Gluepots in the irons

Merely the second day's racing cards of the opening weekend at our local disaster on hooves Thoroughbred track , Thistledown , finds me with Slipsy JR , and Inspector Von Diesel looking to turn two dollar tickets into steak dinners. Bovine dinners earned by equine divination. Please do not expect to view much gorgeous horseflesh here at Thistledown raceway on Cleveland's east side . Only claiming races featuring four legged glue pots with jockeys perched upon them , when placed into the irons and let all fly for the cheap handle , five and six furlong races that comprise the live racing card at " the down" early in the season. Parimutuel play at the down is more akin to betting the policy numbers than thoroughbred race horses. Many of the tired faces that gather in these humble surrounding are already quite familiar with the habit of numbers play , whether the State sanctioned variety or the street side stock final variety popular in Ohio for many years. Having both eaten horseflesh and laid wager upon same said equine fleshpots . I state preference for the former not the later........................." Green skies , playing today!" was the verbatim telephone message conveyed by JR Slipsy in regards to today's golf game in the early afternoon. It continued to rain for another twenty four hours and sometimes the best laid plans of man run asunder or at least take another curve and end up in the black............................Standing in the Highland Park Municipal Golf Course , talking to Joc O Sot in the rain out by the ancient burial grounds on the high bluffs south and east of the city to the north. Coolie's farm. Old House of Corrections built and maintained by the City since it's earlier proud early twentieth century days...........Parts of the city Highland Park grounds now sold off to local developers for a song and dance. A cheap dance at that. Not even a good hard humping . Save what the citizen's of the city received from the politicians who sold off this valuable land on the cheap side from under the citizens . Who received not much in the way of new jobs or tax revenues promised in return for divesting themselves of prime Chagrin highlands property owned previously by the city and maintained as a storied and valuable " back forty" . Just the sort of fate reserved for the citizenry of Cleveland , Ohio these days. No representation at the scene of negotiations concerning a citizen owned piece of valuable property. Business as usual occurred here at the Highlands. Property of value sold off cheap to one of the feudal real estate concerns whose name until recently hung on the American League ball yard downtown..............................So much lightning in the sky over our blue municipal golf course. Large cracks of thunder and spiderwebs of electricity tossing airborne cobwebs for a noontime light show , under dark wet sky.Think about Detroit , Michigan and the Highland Park municipal golf course that they also own and operate. The infamous forty five iron act that occurred there in ......Lil Shaver made his way to town from Detroit for a california speedbag reunion. Don't ask. Lil Shaver is a true guitar hero of the old school stripe. Power tools by day , power amps by night. The name of the band kinda sez it all. california speedbag. Yeah. You got it right the first time. Enough already.......Post time. Slipsy JR and Inspector von Diesel had rode in together and had discussed thistledown as alternative to golf rain out. They are not surprised when I mention the track. We go to the races without Lil Shaver who decides that tomorrow is another day , the elements having failed our golf game at the highland grounds.Arriving from the parking lot amid a trail of tears . These tears comprised of multiple spent losing white paper lottery ticket sized betting slips. It is only the second race of a days card and the bust outs are leaving already.........Mudders instead...........To describe the track conditions as sloppy as the tote board proclaimed seemed a major flaw in logic. Underwater was more likely a description.....To describe the patrons of the down is to imagine a class of local people unable to escape Cleveland long enough to attain the relative perceived gambling nirvana of say Detroit , Michigan or Wheeling , West Virginia. Bad tires. No gasoline. A thousand excuses. Every last one a half truth , half lie. Bust outs one and all inhabit "the down". Their distinct pallor of grey speaks for the condition of their hair , skin , and livers alike. Average age? Well past sixty. Craven , sullen , and beaten down faces as a window into the customers soulless beings. A lamentable pile of perps shuffle under the downs grandstand this rainy Friday afternoon. Career bad gamblers , perverts , popcorn pimps and their ladies , postal employees taking a " sick day ". A desperate lot of hard luck stories with feet and other human body parts attached as adjunct.The notion of relaxation is foreign here , though by nature implied. Cheap is the predominate flavor , and whatever pleasures garnered bitter........Having arrived in this place as an alternative to an afternoon of golf. We proceed to decide upon exacta play s remedy for the afternoon's rain... We first decide to wheel Casey Stengel [ 37 ] for two dollars. Smart guy that I am laying down an additional two dollar nose bet on the number seven horse as insurance. We wander out track side in the rain to watch our vaunted three seven combination deliver our steak dinners. Instead. Our ten dollar grouping of white tickets join the many other losing tickets scattered like confetti about the down grounds. Duds one and all. Some unshaven poorly dressed miscreant walks past us and tosses his lit cigarette into a plastic lined waste container as if to change his luck from bad to worse or perhaps to fulfill an unstated wish and make the down go away once and for all. In any event this nutcase with a tobacco habit seemed to fit the profile of half baked bad attitudes content with donating their meager dollars to the downs coffers. Another anonymous asshole loser busted out early and taking an early voyage home after the fourth race of a ten race card........ A bad " Little Miss Marker " act appears complete with a gaggle of conspicuous phony tattoos on her nine years old arms , prancing about. This real live hard luck 2008 Shirley Temple shimmy shammy was dragged about the under belly of the downs grandstand by her slovenly Mother , who had plenty of real ink that mirrored her young daughters false ink. Just what their game was I am unable to relay to you dear reader. Use your imagination if you dare. I do not dare. The mere thought of this Mother and daughter routine tough on my remaining brain matter. Let your imagination serve as road map. On a school day none the less...... We find a discarded program and decide to sit out the simulcast fifth race from Meadow Downs. Inspector von Diesel brings back coffe for me and paper cups of beer for himself and Slipsy JR .We watch the Meadow Downs action instead on one of the downs many television monitors. The horseflesh at Meadow Downs and the other races on the televised simulcast races the only sunshine viewed and attractive flesh for today , equine or otherwise. Inspector von Diesel is babbling away in some foreign tongue , while sipping his beer. Slipsy JR and I stare at the tote board and simulcast screens like a pair of euthanized simians with a few dollars to wager. We decide that even being the opposite of odd is our number six race meat and proceed to attempt to play find the winning trifecta combination. Two four six the ticket. Oops. The number two horse scratched. Leaving us with an unsteady four six. We wait in line to place our bets and gaze up at the track clock which reads two four six. Drat! We decide on the four six wheel and lay down our funds. Having a few minutes before the post we slip down to the track to inspect the flesh. In a heartbeat we notice that number six horse and jockey should be wearing a sign that proclaims: We will finish out of the money. The young girl jockey in the psychedelic polka dot garb on top of the four horse looks ready to go . Why we did not add her to the tail of the winning afternoon shift five to nine exacta for the winning trifecta is a matter of shoulda woulda coulda jive that curses those of us that ever visit and wager such dens of iniquity as the downs. We race back to the betting window and play the winning five nine combination. We did collect our wagers back plus a ten dollar profit per , and promptly made for the exit. Bet odd , even , odd , then win. JR Slipsy and Inspector von Diesel headed back to the wilds of Amrap for a pig roast and beer blast followed by a speedbag practice. I decided to invest my scant winnings in a few books and 45 rpm records that I found in one of the three thrift stores located across from the downs. In the end having some viable tangible printed pages and groovy little discs to show for the afternoons efforts. I almost forgot the vision of Detroit , Michigan and it's city golf course also known as Highland Park and the famous 45 iron incident of a few years back. Seems that a group of golfers were playing a slower game than those in the group that followed them expected. The later gropu hit a ball into the slower playing group and then the fireworks began. Seems that one of the players in the slower group was also carrying a loaded forty five caliber automatic pistol to which he proceeded to shoot dead the member of the group behind him that hit the golf ball at him. Sometimes it makes more sense to go to the track to relax than the golf course. Especially when it is green skies and lightning. Slipsy JR was prophetic in his earlier telephone message. At least the " playing today" part of it.

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They Remained Others Fled

Joc O Sot lies sleeping the final bone yard dirt nap in the shadow of the right field light towers perched way above East Ninth Street across from his tidy little digs in the necropolis his skeletonic remains occupy. High ground. The spirit of Joc O Sot dreaming onward and into the future. "A Distinguished Chief" , reads his headstone. I believe those three simple words as if it is the very rapier of truth. Older law. Old Bones. Laughing back from his grave. "Got you were we want you now Cleveland American League Baseball Team". "We are going to curse you for to settle an old lingering score." Uggh! "Cuyahoooga to you!My old partner Charlie Bread always was quick to tell the world that Cuyahoga translates to roughly " crooked" in the ancient tongue. So Charlie Bread often yelled Cuyooooggaaa , at those in passing that he did not fancy. Charlie spent most of his adult life on East Ninth Street in downtown Cleveland Ohio. First in the old Art Deco beautiful sentry at East Ninth and Euclid's northwest corner The Bond's Clothing Company. A few doors south of the old Roxy Burlesque Theatre . Charlie fit out the strippers outfits every Monday evening , and was so close to so much beauty and tragedy wrapped up in a tight little pocket. Accordingly. Some rubbed off on him. Jelly that is. Composition and form. Ignored my own advice. Old bones molder away in this rapidly draining swampuserium. A stroll about the grounds of the cemetery down the block . Produces an early settlers tombstones inside the east ninth street gates that have been " effected" by some form of primitive Earth movement recently. A Terra firma belch or gaia fart perhaps? Rocks! Not the low ball fecal laced crackler gas emitted down the hill near the old pier the clothing pin bin or whatever that odious anti aesthetic graveyard of bad taste is up near the ditch.Yeah , that ditch! The one down by the east ninth street pier and that ugly pointy mausoleum for old rock and roll rags. Our high ground local cemetery tombstones more likely than not victims of a shifting of the local earth 2006 style. Heavy tombstone just inside the East Ninth Street cemetery gate grew legs and moved it's three hundred or so hunk of chiseled rock form a few feet?The Carter family headstone got the tombstone blues . Got up and trucked off it's ill conceived home of the last two years .Knocked off it's weighty perch atop the original faded early nineteenth Century head stones just inside the gate on Erie Street." Effected By The Early Settlers of the Western Reserve ." A crushing modern weight placed top the original early nineteenth century headstones in a less than Historically or aesthetically pleasing manner in the year 2006 , and a source of bewilderment anytime I have viewed this invader headstone. . " When others fled fever and ague The Carters stayed" . "They Remained Others Fled". Looks like some real live humans perhaps conspiring to lift and pry this hunk of stone off to the hypothetical wet headed creature dreaming of a big junkyard payoff from some scrap dealer.Just who could you imagine to rob a graveyard? What sort of desperate human is deranged enough to violate the dead? This is the realm and mater of horror comprised. "Effected". A justified deed. "Effected" like the competition with Detroit , Michigan and the surrounding suburbs for mostly all the wrong reasons in these early years of the twenty first century. Growth often comes attached with some form or other of pain , of varying degree.Picking on an old bone. Like a set of saliva dripping canine jaws wrapped about a distinctively piquant yet recently discarded bovine soup bone. How did this city of Cleveland ever get the notion to become more as Detroit , Michigan than Toronto , Ontario? Ask the recent urban planners of this odd automotive Nation. Government hit men . Using bulldozers and politically motivated Urban renewal plans as weapons against the fabric of the American urban landscape in the second half of the twentieth century. Definitely effected behavior served up with profits diverse and crooked as the easily purchased American City and County governments and transit authorities bought off by the well documented consortium of oil , auto , steel , and rubber industries who replaced the historical veins in the urban American corpus, with interstate highways , high rise ghettos , and all forms of ugly empty parking lots created from the once occupied tenants of diverse interesting North American cities. Cleveland , Ohio and Detroit , Michigan are examples of botched surgical experimentation of the most heinous stripe. Cheap ripped and torn shells of their former urban glory , Cleveland and Detroit are the De facto examples of American cities in decline. Cleveland politics can be proud by in comparison to the sad , immoral examples set recently by some of the Mayors of Detroit ,Michigan.The current Cleveland mayor is not the problem . The prolific graft , pillage and plunder equation that becomes a day to day living scandal which has brought Cleveland , Ohio and Cuyahoga County to the low place that it resides today . Oh yeah , the politicians and corporate types have had there way here for better than two centuries now , and it is difficult not to be sadly swept up in their waning causatum . Sadly enough the very infrastructure of this part of the post industrial metal badlands comprising the botched Great Lakes former industrial works is now kaput. The urban fabric of these rusty deserted places are rotting away. Citizens , housing , and commercial concerns included. The damned Great Lakes region is a rancid and decrepit cesspool of abandoned lives and industrial wastes of all shapes and stripes. Erie , Pa. Buffalo, N.Y. or any other of the void and null grim places in the post industrial vat of human stew meat and fabula anima mundi that makes one cringe aloud today seem to me the same street merely another city. Deranged news items often of such heinous stripe , emerge from these parts as if lifted from the pages of a history or chapter of events more akin to a third world country. Sordid tales of human depravity . Family warfare. Violent deaths carved out of disputes concerning low gambling games , or perceived slights while all parties are high as hoot owls , under the influence of some " bad shit". Yeah , some evil dope dumped in the hood by way of some foreign soil and rife for to cause mayhem and ugly affairs in all quarters it enters. Government sponsored and aimed to keep the oppressed down closer to the ground. { to be continued in a nauseous fashion I am afraid}

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