Only Wheel in Town

In the starting gate, eight skittish thoroughbreds pawed at the frozen ground and shot steam from flaring nostrils. Cold-numbed jockeys gripped the reins and tensed for the starter's signal. "They're off!" shouted Track Announcer Raymond Haight--but on the first turn, the horses disappeared in a blinding snowstorm. Haight gave up trying to call the race, made a mock appeal to the crowd: "If anybody knows who that horse is that's on top by four lengths, will he please call extension 37?"

Snow and subfreezing temperatures do little to cool the enthusiasm of the hardy horse players who jam West Virginia's Charles Town Race Course each day during the long winter: 30,000 were on hand last week. Pockets bulging with Mason jars of moonshine, Shenandoah farmers huddled over their tout sheets; Baltimore businessmen traded tips with pin-striped Washington politicians. For hundreds of other two-buck bettors from New York and Philadelphia, the day at the races had begun at 6 a.m., when they boarded special buses for a five-hour trek to the track.

"I wouldn't get up that early to look for a job," said Long Island Printer Frank Tuboccini, a Charles Town regular, "but to go to the races, I don't mind nothing."

Rigged Races. Most of the racing buffs who come to tiny (pop. 5,000) Charles Town are the same breed--refugees from the big-city race tracks of the North. They travel to West Virginia because New York and Maryland tracks are closed, because Florida is too expensive and too far away. Explains one hardbitten railbird: "Charles Town is the only wheel in town."

Tucked into West Virginia's nubby Blue Ridge Mountains, Charles Town was built in 1933, survived the Depression to become one of the nation's most successful small tracks: its parimutuel machines handle an average of $340,000 each day of the three-month winter meeting. Old-timers fondly recall the track's early years, when races were rigged, payoff prices were faked, and a nearby electrical shop offered specialties for jockeys: "A little battery to stimulate your own horse, or a dynamo big enough to electrocute the rest of the field."

Hay at 50-c-. Now thoroughly respectable, Charles Town Race Course is the biggest business in all of Jefferson County, employs 1,200, and boasts a $5 million plant--including a heated clubhouse and a three-quarter-mile track that is specially designed to provide good footing, even when it is covered with snow. But Charles Town's persistent problem is still the freakish winter weather. In 1954, a bolt of lightning struck the starting gate, knocked out Starter Harold Holland and the two Percherons that were tugging the gate into position. In 1956, riders abruptly quit for the day after a 60-m.p.h. gust of wind blew Jockey George Stidham out of his saddle as he was leading the pack through the stretch.

With its steady menu of cheap claiming races,* Charles Town rarely attracts stakes-winning thoroughbreds or top jockeys, who prefer to compete for rich purses at the lush winter tracks of Florida or California. But it is a haven for penny-wise trainers (hay costs only 50-c- a bale, v, $2.40 in Florida) and hungry young riders hoping to crash the big time. Charles Town's graduates include such well-known riders as Ted Atkinson and Willie Hartack. But for others, like battle-worn Jockey Sam Palumbo, 53, who rode in the track's first program, the cosy, small-town atmosphere is the main attraction. "We don't have to be gypsies here," says Palumbo. "We can live a family life, like other people."

Nobody gets rich quick on Charles Town's slim ($1,000 to $3,000) purses, but Mutuel Clerk Tommy Carr set a one-race record that will be hard to match: he punched his own tickets, helped saddle his horse in the paddock, watched the race, went to the winner's circle to be photographed, and returned to his window to pay himself off.

*In which any horse entered may be "claimed" by another owner, before the start, for a predetermined price. If a claimed horse wins, his purse goes to the original owner.

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