I am starting to lose my excitement for certain things in my life that for years seemed to play what I thought was an important part. One of those things would be racing. It use to be that if it had hoofs or racing slicks I would be interested in watching the race if not helping with it in some way.
Horse racing I liked because of the gambling factor, I loved to handicap the races. Before I was married I spend quite a bit of my spare time reading racing forms and tip sheets.> (40 Minutes) < Yes, it took me right at forty minutes to decide which way I was taking this post, actually it took about seven and I dozed off for the other thirty or so.
Back several years ago the State of Texas did not allow wagering on horse racing so the closest state Texans from the Houston area could go wager on horse racing was Louisiana. The closest track would be in Vinton, Louisiana if I remember correctly it is called Delta Downs. I can see having the name Delta in their name but where does the word “Downs” come from in horse racing? I know that the most famous horse racing track is in Louisville, Kentucky in the form of Churchill Downs. I wonder if it has anything to do with putting your bet “down” before the horses leave the starting gate. Well, somebody will know about the names and how the “Downs” became a part so we’ll move on.
Let’s get back to Vinton and let me tell you how that track and a trip I made over there in 1991 changed my life.
I have been into horses or had been into horses since I was a young pup, but I was into horses used to work cattle and the sport of cutting. I did have a couple fellows who I was working with who had some racing quarter horses and so I would go with them to the track when their horses were racing.
In the spring of ’91 I made one of those trips with them to Vinton. It was there that we met up with some other folks we knew from our local area and we all managed to get a couple tables in one of the bar areas of the track. I had been studying the racing program and really wasn’t paying much attention to who all was around us at the two tables. The trainer for my friend Mike’s horse was a lady from our area, she was about my age and fairly good looking, but a real bitch to be around. Her voice was the killer for me; I would rather have to listen to finger nails being dragged on a chalk board than to listen to her say, “Hi, how ya’ll doinn today?” She had a boyfriend who was old enough to be her daddy, I guess that is where the term “sugar daddy” comes from, give the old man some sugar and you get you what you want from that old daddy. He happened to be the largest cattle man in the Houston area. He had cut deals with just about every land developer in the county to put his cattle on the developer’s properties so that the developers could claim an agricultural exemption on the property. These developers would in some cases be holding these properties in reserve until other properties were developed around them and that would increase their land value.
The old man had a good business plan for sure, he leased the land from the developers for a dollar a year per acre, and the developers had to provide water either by well or a water district meter. He did pay for the water or the electric to run the well but that was minimal. The developers really wanted this guy keeping cattle on their properties, land that was sometimes valued as high as $15 to $20 a square foot would eat them up with property taxes if they sat on the property very long at all, this old man’s cattle dropped those taxes by about 95% from what he had told me.
So we are in the bar area and I happened to see the cattle man’s son come walking in with another fellow and a drop dead gorgeous young blonde hair girl that looked to be about her late teens or early twenties. As the three of them were making their way through the bar it appeared that they were coming over to pull up a seat with the group. It turned out that the blonde and the other fellow was brother and sister and the cattle man was their uncle, they had ridden over with the cattle man’s son, their first cousin.
The introductions went around and I caught the young ladies name, Charro, it didn’t seem to fit her, but those boot cut Wrangler jeans she was wearing sure did. This young lady was fine from head to toe and it pretty much ended my paying attention to my handicapping notes and cheat sheet. My buddy’s horse was racing in the second race of the day, and the horse didn’t do too well. The jockey made a couple excuses and the trainer backed the jockey up on what he had said.
So we didn’t hang around long after the race. We had gone outside to watch the race, all of us in the group, including Charro. I made sure as we were walking back into the club area that Charro was walking in front of me, I wanted to make sure she looked as good going away as she did coming towards you, and she did. I would have liked to stay and visit but I wasn’t driving and my ride was leaving, I finished my beer and we said adios to the group. The cattle man had a couple horses running in the later races and that is why Charro, and her brother had come over with their cousin was to watch those horses race.
I didn’t end up cashing a ticket winning ticket that day, I was only there for two races and like a fool I had my buddy’s horse in the mix on my wagers for the trifecta & superfecta tickets, the horse finished 6th in a 9 horse race.
It turned out though that trip was the best trip I ever had to a horse race track, the young lady in the fine fitting Wrangler boot cut jeans would end up being my wife about 34 months later and we are still together and doing fine.
So you got to hear the good story today, in a future daily dose you may get to hear the story about Chuck, he was the other buddy of Mike’s that also had a race horse and how Mike and ended up pulling a prank on him.
I didn’t go to the horse track once last year, and I only watched one car race on T.V. but I sure am glad I hadn’t lost interest in the racing in 1990 or I may never had met my wife.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
