Kentucky Derby!

If the Kentucky Derby is where they gather some horses together and the I recall, one with the most teeth wins.

Horse racing has always fascinated me. My whole family was consumed by it for a while. Every time we went to the Los Angeles County Fair, the big event for my father was always the race track. I don't know if he ever won any money. He never talked about it, so I would assume not.

The real races were not enough. We would all sit down at a carnival game which had individual stations where you could sit down in front of a sort of pin ball machine, except there were no lights, bells or flippers. The idea was to get the ball up and hope it fell into the largest point value assigned to one of the slots on the board.

There was a race track elevated in the back where you could watch the horses advance toward the end of the race. There was also a guy announcing each race so, if you were playing, you didn't have to look up from your machine to see how you were doing.

We were all obsessed with the game. It was a lot of fun and you could win prizes that included various horses from small to large, plastic to metal, with the most coveted, a golden horse with a clock. We could have bought horses for probably a tenth of what it cost to win, but the thrill of victory was worth the extra expense.

As kids, we were thrilled with winning a metal horse. They were fairly large and would be proudly displayed in the living room in our house. Those were fun times and I'll never forget the way that silly game brought our family together. I have gone to many carnivals and fairs in search of the game, but I guess they no longer exist.

As my brother Fred and I grew older and video games began to explode, we would get the best game we could find and play it constantly. The most fun games were the ones where you started off with $10,000, a jockey, a trainer and a couple of horses that would place, but almost never win.

The object of the game was to increase your money so you could get better horses, jockeys and trainers. It would cost money for feeding and training, so you wouldn't want to have losing horses around very long. After every race day, you could go to an auction to buy and sell horses.

I think I've only been to a real race track once, and I liked watching the races but I don't remember betting. Maybe I just didn't want to remember losing my shirt, or I didn't bet. In any event, it was great fun.

I'll be watching the Derby today and may the horse with the most teeth win!

See you tomorrow.

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