My Slantomatic Summer

 

     

The man’s Slantomatic sewing machine had been damaged in a fire at the racetrack. My summer job in customer service at the Singer shop, was to record details about repairs requested. 

     “Going out to the racetrack later, honey?” the man asked, between my questions. 

     “Er...maybe,” I said. I was seventeen, too young to buy an entrance ticket. 

     “Well, if you do, lay some cash on Ringadingding in the seventh. I’ve been training her and she’s ready to go.”

     “Okay,” I said. Lay some cash on Ringadingding? It was an insider tip—a sure thing. I recognized this because I was no stranger to racetrack wagering. My maternal grandmother was a gambler. If you saw her sitting by the fire, a crocheted throw on her lap, you’d never guess she had odds running through her brain. Grandma and my three maiden aunts spent hours every week filling out contest forms. For them, chance was a serious business.They’d won their house in a church lottery; their car in an insurance company raffle.

     I couldn’t wait until 4:00 pm when I left work and took the three buses to the racetrack. The cashier barely looked up as he slid me an entrance ticket. The odds were twenty-to-one on Ringadingding. I bought a twenty-dollar ticket to win, almost a week’s salary from Singer. Ringadingding ran her heart out and won by a neck. I collected my four hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills.  Dizzy with excitement, I got home and burst through the front door with news of my windfall. Dad was reading the paper. 

     “Dad, I’m not going back to school!” I said,  waving my stack of twenties. “I won four hundred dollars at the track on Ringadingding.” 

     “Fine,” he said, as if he’d been anticipating my announcement. “Though I wouldn’t recommend that as a way to make a living.”

     “But Grandma has,” I said. 

     Dad sighed. “Your grandmother is an exceptional case. She gambled as a last resort. She’s very lucky and an expert money manager.”

     “Maybe it’s genetic? Maybe I inherited her genes.”

     Dad looked resigned. “If you insist on keeping it up, do it through Grandma's bookie, George. It’s illegal for you to go to the track. You know that. And you can’t tell anyone about this.”

     A bookie? I was going to have a bookie. And it was a secret—to add to the list of secrets I already had to keep: my step-grandfather was gay, my Aunt Nilla was a lesbian, Mom was pregnant when my parents got married. And now I was a gambler. You couldn’t open a closet in that family without being smothered in skeletons. 

     A month later I was broke just in time for my return to school. As it turned out I was lucky, like Grandma,  because I lost so absolutely. The Slantomatic job opened a door into another world I learned to avoid early in life. My wise Dad never had to say another word on the subject.