The Ticket I Couldn’t Cash

[Teach]

I saw the pari-mutuel ticket lying there. It had just been “spit out” by the machine. At that moment, I felt like a mouse looking at a piece of cheese. I looked around. No one was at the windows.

That early afternoon I was playing Freehold Raceway at Foxwoods in Connecticut. I had shot craps in the morning hoping to increase my larder for my afternoon racing session.

I had recently entered the race-book. That’s when, as I went to the “windows” to make a bet, spotted “the ticket.” As I recall, I made my Freehold bet and then scooped up the ticket that had been lying there unattended.

Soon after, I returned to my carrel to look at the Freehold race I had just bet on the overhead monitors.

Just then I noticed a commotion at “the windows.” Something about a missing ticket. Could it be the one I had picked up?

After I watched my Freehold race, I took a look at the ticket I “found” at the “windows.” I thought it might be one of those “straight” tickets. Maybe a $2 win, but it wasn’t. It was an “exotic.” I figured just another ticket to “paper the floor” with. I recall that “the ticket” was a race from Suffolk Downs. The winning jockey, as I recall – he was at the tail-end of a storied racing career – Herberto “Herb” Hinojosa.

I remember looking at the numbers on the “found” trifecta ticket. They matched the outcome on the Suffolk results race-board high above the race-book. It was “huge”. Telephone numbers. A tax ticket. I was in a quandary. My first thought was to bring the ticket back up to “the windows.” But then I thought, “Anyone might have claimed to be the ticket-purchaser.” Frankly, I was on “the horns of a dilemma.”

I decided to try to cash it through the self-betting machines that were located in the corner. I dropped the ticket into the machine. The machine wouldn’t take it. I put the ticket in my pocket. I would take it home with me.
Looking back, I must have kept the ticket for a good two to three weeks. Yet I had a gnawing feeling of guilt. I was “betwixt and between.” I kept thinking, “How would I have felt if I had purchased that ticket, and then not being able to cash it?”

In the end, I mailed it back to the Foxwoods race-book. In a brief cover letter, I explained the circumstances. I never knew, nor will I ever know, if the rightful owner got his/her money. One thing I do know, as my mother oft said, “A clear conscience is a soft pillow.”