Gulfstream Park – Hallandale Beach, Florida

I’m not much of a gambler, but I’ve always loved galloping horses!

Patsy and Ginger were some of my closest four legged friends while I was growing up on our small Iowa farm.

I learned to ride when I was VERY young, and Patsy was the most amazing horse I’ve ever seen.

My Uncle Ivo gave Patsy to me when I was about five years old. He had a huge herd of horses, and his pinto mare, Patsy, had been kicked and injured by one of the aggressive geldings in his herd. Patsy needed some extra TLC to recover from her slight limp, and my uncle knew my brother and I were the right kids to provide that attention.

Patsy was a very smart horse. Whenever my flock of cousins would descend on our farm, everyone wanted to ride…all at once!

And Patsy was very kind to oblige. She would allow at least FIVE of us to climb aboard at the same time, then slowly parade around the yard. (Apparently our parents were much more relaxed and less afraid of injuries back in the 50’s and 60’s…I don’t remember much adult supervision during those rides but I’m guessing there was much more than I remember!)

No matter how small the cousins were, Patsy would take great care to make sure none of them fell off. If even one child began to lean left or right and begin to slide off, Patsy would literally stop in her tracks and LEAN THE OPPOSITE WAY until the child could regain his/her balance! It was absolutely amazing!

Once when I was alone and galloping at top speed through the pasture, Patsy tripped on some uneven ground and stumbled. I was thrown off….over her head! I remember seeing Patsy skidding to stop from crushing me, and then I must have blacked out for a moment. The next thing I remembered was waking up and having Patsy standing over me, nuzzling my face with her lips and whiskers!

The long skid marks made by her hooves in the dirt showed me how hard she had worked to stop from trampling me as I lay in the pasture. This show of love still brings tears to my eyes as I’m writing this…about sixty years after it happened. What a dear, treasured friend she was.

And Ginger was my OTHER girl; a horse with a mind of her own. My Dad bought her from a cowboy at the monthly horse sale in Kalona. When all of the cowboy’s purchases wouldn’t fit in his horse trailer, Dad made him an offer and Ginger came home to live with us. She apparently liked me more than she liked Dad, because she had a bad habit of trying to scrape my dad off of her back by galloping too close to our wooden fence whenever he decided to go for a ride! (I especially remember Dad’s wild ride when a stirrup broke on the saddle….and Dad had a REALLY close brush with that fence. It was REALLY HARD not to laugh…even though I knew I shouldn’t!)

I miss those days, surrounded by horses. And if you’ve read my Bucket List you may remember I still have dreams of galloping around a real race track on a thoroughbred! (Just call me crazy in my old age…)

It had been YEARS since Peepaw and I had been to a horse race. So recently we made the trek to Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

This racetrack, built in 1939, is one of the premier thoroughbred racing venues in America. The season runs from December through April, and many of the horses who race for the Triple Crown can be seen in the months leading up to that much-anticipated horse racing trifecta. Gulfstream Park is located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and it’s only one mile from the ocean…a beautiful setting, for sure.

Times have changed at the track. These days it’s not enough to offer world class horse racing, so a huge casino and high-end shopping mall and upscale restaurants have been added.

We arrived right before the first race and were in a hurry to find the betting windows. (Those $2 bets were eating a hole in my purse!) And as we walked toward the track we realized just how much betting has changed…there were hardly any humans at the betting windows!!! It was so confusing we missed placing bets on that first race.

I found an usher who explained that seating was FREE if we stayed downstairs at the concessions level beside the track, but we wanted a better view of the races, so we marched up the stairs and were greeted by an elderly usher who said the seats we wanted would cost $5 each. She also informed me that the same seats had cost $50 each the day before, during the sold out Florida Derby so I’m glad we hadn’t chosen THAT day to check out the park, especially since we’re such “high rollers.”

We spent a fun afternoon, and, rest assured, the track did not make a fortune from our bets…even after we finally figured out “the system.” At first, Peepaw trekked all the way back downstairs to place his bets, but we finally found a track employee who told us someone will actually come to the seats to take our money…sort of like a peanut vendor at baseball games!

She took our cash and simply printed out the tickets from her “money belt” around her waist. I must say the charm and romance of heading to the betting window (I think I spent $12 the whole day!) has been lost by this newfangled innovation. (Bring back those guys in the green visors behind the windows at those tall counters! THOSE were the days at the track!)

Before each race, the odds of winning are projected onto the giant screen in the middle of the track. The odds keep changing, based on how many people are betting and on which horse they are placing their bets. You can place any amount of money on a horse to Win (finish first), Place (finish second), or Show (finish third), or you can get really crazy and bet things like trifectas, perfectas, and lots more combinations I can’t even pronounce…but those bets are WAY out of MY league!

And if betting on the races happening in front of you is not enough, you can go inside and check out LOTS of TV monitors to watch and place bets on races happening at race tracks all around the country! It’s called simulcast betting. Whew! So MANY ways to lose money. Who knew! But this old Meemaw stuck to betting on those beautiful horses running right in front of us…an awesome sight.

I was having no luck until the last race…when my $2 To Win bet paid off with a win from #2 Brown Almighty! (Since Peepaw was a UPS driver for 3o years I just KNEW it was the horse for me! Remember that TV ad…What can BROWN do for YOU?)

Before we headed to the car, I found the “ticket lady” to collect my winnings, and I must say it was fun to watch her counting out that cold, hard cash into my hand…all $22.60 of it! Not bad for a $2 bet. And I recouped all of my earlier losses with money left over! 

Which meant I came home from the track with money in my pocket…

…but even better was the time spent remembering my four-legged childhood friends…PRICELESS.