Word: aqueducts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...grandparents brought me into the fraternity of horse-players when I was about six, whisking me from midtown Manhattan to Aqueduct Racetrack in Jamaica, Queens. We would make the 45-minute bus ride on a 20-passenger van owned and operated by a man named Gus, who, I would learn years later, died of a heart attack in the men's room at The Sands in Las Vegas. Gus had been married several times, and his last marriage ended when his wife gave him an ultimatum: me or horses. Gus chose horses...
...called an authoritarian method for picking horses. Before hopping Gus' bus, my grandfather would pay $2 for a handicapping sheet xeroxed on bright orange paper in the cigarette store across Second Avenue from his apartment. This sheet, which was compiled by "Clocker Lawton," tipped three horses in each of Aqueduct's nine races that day. Lawton--the only clue to whose identity was a grainy photograph of a man in a trenchcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, a cross between Elliott Ness and John Wayne, printed above his picks--mystified me with his expertise. Invariably, Lawton would recommend a rank...