Woman has hallowed memories of Saratoga

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, Aug. 13, 2006

The woman was standing by the side of the track, her eyes wet with tears.

She had spoken to a track attendant and solemnly watched him walking away. He strolled back onto the dirt of the racecourse as the machines soothed the aching sod to get it ready for the next race.

A few minutes earlier, the horses had all crossed the finish line, cheered on by thousands who called out their names: Genuine Devotion. Easy Start. Most Beautiful Storm.

Now everything was quiet, a pause between races.

The gamblers shuffled their way to the betting windows. The horses were guided back to the familiarity of their own barns by hot walkers whose names no one will ever know and the jockeys went off to rest before their next mount.

Nearby, the sound of a Dixieland band filled the air, mixing with the smell of fried dough and barbecued pork, as some stopped to marvel at a display of vintage race course photographs.

Others paused to ink their best wishes to a three-foot high greeting card that read, 'Marylou, Saratoga is Thinking of You.'

Nobody was talking about Porco, liquefied bombs, or faraway cities being blasted into dust. Here, life is no more and no less complicated than handicapping the next race and keeping an eye peeled for famous faces.

'We used to come here every year,' said the woman with the tears in her eyes, whose name is Mary Anne Darzentas. 'This is going back to about 1965.'

She would come every year with her husband Nicholas. Later, they started bringing along their children for the ride.

'We have been coming here since we were little kids,' the woman's daughter Demi recalled, while standing alongside the track with her mother and watching the track attendant who had an envelope in his hand.

'When he would win, we would go out to dinner and eat lobster,' Demi remembered. 'When he lost, we would get hot dogs.'

As the years passed and the family grew, the parents began bringing their grandchildren along with them. In April, Nicholas suffered a stroke and died. This summer, Darzentas made the trip from her Florida home to Saratoga alone.

'Forty years we were together. This was his favorite place in the whole world,' she said, watching the attendant standing on the track. She watched as he opened the envelope she had given him, watched as he turned it upside down. She solemnly stood and looked on as the ashes sprinkled out of the envelope and down upon the legendary track.

A few moments later, with wagers placed, everyone was rushing back in to the side of the track. The jockeys mounting their new horses, and thousands cheered the animals on by calling out their names. The happiest were the ones who picked the eventual winner, a horse crossing the finish line that went by the name Miracle Moment.

photo by Thomas Dimopoulos of Funny Cide at Paddock, Saratoga Race Course, 2006.