Turf Paradise

Munson returned to the race track in hopes of retrieving the hippopotamus cookie jar he had left behind the day before.  Over the years he had received several large ostentatious cookie jars as gifts from friends and family.  The hippo was the most recent and he had taken it to Santa Anita the previous day as a good luck charm.  It was a bilious bright green and the size of a basketball.  

A day at the track with Munson can prove to be quite hectic and yesterday had been no exception.  As the afternoon wore on his analyzing, drinking, wagering, gloating, regretting and threatening of horses and jockeys intensified, and he and the hippo became separated.  He hadn't noticed it was missing until he was almost home. 

The following day he was told at the entrance gate that the lost and found was inside the administration office.  As Munson entered the office he spotted the hippo sitting on the desk of a young lady.  She could tell immediately by Munson's sheepish behavior why he was there.

She said, "We were all wondering how long it would be before the owner came looking for it."

Munson asked, "Did somebody turn it in?"

She said. "One of the cleaning crew said they found it on a table in the Paddock Room."

The hippo cookie jar episode was no more unusual than most of Munson's visits to the track.  On occasion the two of us would try a different track for a change of scenery and the unexpected seemed to always be waiting there for us.  In 1991 we spent two days at a race track in Arizona named Turf Paradise.  It was then a true jewel in the desert.  It sat 25 miles north of Phoenix with its startling livid green oval surrounded by hundreds of barren acres.  Phoenix's urban sprawl has long since filled in the once vacant space.

Turf Paradise is a small race track that opened in 1956.  Despite being far removed from Phoenix proper, it did well financially and attracted a series of new owners who were wealthy enough to outbid Arizona's 16 Native American tribes and their 25 casinos. 

We drove up to the entrance on our first day there and found a couple of old timers stationed in their lawn chairs, collecting parking fees.  We stopped along side their umbrella in order to pay.  The old guys looked at the two of us, then laughed and waved us on by. 

When we walked into the place we noticed that even for a small track the racing crowd seemed awfully thin.  I would be surprised if there were more than 200 people there.  The 45 off-track betting parlors throughout the State of Arizona may have been part of the reason for the low attendance. 

Having been granted free parking we decided to splurge and headed for the turf club.  Our prospects for being admitted seemed nil as we had chosen this day for a mano a mano ugly shirt competition.  Munson begrudgingly conceded me the victory.  His shirt was just ugly where as mine was staggeringly grotesque.  Picture if you will an over-sized, bold-colored aloha blouse but with Czechoslovakian imagery.  In hindsight, this may have been why our parking fee was waived.  We assumed we would spend the day in the grandstands with the rest of the lowlifes and shit kickers.  Oddly enough, the track's turf club was the only one we had ever seen without a dress code and we were invited in to mingle with the local movers and shakers.

Once we settled in we continued to observe the huge difference between this tiny layout and the major tracks like Santa Anita.  If you placed a $20 wager early enough, you could drop the odds on a horse from 15 to 1 down to about 3 to 1.  To accomplish this at Santa Anita would have required a wager of $50,000.  For the first couple of races we entertained ourselves by placing bets just to see how drastically we could change the odds.

Turf Paradise is not considered quality thoroughbred racing by most race fans.  The races have small purses and are filled with cheap plodders.  The seventh race that day was an exception.  It was a stakes race with some decent horses competing for a sizeable purse and a trophy to be presented to the winning owner by Rose Mofford, the Governor of Arizona.    

Governor Mofford had taken office after the recently elected Governor, Evan Mecham, had been convicted of a felony and impeached.  Mecham was also notorious for outrageous public speaking blunders including: "I employ blacks because they are the best people who apply for the cotton-pickin job."  Mecham's fate was not atypical for an Arizona Governor.  John Symington, who followed Rose as Governor, had to resign after he was convicted of a felony.

Rose was different.  She was a pleasant, unassuming, blue-haired senior known for answering her own phone and responding in writing to her own mail.  She had come to the races with a lady friend; no entourage and no security.  I sat down next to her and began discussing the entries in the next race.  Rose introduced me to her friend Millie and the three of us got to talking horses.  A few minutes later, Munson wandered by and came over to the booth where we were seated.  I could see he was still in a foul mood having yet to win a race and still smarting from the shirt competition.  In my most cheerful tone, I said, "Munson, let me introduce you to my good friend Millie and her good friend Governor Rose Mofford."

Munson glared at me for a few seconds, then barked out, "Give it a rest!", and walked off in a huff.

I said to Millie and Rose, "He's not having a good day."

Munson always waits until after the day's last race to cash any winning tickets.  On this day he had one worth $125 but he couldn't find it.  After an exhausting search of all his pockets, his racing form and his program, he determined that he had lost the ticket.  He was certain that he had kept it inside his program and it must have fallen out when he was at one of the betting windows. 

There is no more hopeless notion than thinking you can find a lost ticket on the floor of a race track at the end of the day.  The place is carpeted with discarded tickets.  No one puts their losing tickets in the trash cans, it just isn't done.  Losing tickets are flung helter skelter – that's just how it's done.

I figured it was worth a shot.  The best part of my golf game is finding lost balls.  Be it my own or somebody else's ball, when I go looking I expect to find it and I usually do.  Munson was descending into the depths of gloom only he can reach but I insisted that he retrace his steps since the 6^th race when he last remembered seeing the winning ticket.  A few minutes into the search, I found the ticket on the floor about 15 feet away from the betting window he had used after the 6^th race.  Munson's outlook on life brightened considerably and we headed for Vicenzo's Trattoria – a recommendation from Governor Rose.

We were working on our antipasto when three beefy sixty-year old men and their wives came in and were seated a few tables away from ours.  I had always heard about ex-mob capos from Jersey that followed Joe Bonano's lead and headed west to retire in Arizona.  This was them.  Soon one of the capos came over and stood beside our table looking down at us.

The capo said, "How'd ya do dere?"

I said, "You mean at the track?"

The capo said, "Yeah dah track.  Don't make like ya wadn't dere cuz no way deres more dan one uh dose fuckin' shirts."

I said, "We had a good day.  We even found a winning ticket."

The capo said, "Yer shittin' me?  Where ja find it?"

I said, "Next to a betting window."

The capo said, "Dats where I lost mine!"