Racino

Yesterday afternoon (Easter Sunday, March 27th, 2016) I ate out with my niece at Finger Lakes Racino.
The Racino is Finger Lakes horse-race track, with gambling casino attached.
I’ve been there before, a few times with retired Transit employees, and once with people from a bereavement group.
They have a buffet behind all the slot machines.
Thankfully it’s away from the din.
It’s a nice place, although pricy.
My bereavement people weren’t happy; it cost too much.
I don’t remember any complaints from the retired Transit employees.
The buffet cost $22.52; increased Easter pricing.
$22.52 is a fortune, considering what little I eat.
At least at a restaurant my cost is negligible.
So $22.52 for not much of anything.
The price of a pleasant time.
After dinner my niece and her daughter got up to play the slots.
Not this kid; for which I was declared by the daughter to be “boring.”
To me, playing the slots is the same as flushing your money down the toilet.
 “Yeah, but you may win,” my niece said.
 “May,” I said. “More than likely you won’t. This place can’t survive by forking over winnings all the time.”
Dinner finished, we all got up. My niece, etc for the slots, me to leave.
I stuck around planning to say goodbye to my niece’s mother — my niece lives with her mother. But her mother was on her cellphone talking to my wife’s 100-year-old mother down in FL.
After ten minutes I gave up.
Past the slots I walked.
I can’t stand the racket, the din of the slots.
Everywhere angry Grannies punching the slots, flushing away their money, hoping they’ll win sometime.
I’m sorry but I think this is fruitless. The Racino is making like a bandit. Ever more money flushed away in hopes of winning.
The place is awash in walkers and wheelchairs. Cripples seeking redemption.
Outside you have to avoid all the smokers noisily asserting their right to pollute — my lungs as well as theirs.
Some guy in a Trump tee-shirt was completely zonked on a park bench.
Shades of the Walmart* videos on You-Tube — flaccid shoppers in their pajamas.
I tiptoed past to avoid getting shot.
Nevertheless the Racino buffet is a nice place to eat, once past the slots, and the rumpled patrons frustrated by not winning.

• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• My wife died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her immensely.