Memories of a windfall, via a new racetrack

The Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama will be a thrilling experience for the millions expected to gather in Washington that day.

For hotels and local homeowners, according to The New York Times, Inauguration Week is expected to be a windfall. As I'll explain, old-time residents of Arlington Heights would understand how.

Every bed within a 25-mile radius of the Capitol is a potential source of revenue. One of the highest prices for a private home so far appears to be $57,000 for a week in a three-bedroom home near Chantilly, Va., about 24 miles from Washington.

Four nights at the Mandarin Oriental comes as a package deal. For $300,000 guests get catered meals complete with caviar and champagne, a Ralph Lauren wardrobe, and a chauffeured Maserati.

For the bargain-hunters there are many choices, including a futon on a basement floor, a sleeper sofa for $250 a night. There are also campground cabins (no running water) in Harpers Ferry for $65 a night.

There was no champagne or caviar, much less chauffeured Maseratis, for the people of Arlington Heights when the Arlington Race Track opened in 1927. But there was most certainly a "windfall" for the homeowners in town.

Like the fortunates in Washington, Arlington residents were quick to see how they could make a dollar without playing the horses. They could rent out their homes to the well-heeled patrons of the new track. Locals could move into their basements or attics. They could move in with relatives. They could double up with neighbors temporarily.

The racing season wasn't unbearably long, only 19 days the first year. And the horse owners who came for the summer were well able to pay handsome rents to the local people.

Lower paid employees, like the hot-walkers, slept in the railroad parks. And, as restaurateur P.K. Ladas once told me, they came into his place on Northwest Highway when they woke, used his bathroom to freshen up, and left for work by the back door. Years later, he told me this as a funny story.

At first the local people were tentative about harboring racetrack personnel. But in time many of the renters who returned every year became good friends with their host families. One of the young beauties in town married a jockey, at first a shocking development, but then a matter of pride as the jockey and his bride did very well together.

The racetrack also brought jobs. Most of the townspeople were shopkeepers, draymen or carpenters. More than 500 workers, mostly skilled carpenters, were hired in July 1927 to build stables to hold the horses, and two race tracks, one inside the other. Carl Weinrich recalled being paid 30 cents an hour doing cleanup work.

There were downsides to the coming of the racetrack. As Eleanor Dieball, whose father was the first uniformed policeman in town, once put it to me, "There is good and bad in everything."

But, overall, the track that builder "Curly" Brown planned "as the most beautiful in America," turned out to be a windfall for many, just as the inauguration is going to be.