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Show ONCE OVER- Hoss Racing -the Inside Track By H. I. Phillips ' A legislative committee is taking a look-see at New York race tracks to see how racing operates. We are glad to offer some help in obtaining the Facts of Life at Horse Ovals: 1. The contests are for horses , bred for speed and for facing addicts ad-dicts bred for endurance, gullibility and erroneous deductions. 2. The horses run from five and a half furlongs to a mile and three-quarters. three-quarters. The fans run much farther. farth-er. A horse pops an osselet, bows a tendon, or breaks a leg and has to be retired. A bettor can suffer all four without weakening. 3. Horses begin racing at the age of three and usually are through at the age of eight. A race addict rarely rare-ly seems to develop beyond the age of three and is through only when in the hands of eight pallbearers, seven of whom are still listening for inside information that he may yet snap out of it and stage an upset. 4. A race horse lives on choice oats and selected hay. (A bettor should live so well!) 5. The ponies race under weights, conditions and classifications. It is realized that there are limits to what they can accomplish on a given afternoon. A race track addict acknowledges no such limitations. 6. Weights are used to give every horse an equal chance. The fans do about the same, loaded or not. ' 1 7. Horses wear special shoes. Fans are lucky to wear any. 8. Interest in racing is sustained Iby huge purses. A horse can earn '$100,000 for two minutes work. A fan may work all his life for it, even as an optical illusion. 9. The horses are ridden by a ' strange race called jockeys. They are too small to take a horse out of a park and yet big enough to show inclinations in that direction. 10. Betting is done by mutuels machines. A mutuels machine op erates the same as a sausage grinder, grind-er, except that the meat goes back to the butcher. It is a hamburger apparatus with a built-in cash register. reg-ister. It offers the only medium by which a man can spend an afternoon after-noon in a cement mixer and have it come under the head of outdoor sport. 11. To place a bet you go to a window. These windows are mostly on the ground floor to discourage jumping. 12. Suspense Is added to racing by a photo-finish. A photo-finish is taken whenever two or more jockeys joc-keys finish within telephonic communication com-munication of one another. 13. Racing is called the Sport of Kings but it is supported, by Deuces Wild and Jacks Back to Back. It has raised to a high art the practice prac-tice of talking out of one side of the mouth, and developed a race known as Whisperers Anonymous. 14. First race starts around 1:45 p.m. Wrong information begins around 6 a.m. All -aboard! MR. MALIK TAKES OVER The Upsidedown Days now are here, The saddest of the year Where everything is what It ain't, As Jake makes it appear! Eve Peron says Peron is God to her. Does that go when he won't put down the paper at breakfast and disagrees with her over the pattern of the new curtains? John P. Crane, former head of the New York Uniformed Fireman's Association, As-sociation, who told the Kefauver Committee he handed out thousands of dollars in alleged bribes, is -uing to make the department take him back. This is the first recorded attempt at-tempt by a fireman to slide UP THE POLE. |