Almost Making a Killing

Before my recent vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I did not know anything about horseracing. Maybe it should have stayed that way. Why people call them ponies I have no idea because through the snowy picture of the casino simulcasts they looked all grown up to me. When I asked a patron why domesticated animals like donkeys or llamas do not competitively race the way humans force horses and dogs, he knew I had never been to a racetrack. He pushed up his Johnny Olson glasses like a crack reporter then returned to some filler newspaper devoted to nothing but assigning numbers to silly horse names. Without him saying a word proved the beginning and end of our relationship.

After placing a first bet, a track announcer on the simulcast reported that the next race is for horses who have never won a single race. My wife and I giggled at the contradiction. I now felt foolish holding my tendered ticket like it was some unclaimed prize pack for dopes. I held onto my foolish thoughts this time though but cannot get past the notion that these loser horses should be fired as racehorses and sent out to pasture. The race saw none of the horses we bet even finish in the middle of the pack.

For an entire afternoon, my wife and I randomly bet horses whimsically called Coy Cat, Red Delicious, Bold Ocean, etc after extrapolating their odd names to some insignificant meaning in our lives. I pickup the jargon of win, place, show and learn about trifecta but my lackluster horses want none of the winner’s circle.

While attempting to simply wager on a horse to show, the casino worker agreed that it was a good bet but he would not allow me to gamble.

I asked, “Why not?”

“Eight horses scratched on the sloppy track….there are only three horses left. Blame it on the hurricane!”

I walked back to my video monitor with disappointment hanging on my face. I explained to my wife that the odds were too much in our favor for the house to accept my bet because of inclement weather. Wouldn’t you know it? Emerging from the rears of the thin field kicking up brown muck, my horse predictably finished dead last. I curse the casino that had refused to turn my bad luck around.

So I gathered my wits and looked for a favorite. I searched the whites of my pockets and found three crumbled dollars and four quarters. I am all in as they say on a number five horse called Libor Lady to win. My horse won first place in a photo finish. From my comfortable perch inside the casino, I had won my first horserace, the next to the last race at the famed Churchill Downs. High fives go around the booth. By our hooting and hollering, the other grumpy betters must have thought we won a 99-1 long shot betting the mortgage.

I pocketed my gross winnings…$6.80 cents, a full $2.40 more than I actually gambled on Lady Libor. Feeling like lady luck was with us, we left horse and buggy for the self-park garage. From this paddock, I jockeyed my car into an ungodly Nor’easter formerly known as Hurricane Ida. The sideways rain and sixty miles per hour winds did not deter me. I had a coupon for a little out of the way Italian restaurant and nothing was going to stop me from saving a few bucks. I grabbed the reigns of my steering wheel as the wind moved my car side to side. Low-lying streets were flooded and visibility was nil but the endless sloppy track was wide open. I shoot to the inside lane never looking behind. After getting into a car accident with another moving vehicle, I realized that I should have scratched myself from this last race. This coming from the horse's mouth, I almost made a costly killing on the track.