By Michael Kaufman

There was the time I double parked in front of the OTB on Broadway in Riverdale so I could run in for a quick look to see if I’d won a bet I’d placed earlier at a parlor downtown near my job. Not only did my horse finish out of the money, but when I went back to the car a cop was writing out a ticket.

“I was just in there for a few seconds,” I pleaded. “Can’t you cut me some slack?”

He apologized and recited the standard explanation that once he starts writing a ticket he has to finish it. Then he told me he didn’t like his job. When I drove away I felt worse for him than I did for myself.

Once, when I was a single father raising two young daughters, my little one entered my name in a contest for “mother of the year.” This still warms my heart. She is all grown up now and recently I heard her laughingly tell her younger sisters about the time I took her into the seedy, smoke-filled OTB in the George Washington Bridge bus station so I could get a bet down.  “When we walked in, dad turned to me and said, ‘You’ll never get the father of the year award if you take your kid into this place!’” 

During a big protest march against the war in Vietnam that was eventually broken up by mounted police, I ducked into an OTB parlor to bet a race.

Al, the art director where I worked as editor of a medical newspaper, was also an avid horseplayer and we often would go partners on small exacta or quiniella wagers, which require picking the horses that finish first and second in a race. One of us would run out to the OTB to place the bet. During his lunch hour, Al would draw clever cartoons based on the names of the horses we were playing that day. These were so well drawn and funny that I sent some to Vic Ziegel, sports editor of the Daily News, suggesting they might use Al as a cartoonist. Vic replied that he loved Al’s work but the paper already had a daily cartoon with a horse racing theme. I still have a batch of Al’s old cartoons.

As a young sportswriter I had covered the opening of the first OTB parlor in Grand Central Station in 1971. Each time the powers that be have threatened to shut down the operation (Catskill OTB is unaffected) I have dug out the old article to use as grist for Zest. But at the last minute there was always a settlement that kept the parlors open and the old article went back into the file.  Not today. They shut it down Tuesday night, putting 1,000 more people out of work right before the holidays.

Few if any of those who lost their jobs were present for the opening at Grand Central, where a section in the middle of the upper level of the bustling railroad station became the first OTB site in the city. Mingling through the crowd that day were eager young men and women, employees of the new OTB Corporation, offering to explain things and asking if anyone needed help filling out their betting slips. A lot of people needed help. Nobody asked.

An old woman moaned when she saw the long lines. “I’ll miss my train!”

“No,” said her friend, “the train is over there. This is where they have the betting for the horses.”

A man waiting on line to bet said, “I like this, you know. You can’t change your mind. You make a bet, that’s it. I go to the track I always watch the odds and change my mind at the last minute. I get killed that way.” As he got closer to the window he had second thoughts. He said he likes it better at the track. You can’t feel the “action” at Grand Central Station. When it was finally almost his turn he looked nervously at his betting slips and then at the racing section of his Daily News. Then he said, “Save my place! I’ll be right back. I changed my mind.”

A young man with an old-fashioned bullhorn announced, “There are plenty of slips under the Big Ben clock. Winning tickets from last night’s races are being cashed at windows one and two. Bets on tonight’s races are being taken at windows three through 10.” The lines at windows three through 10 were about 40 and 50 deep. Hardly anyone stood on lines one and two. No one will stand on line today. 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

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