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Page A3 The Joan
De Arc Crusader / Thursday, December 24, 2015
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A
favorite Turf Paradise escapade
By J. Bueker
To mark the auspicious occasion of Turf Paradise’s 60th
anniversary, I thought I’d share a favorite memory of that most venerable
Phoenix racing institution.
I fell in love with Turf at the age of 16, thanks primarily to the
efforts of my sister Sue and her husband Doug, who took it upon themselves
to introduce me to the wonderful world of racing at the local track.
Initially I was fairly disinterested in the whole thing, but I soon became
quite enamored with the excitement of live racing and the fascinating
culture that surrounds the activity. And although I was still a couple years
shy of the legal age for placing a wager, I quickly discovered that no one
in authority was inclined to challenge my attempts to do so.
“You’ll love it, because it’s like sports,” Sue assured me, and she
was right. My first visit to the track with the Masellis occurred during my
junior year of high school, and before that school year was out, I was
attending Turf Paradise with my buddies on a fairly regular basis. Despite
our limited financial resources, none of us had much trouble scrounging up a
few dollars for the $2.00 minimum bets. And it was a blast. We were all
hooked.
The only problem was that my father frowned upon the entire enterprise. Fond
of occasional gambling himself at cards and other games, the man was
adamantly opposed to his kids playing the ponies, particularly the underage
kid, and he was not shy about expressing this sentiment. Carl all but
forbade me from going, and although this didn’t stop me of course, it
certainly gave me pause. There were tangible consequences for getting
caught.
And so one fateful afternoon in that spring of ’75, my comrades and I
decided to pop over to TP after school to catch the last couple races of the
day, as was becoming our custom. Management waived the admission fee for
races 9 and 10, and so the only expense involved was the gas to drive from
Moon Valley High to 19th Ave. and Bell Rd., plus of course the
money for wagering. Shortly after our arrival, I dutifully walked across the
street to A.J. Bayless to call my mother and let her know I would coming
home a little late that day. I cannot now recall the excuse I fabricated for
the occasion, but I’m certain it was inventive.
After losing
a couple bucks on my Race 9 wagers, I carefully studied the discarded
program we had found to determine my bets for the final race on the card
that day. I had exactly four dollars to wager.
The first
thing I noticed about the field for Race 10 was the presence of a horse
named Moorgate. This was a thoroughbred with which I was somewhat familiar,
since my sister and brother-in-law had both expressed their high regard for
him in the recent past. Moorgate had a reputation as a closer, laying back
for most of a race and then exhibiting exceptional speed and endurance in
the stretch run. He was now running in a somewhat higher class, and so on
this particular day he was one of the longer shots in the betting. Taken
together, these circumstances made him an attractive choice for yours truly.
After a few
moments of careful consideration, I settled on two wagers: a $2.00 show bet
on Moorgate, and more significantly, a $2.00 quinella bet that paired
Moorgate with the odds-on favorite in the race. A quinella wager of course
requires selecting both the first- and second-place finishers in the race,
without regard to the order of finish. If memory serves, Moorgate went off
at 8 to 1 that afternoon, largely ignored by the bettors in attendance.
My hunch
regarding Moorgate proved to be impeccable. Falling back early in the
one-mile race, he gradually moved up on the back stretch and closed strongly
under the guidance of legendary jockey Ross Allardyce, just barely losing
out at the wire to the favorite (whose name escapes me now). I
excitedly screamed out my winning quinella combination several times to my
bemused buddies as we looked on from the grandstand seats. Needless to say,
they were quite impressed and a little envious of my adroit wagering.
Moments later when the tote board posted the payouts, I suddenly found
myself about $40.00 richer.
Now, forty dollars needs to be put into a little context. These were
the days when my pals and I were still playing penny-ante poker, and winning
five or ten bucks was considered an epic haul. For 16-year-old John Bueker,
winning forty smackers was roughly the 1975 equivalent of hitting the
Powerball.
I was so thrilled by my gambling triumph that I lost all concern about
fibbing to my mother regarding my whereabouts or facing my father’s wrath
for ignoring his prohibition on visiting Turf Paradise. Unable to contain
myself, I burst into the living room at 3219 and gleefully shouted “I won 40
bucks at the track, I won 40 bucks at the track!” Fortuitously, Carl was
travelling and would not be home for a couple days. And somewhat
surprisingly, Mother actually seemed pleased by my good fortune.
I then did
something rather shrewd. I took the entire wad of bills that I had just won
gambling at the race track and handed it over to Barbara. I asked her to
deposit the funds in my savings account at the Westown branch of Valley
National Bank, which she did the following day.
When Father
returned home that Friday, Mother apprised him of what had transpired. I
braced myself for a stern lecture and probable grounding over the incident,
and realistically, this seemed like a foregone conclusion. Yet much to my
eternal surprise, the man chose to say nothing to me about it. Not a word.
No punishment, no angry admonishment. Nothing.
It eventually
dawned on me that Carl Bueker was proud of me. I was my father’s son. Not
only had I skillfully cleaned up gambling at the race track, but rather than
spending the proceeds on crap, I had chosen instead to squirrel them away in
the bank. Given the circumstances, he did not deem it appropriate to praise
or congratulate me, but he also gave me zero grief over it. He was inwardly
smiling about the whole thing.
I still enjoy visiting Turf Paradise once in a while. It’s one of the
few enduring destinations in Phoenix that has been around for a very long
time but not really changed all that much. This alone makes it a special
place for me. And when I go, I still reflect back on that spring of ‘75,
when the old track provided me with a happy and lasting memory of my father,
who would not live to see the following spring.
Thanks,
Moorgate.
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JDA
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