The Last Time I Visited Monticello I Brought “A Hooker”

[Teach]

She looked delicious. Buxom blonde. “May I sit here (empty seat bar),” I asked. “Be my guest,” she replied. “Where you from?” I asked. “New York City,” she said. So were many of the people there. After all, it was only 100 miles north of “The Big Apple.”

In August, 1968, my friend Dave and I had ventured west from Boston to visit a resort in Liberty, NY (the Catskills) called Grossinger’s.

I would meet at that “singles week” (It was called “Operation Match” (they used computers, then in their infancy, to match you up with your “perfect date”). It was mid-week that I met the lovely, young lady at the resort’s “watering hole” thatwas called the “Pink Elephant Lounge.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked. “I’ll have a Manhattan,” she said. “Hold the cherry,” she added (Was that a play on words?). We talked. All the time I’m thinkin’ “Where can I take her on a date?” A motel? (You dirty, young man; I was only 25-years old at the time). What am I talkin’ about? I had a room upstairs. I settled for taking my date, the following evening, to Monticello Raceway. She said (I’ll call her, Janet), “I’m here with another woman.” I said, “That’s okay. I’ll fix her up with my friend Dave. I finished up by saying, “We’ll meet you in lobby tomorrow evening at 7 p.m.”

As I think back, one of my earliest teaching jobs (the mid-to-late 1960’s) was at a Long Island high school. At that time, I would occasionally trek north into the Catskills to Monticello Raceway to get my harness-racing “fix.”

In hindsight, I musta been crazy. It was over 100 miles from where I was living and teaching. I remember it took me well over an hour-and-a half to get there.

Now, two years after I had first started going to Monticello, I was going back to the “Little M,” once again.

That following evening, Dave and I meet the women in the lobby. Both women were the epitome of feminine pulchritude. We drive south on Route #17 to Monticello.

As I think back, I remember little of the evening. The only thing I can recall is that I was slightly so out of sorts that I made a bet and it turned into a $10 “drop.” I told the mutuals manager I had forgotten to wait for the change from a $20. After the race, he gave me the “saw-buck.”

Oh, one other thing (strange what you recall). I was wearing red sweater. I remember Janet saying, “You going college (rhymes with besiege)?”

Some 52-years later, I couldn’t tell you how I did that night, but when we got back to the resort, my buddy Dave said he wanted to talk to me, in private.

We headed for the men’s room. When we get there, Dave says, “Leave it to you. You pick up a woman and she turns out to be a “hooker.” I remember saying, “Are you sure?”

It was then that Dave, a pharmaceutical salesman, starts lecturing me on how I have lived a cloistered life as a teacher. He says something like “all those women you teach with wear skirts with hem-lines down to their ankles.”
When Dave and I rejoined the two women a few minutes later, we made up a story that we’re “hitting the sack” early because we’re taking a tour of the Sullivan County wine- country (if such an animal exists) early the next morning.

In the end, the last time I glimed the two women was when Dave and I entered the elevator and headed up to our room. That evening was the last time, over 50-years ago, that I would visit, in person, Monticello Raceway.

Oh, I’ve pulled up their signal many times to wager on the track on my ADW, but never again, in person. As a postscript, I recently learned that Monticello has enhanced its signal as they’re now transmitting in HD.

Finally, in 20-20 hindsight, if only I had been more observant when it came to picking up women.

[king kong]

Those GIRLS were picking you up.