[philcski]

I love stories like this, Doug. Real guido sh1t. A conversation I had with my dad a long time ago about betting horses (he doesn't talk about his childhood much, so this was opening up quite a bit for him):

"So dad, when did you get interested in the track?"

"Well you know, my mother was gone early and my dad was gone when I was 15. So it was just me and your aunt, broke, homeless, nowhere to go. One day in high school I was at the deli and some guy offered me $5 to run a paper bag down to the bar on my way . He says don't look in there. The guy at the other side paid off. He tells me come back tomorrow and do it again for another $5. Naturally, after a few weeks of doing this I got curious about what it was, so I looked in the bag and it was the daily double at Aqueduct. So I started watching which guys [numbers] were winning and would take my lunch stipend and bet it with them. I started hitting $15, $20 doubles a few times a week and thought I was rich. I didn't even know what I was betting or even where to get the results. I just would ask around at school and some of the wiseguys there would get the results on the radio and we'd all either eat well or not at all. That was a lot of money in those days."

FYI he still has no idea how to read a racing form, 50 years later. Rarely bets but really enjoys watching the races.