At 73 my old man is cool as fuck, a card carrying member of the left he can converse on any number of topics from politics to sports to history to philosophy to the great singer-songwriters of the 70's, he's a smart bastard and our normal phone conversation runs 2 hours, the Posa on the other hand voted for Cheeto and gets all his information from Fox News, the trick is to not converse with him on any topic because it's like talking to a stone, a stone who likes to yell and scream and argue but who hates things like facts and logic, he spends most of his time telling you about what he's eaten, his bowel movements and his favorite grandchild, (not on of my boyos thankfully), for most of her life he's treated the girl like shit but for all the world other than me she is empathetic and kind to a fault, hence she feels bad for the fucking clown...
And so for X-mas she got him a train ticket to the burgh in order to spend the day with her and the plus one (me)... and by spend the day it meant his three favorite things, a trip to Costco, then the Casino and it's buffet and gambling. There are two casinos near where i live, one downtown and one about 15 miles south, downtown might be physically closer but it's quicker to the other and so that's where i usually take him and so we parked and made our way to the buffet where at the ripe old age of 46 i was easily the youngest person there by 20 years, i watched as the Posa gobbled down three or four plates of grub before getting his desert and then heading out onto the floor to gamble... the first thing i noticed is that for a Wednesday at noon the place was packed, it was a herd of walkers and canes and wheelchairs, there were oxygen tanks and cigarette smoke, it was social security checks and retirement funds and reverse mortgages all being plowed into a bleeping blur of neon clicks and clacks, bright flashing lights and buzzers and bells and the most beautiful shades of silver-blue hair...
Now the business of my domestic situation breaks down like this, i get room and board and a car, i'm a bit like built in childcare and that's cool cuz it's me boyos and i like that part of the gig, of course when it comes to what i call pocket money i gotta come up with my own and since i've always been the resourceful type i get by, a bit hand to mouth but not really cuz i'm not fucking homeless (not yet), it's what i call my sanity cash, the ability to buy a record or see a rock show or get my gear without having to answer to anyone about the cheddar, of course it usually doesn't leave extra money for things like gambling and since i'm not averse to the roulette wheel or the blackjack table i'll do my time for a little free dosh but alas i was handed $50 and asked if that was okay? what the fuck was i gonna say no? and so since i didn't really have enough bankroll to hit the blackjack table or the roulette wheel i found the video roulette and promptly lost $20 of my $50 and said fuck it, i refuse to play slot machines and so i spent the time wandering and debating on if i should just pocket the other $30 and say i lost it and then i remembered... Post Time, 1pm...
Thanks to humanity doing it's best to fuck up the planet i sat outside in the grandstand on a February day in a t-shirt and jeans, one of the reasons i liked this casino over the downtown casino was it had a track, a harness track mind you but a track nonetheless and as we know i like the fucking track... there is a marked difference between the track crowd and the casino crowd, the slots players were suckers, out here it took skill and guile, you needed an eye... at least that's what horse players told themselves, and so i thought back to what the teacher of my horse playing class had said about the trotters, that you could eye the standard-breds, you could see which ones were ready to go and that there was money to be made, i had never played standard-breds before but it beat wandering around in the blinking neon and so i sat down and watched the tote board, didn't even fuck with a program just watched the tote and listened to the track announcer and eyed the ponies...
And so it was on this day that i would place my first ever wager on the trotters, i knew fuck all about gait but everything else was the same as thoroughbreds and so i listened intently to the track announcer and watched the tote as they flashed the expert picks, mainly i eyed the horses as they warmed up, i watched their demeanor and their eyes, watched their movements and alertness, some you could see were going through the motions and some looked more ready than the others, now to figure out which one was most ready, and so i gave myself a whopping $4 budget and set to work trying to score a winner, a real horse player is never one for the favorites, sure they come in one out of three races but it's the public that sets the odds at the track and the public is known to be stupid, with the form you crunch numbers and look for an angle, with no form it was eye and gut, and so my four bones would be laid down with a win bet and an $1exacta box, sometimes a cheap part wheel...
The first race i won fuck all, my exacta finished place/show instead of win/place and my winner finished second, but in the second race there was a horse looked like it was ready to pop, the tote board said 12-1, i hit the auto-tote and placed my win bet, i went back out the grandstand and took my seat, i watched my big white horse drift up to 15-1, the race went off and he settled in and on the backstretch he made his move, i was already grinning, my pony was sailing by and when he hit the stretch i knew i had the winner, $32.80 on my $2, i should have played a wheel like my gambling guru taught me but i was trying to be disciplined with my limited funds, since the Posa was sinking his retirement into slot machines and a stud poker table who knew how many races i'd get to play, plus the card just started and if i won nothing i had cash for 7 races, of course i only got through three, the third bringing in a cheap dollar exacta with a favorite on top but it was another $9 and change, i had made my fifty back...
The text came in and it was time to leave after the third but man did i miss the track, the itch was back, my uncle who once had a gambling problem (football games) told me how dangerous the track was, the fact that a new race went off every twenty minutes, sometimes less, being well acquainted with the addicts mentality i understood where he was coming from, like most vices there needs to be a discipline involved, but what i really missed was the atmosphere, there is the lovely solitude in the sparse crowd at the track, especially on weekdays, it's mainly lone men all staring at their forms, some you can tell cut out work, some probably schedule certain days off to make it, there are the occasional couples and sometimes a group of guys fucking off and getting drunk, you can sit there all day and the only person you talk to is the lady at the ticket cashing window, there's the smooth voice of the announcer and track expert, the crack of the whip and calls of the drivers, i could have sat there all day, i'm hoping to get back out soon, maybe even spend the two bucks and get the local program, and while picking winners is fun i'll admit it's not about that at all, it's about something else and you either know what that something else is or you don't...
3 comments:
The track was always too tough for me. I don't know if it was the math involved or the feeling that all the horses were being fucked with and the hoi polloi (meaning, me) didn't stand a chance or the long wait between races, but it never got under my skin. I like dice. Dice can't be fucked with the way a horse or a slot machine or a deck of cards can.
I used to be a degenerate gambler. That's someone who'll stay in a casino and keep gambling until his stake is gone, no matter how far ahead he is. He has to be at zero. A compulsive gambler is someone who gets to that point and KEEPS GOING. It took a long time but I got that shit under control. I never have gigantic, retirement-type, winnings but I don't lose much, either.
Exile- i was always shit in math (well school math) but for some reason the form makes sense to me, and there's something about the place, they can't fuck to much with the horses but the jocks do make mistakes and sometimes you wonder, race fixing is dangerous shit though, first offence may be a lifetime ban, it's long i know that...
I avoid betting on humans, they're too unreliable, said a wise man once.
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