening of general parking at 1:00 P.M. and the start of the race at 4:00, picnickers toss Frisbees to their dogs and children, engage in a little table hopping, and have a gander at any unique vehicles on hand. Last year an antique roadster and a Humvee were the main attractions. The latter, with its tanklike construction and its plush interior, looked like just the thing for a hostile corporate takeover.

The other country of hunt cup spectators is located in the subscriber parking area, less than a mile but more than a few socioeconomic strata from general parking. The first things one notices about subscriber parking are that the gene pool, noses, and silhouettes appear considerably more narrow than in general parking. This is a gathering marked by "chiseled features, polished manners and prep school airs [that] are redolent of the British Isles," one local scribe has observed breathlessly. There are more out-of-state plates (primarily from New York and Pennsylvania) in subscriber parking, fewer retrievers, more terriers (though not a Jack Russell in sight last year), more elaborate floral arrangements on the tables, more and better china, fewer beards, fewer coolers, more picnic hampers, no legible clothes, and more people called by nicknames or initials. The food, though somewhat more elegantly deployed, is not much more remarkable than that in general parking; and the overall prohibition against barbecuing and food concessions makes for a blunted olfactory experience here, too. A pass to subscriber parking [DEL: can be obtained by inheritance or the proper connections only] is a jealously guarded commodity. "When there's a divorce in a hunt cup family," laughs one subscriber, "there's often a fight over who gets the subscriber pass."

Subscribers and their guests do not do much to occupy their time before the race. They are more practiced at standing around in nice clothes with a drink in hand. Ironically, the folks in subscriber parking, who are used to more space in their lives than are folks in general parking, are packed in more tightly on hunt cup day.

Although people-watching is no small part of the hunt cup's charm, one has to read between the lineages to discern what is really on display here. It is not money, a new straw hat, social standing, hood ornaments, or a picnic hamper from Pier 1 Imports. As the Talking Heads once admonished, "This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around." This is a serious horse race that represents a serious tradition that represents a way of life that is under serious siege from the rabid armies of social progress, multiculturalism, and real estate developers. That way of life is largely WASP, the only ethnic group about which a person can make pertinent observations without fear of being called politically incorrect or worse. One is free to observe, therefore, that in the first 99 runnings of the Maryland Hunt Cup only three riders or owners had last names that ended in pronounced vowels--and two of those three were the "sometimes" vowel y.

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