At breakfast this morning, I asked Elizabeth what her impressions of Rosecroft were. I hadn’t felt like my own thoughts, expressed in the previous post, were either perceptive or interesting. Not surprisingly, she had excellent points to make.
First of all, it’s a democratic place: everyone is welcome as long as they can pay the $3 entrance fee. Of course, it’s an American kind of democracy–anyone can go out to the bleachers with their broken plastic folding chairs, or mill around in the starkly lit dingy lower level, but those with $20 to spend on a mediocre buffet dinner can buy a nice table and a good view of the track from behind a tall glass wall.
Even upstairs, though, the smudged glass wall speaks of a shared human experience. I had joked, when Ed suggested the window was so dirty he couldn’t see through it clearly, “Imagine how many noses and foreheads have been pressed to the glass.” Elizabeth picked that thread up this morning, pointing out how human that is, to press forward in excitement, and how the smudges, though gross in a way, are also a link to all the other people who had been in the same place you were, as your 19-1 longshot faded and fell back right before the finish. Other people at this table have been just as excited, and probably some of them more desperate.
She also commented on the environment. The racetrack, although just outside the Beltway and in a cartographically inauspicious section of Prince George County, is surrounded by woods and meadows. It seems to belong in its environment. And unlike in casinos, in a racetrack time is everything, from post time to the quarter-mile pace reports to the number of minutes left to bet. Here the gamblers are watching all kind of clocks.
I will add that it was also gratifying to see Bill in his element. Elizabeth and I respect him quite a bit for his insistence on doing what he wants to do and not doing what he doesn’t. He likes horse racing, and he likes his friends who also like horseracing. It was fun just sitting with them.