The Belmont Stakes

by Gerald Singer

In the early 1960s, the city of Yonkers, New York was a growing suburb. Newcomers, mostly recent émigrés from the Bronx, overshadowed the original population changing the nature and character of the city.

From 1959 to 1963, I attended Roosevelt High School in Northeastern Yonkers. The school, like the city, was in the process of change and expansion. In those days peer pressure demanded staying within narrowly defined socially acceptable norms. Nonconformity wasn't yet the virtue it was to become by the end of the decade. This was pre-Beatles, pre-Dylan and pre-Alan Alda. Long hair and sensitivity for males were not yet popular.

One day toward the middle of the school year, a new student came to Roosevelt. His name was Stuart. Stuart was the first boy I ever saw who had long hair. He had long blond hair, he wore thick eyeglasses and ... he came to school in a suit and tie.
A suit and tie! This was unheard of! This was asking for trouble! No one had ever seen anything like it at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, New York.

No one said anything to him, or challenged him that day, but by the end of the day everyone was talking about the new kid with the long hair, glasses and suit and tie.
In those days you could smoke cigarettes at lunchtime if you went outside. After lunch the kids that smoked, and some others that didn't smoke, but just liked the change of environment, would hang around in the smoking area. In addition to smoking cigarettes and shooting the bull with one another, we would play games like Johnny on the Pony or pitching pennies. Johnny on the Pony was a rough game that would often result in injuries and was finally banned by the school authorities. Pitching pennies was a more benign activity. The players would toss their hard-earned pennies against the wall, and the one who came closest to the wall would keep all the other pennies.
On Stuart's second day at school, he walked out to the area were the kids were pitching pennies. There he was; the guy with long hair and thick glasses and suit and tie. He strolled over to the circle of penny pitchers with an air of nonchalance. No one said a word. Everyone just stared.

Stuart walked right over to where the pennies were lying near the wall. Without looking at anyone he reached into the lapel pocket of his suit and pulled out a test tube. He opened up the test tube and poured the liquid contents on the pennies. Smoke bellowed up. The pennies bubbled and crackled and turned green. A distinctly chemical odor overpowered the smell of cigarette smoke. Stuart looked up and smiled at the boys whose expressions had changed from somewhat threatening to perplexed and bewildered. He walked slowly toward the shade of an old oak tree, lit up a cigarette and chuckled.

Stuart had put nitric acid on the pennies, a chemical that reacts violently with copper. His trick gained him instant acceptance.

It turned out that Stuart had previously attended an exclusive private school in Queens, New York. Although he had a reputation for being rebellious and a troublemaker, he was excellent student. Chemistry had been his favorite subject and he wasn't above taking this knowledge out of the classroom and into the outside world.

In fact, it was his love of chemistry that ultimately brought Stuart to Yonkers where he was placed, for the first time in his life, in a public school. A chemistry experiment that Stuart was working on at home had gone awry. Stuart burned a giant hole in the floor of his family's apartment and, consequently, in the ceiling of his downstairs neighbor. This was not the first problem that Stuart had caused in his luxury Queens apartment building, but it was the last. His family was asked to leave, and, subsequently, they relocated to Yonkers.
One other thing set Stuart apart from the other kids; Stuart routinely carried with him several one hundred-dollar bills. Now hundred dollar bills had a lot more value back then; and no kid that I knew of had ever even seen one before. But Stuart had hundred dollar bills!

Even though Stuart was the richest kid we had ever known, it seemed that he never actually paid for anything. This was because it was always assumed that nobody would ever be able to make change for a hundred-dollar bill. If we were going on a bus, for example, Stuart would say, "Oh would you pay my bus fare; all I have on me are these one hundred dollar bills, I'll pay you back when I make change." He rarely did.
Stuart, with his long hair, thick glasses, suit and tie, nitric acid and hundred dollar bills intrigued me. When I got to know him better, I asked how it was that he was so rich and how did he got his hundred dollar bills. Stuart explained that he got his wealth by going to the racetrack.
In those days racing fans were all talking about an amazing thoroughbred named Kelso. Stuart was in love with Kelso. He named his dog Kelso. Whenever Kelso would run in a race at Aqueduct or Belmont, Stuart would go to the track, where he obtained entrance despite his age, and he would bet on Kelso. Apparently Kelso never lost, and Stuart just kept on winning more and more money.
The Triple Crown is the racing event, equivalent to the World Series of baseball and the Superbowl of football. It refers to the three biggest races of the year, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont stakes.
At the time, only eight horses had ever won the Triple Crown, that is, all three races in one year. Kelso had already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and was due to run the Belmont Stakes the very next week at Belmont. The handicappers, who wrote their prediction of race results in the New York newspapers, had almost unanimously picked Kelso to be the winner of this last leg of the Triple Crown.

Stuart intended to be at Belmont to bet on Kelso, and he explained to me that no other horse in that race could possibly beat Kelso; it was, Stuart explained to me, what was in racing circles known as a "sure thing."

I decided to go to Belmont with Stuart. I would also bet on Kelso to win the third leg of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, and I would win some hundred-dollar bills of my own.

I still needed money to bet with, however. At home, buried deep in one of my drawers, was a bankbook with a balance of $500.00 representing my savings over the years. Most of the money, however, came from cash Bar Mitzvah gifts I had received from relatives. The money that had come in the form of checks and bonds was under the control of my parents, but they had allowed me to place the cash money in my own bank account with the stipulation that the money be saved for my college education. I figured I could replace the money in the bank account after I won at the track - and I could keep the rest to spend however I wanted. With that strategy in mind, I went to the bank and withdrew the $500.00 - in hundred-dollar bills.
Stuart and I arranged for a kid named Crazy Howie, who was eighteen, and had his senior driving license, which allowed him to drive in New York City, and who had a totally customized car which he drove - crazily - to take us to the track.

We got into the racetrack without having to answer any question about our age.

The Kentucky Derby and the Preakness differ from the Belmont Stakes in that while the Derby is a mile-and-a-quarter and the Preakness a mile-and-three-sixteenths and are both one-mile races run on dirt, the Belmont Stakes is a mile-and-a-half-race and was, at the time, run on turf. Even though Kelso was not a great turf runner, he still was the odds-on favorite. Neither Stuart nor I were aware of the turf angle anyway, and I went ahead and bet the whole $500.00 on Kelso - to win - "on the nose" as they say in racetrack jargon. Stuart bet $1,000, also "on the nose."
The race began. Kelso moved out easily to the front and soon developed a lead of several lengths. I began to calculate my winnings. I could picture in my imagination the prestige of coming to school with hundred dollar bills in my wallet.

The horses were rounding the last turn before the final stretch when, out of nowhere, a horse started to move up on the outside of the track. His name was Beau Purple. He was what was called in racing jargon, "a long shot" - a very long shot.

At the head of the stretch you could clearly see Beau Purple advancing through the pack. There was excitement in the announcer's voice, "and there's Beau Purple moving up on the outside!" Suddenly, he challenging the wonder horse himself, Kelso, "and coming down the stretch it's Kelso and Beau Purple - Kelso and Beau Purple!" The two horses raced neck and neck down the final stretch, but, when they crossed the finish line, the photograph of the finish showed Beau Purple's nose to be slightly ahead of Kelso's nose. Beau Purple was the winner of the Belmont Stakes - by a nose.

Beau Purple paid over $60.00 for each two-dollar bet. Kelso, who ran off at less than even money, still paid $3.20 on a place ticket, but that, of course, was no consolation to Stuart and I with our stack of worthless $100.00 win tickets.
On the way home, in Crazy Howie's customized Ford, Crazy Howie asked Stuart for twenty-five cents to pay the toll on the Cross Island Parkway. Stuart said, "Howie, someone else will have to pay the toll - because all I have in my wallet is this hundred dollar bill.