Life is funny. If the opportunities for vocational fulfillment that I'm currently enjoying were presented to me 30 years ago, I'd have realized that it was cool, but I wouldn't have been focused enough to do the jobs to the best of my ability. I was pretty darned distracted by horses and hanging at the track with my friends--but even though I was a railbird, no one ever talked to me about working at the track, or a career in the sport. Had someone taken the initiative, they might have helped carve the angel out of the stone.
With no wizened racetracker adult to rein me in and help me find my vocation in the sport, I thought of racing as something I loved passionately--obsessively--but something that I did on Saturdays and Sundays, after a full week of work and summer school.
My confusion about the fact that racing could have provided a career was complicated by the fact that I was distracted by pretty rock star faces whose big buses drove down Union Avenue on their way to SPAC. I was pretty easily fascinated by those who had mastered Three Chords and the Truth: "Oooh! Look at that! (Think, "kitten with ADD.")
M.E. Altieri
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