I remember back in the day at Yonkers.

You have no idea how many times I went through this scene at Yonkers. Or the Meadowlands. Or Aqueduct or Belmont. Now I liked the trotters more than the flats. The flats were more of a science. You had to learn how to read the racing form. What all of the abbreviations and data meant. How the horse ran in it's last few races. If it ran good in a sloppy track. What it's normal times were and how it ran at this lenght. Was it stepping up or down in class. You had to study that shit like it was the SAT's.

Now the trotters were just totally corrupt. Everybody knew that it was fugazy. But you never knew what was up so you had just a good chance at hitting a long shot because the fix was in. Sometimes we got tips but then if we got it everybody else did and it drove the payoff down. Here if you picked a long shot and the fix was in you made some money. I saw some shit that was just as blatant as this clip from Easy Money (one of my all time favorite films), I had some big pay offs from the dumb luck of picking a trotter that was fixed to win as a big long shot. A lot more fun then going to school on the horses at Belmont.

I periodically watch "Easy Money" to remind myself that I modeled my life after Rodney in that movie. That was the old me and let me tell you it was a lot of fun. I still wear the same clothes but I toned down the gambling and the drinking and the pizza. You know. All the fun.

Now the racetracks have all wound down. It's not like it used to be. They have been turned into casinos and the living dead are at the slots and it is depressing as hell. You can't go and get a hot dog and a beer and hang out at the rail with your buddies yelling at the jockeys anymore.

They took a lot of fun out of the world when the Mafia stopped running it and the government took over.