Track day

Did the weirdest thing yesterday, something I haven’t done in 22 years: I went to the track. If you don’t know, around here, the thoroughbred horse races at Saratoga are a Very Big Thing Indeed, demanding massive media coverage and tying up traffic for miles around. I don’t gamble, I know nothing about horses, and crowds make me nuts, so the track is not a natural haunt for me, but yesterday I went up with some work friends, we had access to a box in the clubhouse, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon — one of the most perfect, weatherwise, of the summer — chit-chatting and watching the occasional horse race. I bet precisely twice. Once was on a horse named Amanuensis, an odd word to know the meaning of and an odd name for a horse (even in a sea of odd names), but the descriptions from previous races used words like “tired,” “drafted,” and “could use a good lie-down,” so we bet him to show, and had two other horses had heart attacks and one more a severe coughing fit, we could have won that bet. The second time, we all went in together on a pricey bet to guess the top 4 and the top 3 horses, in any order, and oddly enough actually won on the top 3. We took our modest winnings and made a down payment on our dinner, and all in all had a fine day. When I go back in another 22 years, I’ll let ya know if they’ve varnished the clubhouse floors or fixed the rusted-through rain gutters yet.