By Ed Staskus
When I pulled into the parking lot of the Back Wall Racquetball Club in Solon and got out of my car I saw I was parked next to the Roselawn Cemetery. I needed some fresh air after the long drive so I went for a walk there. It wasn’t a big graveyard. I circled it and then took a hard-packed path through the middle of it. I almost tripped on the exposed roots of a large pin oak tree. “Watch your step,” I reminded myself.
All of the headstones looked old. Some were leaning and others were nearly turned over. Two of the headstones next to one another were Abram and Eliza Garfield’s plots. They had been the parents of President James Garfield. Abram died in 1833 when his son was a baby. James Garfield was assassinated in 1881. His mother died in 1888 and was buried beside Abram. James got a large tomb elsewhere.
It was a sunny summer day in 1980, the kind of day that made you glad to be alive. I went into the Back Wall. It was brand new, ten racquetball courts, three of them with glass back walls, a Nautilus physical training room, and large locker rooms on the second floor. I was there to apply for the job of Club Pro and Activities Director.
Marty, who was the manager I had talked to on the telephone, came out of his office behind the front desk. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He was about my age, but dressed much better than me. He was on the small side, trim and fit. He seemed smug, although I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I found out later he was both smug and overweening.
I filled out an application. The facts I wrote down were true as far as they went, although the rest of it was more sketchy than not. I played racquetball well enough to play in the Open class, but that was about it. I had no experience to speak of working in a sports club. In any case, Marty only glanced at the application. He asked me if I had time to play a game. I was wearing sneakers, but didn’t have anything else with me. He outfitted me with a pair of shorts and a ratty t-shirt. He handed me a racquet that looked like it had been manufactured in the Middle Ages.
“Let’s see what you’re made of,” he said.
He was natty in his Nike sportswear. He scored the first eight points. Those were the last points he scored. I got cracking and won the game 21 – 8.
“Let’s play another one,” he said. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
I won the second game by the score of 21 – 1.
“All right, you seem to play the game well enough,” he said, more grudging than not. He told me I could start on Monday. “Get some better clothes. Make sure you look the part.”
I bought an Adidas warm-up suit on Saturday and showed up for work on Monday. The Back Wall supplied me with monogrammed polo shirts. I checked myself out in the full-length mirror in the men’s locker room. I looked like I had just stepped out of the fridge. I was in business.
The business was easier than I thought it was going to be. I started at ten in the morning, gave lessons to housewives most mornings, had a late lunch, gave lessons to children and more housewives in the afternoon, and got in a practice session on my own before the after-work crowd showed up. I didn’t work evenings unless an event, like an in-house competition of some kind, was going on. We hosted Ohio Racquetball Association tournaments now and then. It meant working weekends, but it was more of a good time than work. I strung racquets on the side, half of the remittance going to me, the other half going to the club. I filled in at the front desk whenever the need arose.
I made friends with one of the daytime front desk receptionists. Rose was in her 30s, tall and gangly. She didn’t have much of a chin, but was lively with a ready smile. I also made friends with the cleaning lady. Her name was Zala. One day I asked her what the name meant.
“It’s Slovenian,” she said. “It means small castle.”
She was built like a small castle, short and squat. One reason the club stayed clean was that everybody feared the ogress she became whenever somebody made a mess and she had to clean it up. She sewed headbands for me made from club towels. She hemmed them so they stayed neat. I always had a half dozen of them in my gym bag.
I played some of the club’s members occasionally. One of them was Wayne Godzich, who was a detective with the Solon Police Department. He had wide set eyes, thin lips, and a great head of hair for a man his age. He rarely talked shop, but one day, sitting around in the lobby after a game, I asked him how it was that he became a policeman.
“I got out of the army in the mid-60s. tried this and that, and finally filled out an application here,” he said. “I passed the basic physical and psychological tests and, just like that, I was on the force. I went to the academy nights, but I basically learned on the job. My first day on the job, that was in 1968, I was escorted into the office of the lieutenant, who handed me a badge, a gun, a box of bullets, and then told a sergeant to “take him down to the dump on Crocker Road” to see if I could shoot. I was a motorcycle officer, a narcotics officer, and finally made it onto the detective bureau.”
Another member I played occasionally was Bo Natale. His name was actually Beauregard, but he went by Bo. He came to the club every day in the afternoon since he worked nights. He played racquetball and worked out on the Nautilus machines. He showered and shaved afterwards. He was a harness racing driver. He was a catch driver, which meant he was a hired hand. He didn’t train and drive his own horses. He was hired by trainers and owners to drive their horses. He was driving at the Northfield Park track that summer. The half-mile track was about fifteen minutes south of Solon.
There were a couple of hundred dates at Northfield Park that year. Bo didn’t drive every date since he was only there for the three summer months, although he drove every date he was there. He lived in his own trailer, which he hauled around the country with a brand new red and white Ford F-150. He was a catch driver who followed the circuits and the weather. He lived in Oklahoma when he wasn’t racing.
“I don’t get home much,” he said. “The wife likes it that way. We get along better.”
Bo wasn’t a skinny man, like thoroughbred jockeys. He was closer to two hundred pounds than one hundred pounds. He wasn’t especially tall, either. “You don’t want to be too tall in the racebike,” he said. That was what he called the sulky. Taller drivers sit higher in the sulky, raising the overall center of gravity, impacting stability, particularly when rounding turns.
He wasn’t a very good racquetball player, but he was strong and tireless. I usually hit passing shots, rather than kill shots, when playing him, or I kept him in the back corners with ceiling shots. He was affable enough. I started offering him advice. He didn’t mind it. He was a quick study and got better over the course of the summer.
It was early September when he told me he was going to be moving on at the end of the week.
“I’ve got something for you, in return for your pointers, if you’re interested,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A tip,” he said.
“A tip on what?”
“A race.”
“A tip about who’s going to win?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not big on gambling.”
I never gambled on anything. I didn’t even play the new Ohio Lottery. I didn’t have money I could afford to lose. I knew full almost everybody lost when betting on the horses. On top of that, tracks skimmed a takeout which made the odds even longer. Gambling businesses prey on psychological weaknesses and the excitement of winning and losing. I had been raised a Catholic and still believed gambling encouraged greed and vice.
“Take it for what it’s worth,” Bo said. “The horse is Adios Harry in the seventh. Bet him to win.”
In the event, I went to Northfield Park after work on Friday. I had never been there before. It went back to 1935 when it was built by Al Capone as a dog race track. When dog racing didn’t work out it was converted into a stock car racing track. Twenty years later the last car race was run and in 1957 it became Northfield Park.
I got there after the first race. I had to hike from the far end of the parking lot to the grandstand. It was “Date Night” at the track. The place was overflowing with guys and gals. I found a seat and looked down at the oval dirt track. It was called “The Home of the Flying Turns.” I watched a couple of races.
Horse racing is an ancient sport. It goes back to the chariot races of Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages knights raced horses as part of their military training. In the 17th century racing horses became a formalized sport in England. It spread worldwide from there. The races I watched at Northfield Park were full of life. One of them was a down to the wire crapshoot. Before the seventh race came up I went to place my bet.
The mutuel windows were in a dedicated betting hall. The windows were small, their openings recessed. A glass barrier separated the bettors from the clerks. When my turn in line came up I pushed $50.00 towards the clerk. It was more money than I earned in a day. He had a cash register kind of machine in front of him. There was a keypad. He punched in my $50.00 to win on Adios Harry. He handed me a printed ticket. I went back to my seat. Adios Harrry was going at ten to one at post time. He seemed like an unlikely contender.
There were eight horses lined up at the starting gate. Bo wasn’t driving any of the sulkies. Adios Harry, despite the odds, was a fine looking horse. He was black with muscular hindquarters and large nostrils. He didn’t look like he was going to be lacking for air. The race began when a Cadillac Fleetwood, equipped with a pair of retractable wings that served as gates, pulled away from the horses at the starting line.
It was a one mile race. At the start Adios Harry slipped back into last place. It didn’t look good for my $50.00. At a quarter mile he was in fourth place. At the half mile mark he moved up to third place. When the sulkies hit the stretch he was in first place. As the pack came around to the front of the grandstand their hooves were pounding. I found myself on my feet, encouraging my horse until I was out of breath. Adios Harry won going away. I whooped and started clapping. I rushed to the betting hall.
At the mutuel window the clerk gave me $550.00 in cash.
“I thought I won $500.00,” I said.
“You did,” the clerk said. “You also get your $50.00 bet back.”
“Thanks, that’s white of you.” When he gave me a funny look I realized he was African American.
The next Friday, my winnings from the week before tucked away, I was leaving work, walking to my car, when Wayne Godzich drove up. He had his gym bag with him. He gave me a wave.
“I heard you went to the track,” he said.
“I thought I would check it out.” I didn’t ask him how he knew. He was a detective, after all.
“Did you have a good time?”
“It was an experience.”
“Win any money?”
“You know, you win some, you lose some.”
“You’re not going to make it a habit, are you?”
“No, I don’t think so. It was more of a one-off than anything else.”
“That’s good,” he said. “It’s the house that always wins. Gambling is a sure way of getting nothing for something.” He clapped me on the back and went inside the club.
I never went back to Northfield Park and never saw Bo again. Without his insight, marching up to the mutuel windows would have just been taking a chance. Losing at race tracks happens when you don’t know what you’re doing. What I had won hit the spot, but I didn’t know what I was doing so it wasn’t worth taking another chance.
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”
“Bomb City” by Ed Staskus
“A police procedural when the Rust Belt was a mean street.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books
Cleveland, Ohio 1975. The John Scalish Crime Family and Danny Greene’s Irish Mob are at war. Car bombs are the weapon of choice. Two police detectives are assigned to find the bomb makers. Revenge is always personal. It gets personal.
A Crying of Lot 49 Publication
Made in Cleveland 