Winning, Placing & Showing

So it is said.

You go somewhere and observe a different culture and you come back home and are a little wiser.

Often, you have to get on a plane and go around the world to drink in this culture, but every so often you can journey close to home and discover a new world.

I took a journey last Sunday. I took a disabled buddy of mine, Mikey, to the off track betting parlor. Why it is in theory called a parlor, I'll never know. Parlors are supposed to be comfortable rooms in a house where you visit and chat with neighbors. This was anything but comfortable for me. I saw my future.

No, this was not comfortable, not the Off Track Betting Parlor, the OTB.

In a way, it is a crystal ball, a parallel world that the infrequent visitor arrives at and scratches his head. It makes you think. It made me worry.

I scratched my head. Then I looked around and got a bit frightened.

I saw one possible future for me reflected in the regulars this Sunday night.

Most all were older men. Guys in their sixties and seventies that were there for their horses and for nothing else.

You knew that

had nothing else.

These guys came in two categories. Some were grossly fat and the others were bone thin. Both categories were due to excess. The fatties to uncontrollable eating (to probably go along with uncontrollable gambling), and the skinnies to eating just booze.

While I watched the sissy Cubs whomp the White Sox in the cross town games, these guys, Mike included, played their horses.

When it came time for race they all scurried to get their sure bets in on time, then they stood each on his own to watch the horses run and come in. They stood

each on his own, in their own little worlds, each apart from the other, and when the race finished they went back to solitary seats at their tables or the bar and worked over the tip sheets and hoped for a better showing in the next race.

I looked at this and wondered if this would be a final journey or trip for me.

Alone, more interested in a horse, because there is nobody and nothing else.

I took a long journey Sunday, and it was dark.

I hope I can take another road.

This is not the trip of a lifetime.

Not anywhere you would want to send that postcard back saying, "Wish You Were Here".