Requiem for a Racetrack

In one of my earliest memories, I am about five years old and watching from the grandstand side of the fence at the old indoor Rockingham Park paddock while my father, Paul, serious and intense, saddles a racehorse. Kids weren't allowed in the saddling enclosure in the early 1970s, but I had observed the riders-up ritual from the spectators' side of the railing enough by that age to associate it with the powerful, vocal crescendo that would soon erupt from the packed crowd, punctuating another wild, stampeding stretch drive.

I didn't quite know how I was going to get there, but that afternoon I just knew I wanted to spend my life on the other side of that fence. That was where my dad, the horses, and the jockeys were–the epicenter of all action. Why would anyone want to be anyplace else?

Now it's four decades later and they're auctioning off what is left of my hometown track. Rock hasn't conducted a live Thoroughbred meet since 2002 (cause of death: acute antagonism between management and horsemen) and last ran Standardbreds in 2009 (when the notoriously frugal Granite State refused to pay for further racing commission oversight).

After the Sept. 24-25 everything-must-go auction, the 110-year-old Salem, New Hampshire, oval will be demolished and converted to yet another retail zone in a town already glutted with senseless big-box sprawl.

Racetracks seem to slide off the grid every few months here in the United States. For me, this one's personal.

The “old Rock” was my entry into the alluring world of horse racing. Mornings my dad hand-walked horses up Pleasant Street from a small neighborhood farm to go in the back gate and train over Rock's one-mile strip. We'd eat a 10 a.m. lunch at the busy track kitchen, and afternoons I'd be mesmerized by the hypnotic clicking of the massive, old-fashioned mechanical odds board and the flash of horses thundering through the lane. Even if you weren't at the track, on crisp autumn afternoons you could hear the race announcer's call echoing authoritatively in distant parts of town. Rock was, at least through the 1970s, the well-respected soul of Salem.

The mastermind behind that respectability was “Uncle Lou” Smith, a ruthlessly shrewd dealmaker who transformed the abandoned Depression-era Rock into a flourishing Thoroughbred showcase. Although at first reluctant to embrace “sin taxes,” New Hampshire legislators warmed to the notion when Rock's pari-mutuel betting soon supplied one-fifth of the entire budget for the rural state.

In 1980, the summer I turned 12, I woke one morning to hysterical sirens and a haze of oily smoke. Rock had erupted into flames shortly after dawn, and by sundown the charred, twisted skeleton of the grandstand symbolized the end of an era for many locals. This included my dad, who decided to give up his modest stable rather than make the daily trek to Boston to train and race at Suffolk Downs.

A modern, scaled-down version of the “new Rock” reopened in 1984. Its rebirth coincided with my first driver's license, so after weekday classes I'd sneak over in time for the seventh race, when the gates were left open for free. On Fridays and Saturdays the horses raced under the lights, and I grew to cherish my weekend ritual: Slam a few beers in my '78 Ford Granada, hop the side fence when the fat security guard wasn't looking, then fish out a program and Racing Form from the sea of discarded tickets on the floor. Even on the night of my high school graduation, when my parents hosted a party with relatives in from out of town, I made up some excuse about needing to run an errand. In truth, I sped to Rock to chase a massive Twin Trifecta carryover.

In 1986, I went off to college. The University of New Hampshire was only 45 miles north of the Rock, and I was endlessly imploring fraternity brothers to cut classes and drive down with me. One day I asked a pretty student who hung out at the equestrian stable if she wanted to accompany me to the races. She said yes, and I played it cool when I miraculously hit five winners in a row, acting like that happened all the time. We had a blast, but little did I know my best gamble on that first date at Rock wouldn't pay off until years later: That horse-crazy girl is now my wife.

As a journalism major, I landed an internship at the New Hampshire bureau of The Boston Globe. In the spring of 1990 I talked an editor into letting me do a feature on how tough it was for small-scale Rockingham horsemen to earn a living. The very same day Unbridled won the GI Kentucky Derby, I was sitting under a lonesome, leaky shed row on the muddy Rock backstretch, wearing a shiny new press badge and interviewing a down-on-his-luck trainer about a 45-to-1 no-hoper named More Fog. I might as well have been in heaven.

After college I took a general assignment reporting job with a local paper, but I soon found out a new Thoroughbred daily, The Racing Times, was about to launch. I immediately applied, telling (or practically begging) editor Steven Crist I'd relocate to any track in the country just to break in. As luck would have it, the fledgling broadsheet was looking for a New England columnist, and within a month I began my dream job as a reporter in the Rock press box.

Although track management did not intend to, Rock provided me with my first big breakthrough as a turf journalist. In 1991, general manager Ed Callahan threw me out of the press box after a series of hard-hitting columns culminated with a scoop about the track president's son being busted by state police for running a cocaine-dealing operation out of the valet parking loop. Thanks to Crist's support for his reporter's right to free speech, my banishment from Rock ended up being a national news story.

That notoriety, in turn, ended up helping me land a job on the Suffolk Downs publicity staff a few months later when the Times went out of business. In the 1990s, Suffolk Downs and Rockingham were bitter competitors. Two decades later, a viable New England racing circuit no longer exists. Like many failed relationships viewed in hindsight, you can't help but wonder how things might have turned out differently if the two tracks had cooperated more instead of trying to pound each other into oblivion.

Even as Rock raced toward its unseen finish line, it provided me with one of my most gratifying racing experiences. In 1995, after 15 years away from training, my dad began to re-immerse himself in the horse biz, largely because he now had a son who worked in the industry. He started up a small Rock-based stable and returned to the winner's circle. A few seasons later, he saddled his first stakes winner, also at Rock. It was fitting that a father and son had come full circle together at the same hometown track–especially since I was finally able to stand on the “right” side of the paddock fence alongside him.

The signs of decline were evident several years before the official end to Thoroughbred racing. In my mind, I will always trace the downfall of Rock to Aug. 4, 1999, when popular jockey Rudy Baez, the dean of the New England riding colony, was paralyzed from the chest down in a horrific racing accident. Rockingham management tried to distance itself from the tragedy, and this shameful act seemed to impart bad karma to the Salem oval. Its remaining few seasons wound down in bleak, passionless fashion.

My last visit to Rock was around 2011, when the defunct track had metamorphosized into what it called a “charity” card and gaming facility. After spending an entire afternoon with friends betting on Saratoga races from a clubhouse table, we (and all the other simulcast patrons) were rudely kicked out of the seats we had paid for just before the GI Travers S. went off. The reason? Those tables were reserved for the Saturday night bingo game. Horseplayers had become a persona non grata annoyance at the once-regal Rock.

I will attend the upcoming auction, not so much to bid on souvenirs like the quarter pole or the scale from the jockey's room, but to pay my respects to what I consider hallowed ground. I'm at peace with Rock's closure, because few of us are able to pinpoint a single, specific entity that provided positive childhood memories, strong family bonds, a connection to one's spouse, and a rewarding career path. I'm privileged and proud to say that for me, that entity was Rockingham Park.

Back in my teenage years, I often killed time in the track's dark parking lot, ambitiously scheming how I'd sneak in to see the Friday night races. During that heady era, I recall wearing out a favorite cassette by The Who on my car stereo, blissfully unaware it contained prophetic lyrics: “Long live Rock–be it dead or alive.”

Several paragraphs of this essay originally appeared in a slightly different form in the book “Not by a Long Shot–A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track.”