A husband and wife in their mid-40s arrive at the River Downs grandstand a few minutes before the first race. He heads for a betting window to cash in the tickets they found the day before. She begins rummaging through trash cans.
”Look at her,” says the husband, Jerry, a balding man with brown, deep- set eyes. He shakes his head.
”That doesn`t look very ladylike. But she`s a real lady, all right. She`s the best stooper I`ve ever seen, too.”
Jerry and Peggy have been stoopers for six years. Stoopers hang out at the track looking for winning tickets that, for one reason or another, non-stoopers have thrown away.
Maybe they bet on a horse that scratched and they didn`t know they could get their money back. Maybe they bet on a horse to show and it won and they didn`t realize the bet was still good. You never know, Jerry says.
The term ”stooper” comes from the verb ”to stoop,” which is what Peggy and Jerry do when they see a betting slip on the grandstand floor.
”Here`s the kind you want,” Jerry says, stooping and coming back up with a discarded slip that has been neatly folded to one-fourth its original size. ”You know another stooper hasn`t picked this one up because a stooper isn`t going to bother to fold it again.”
A few steps later, he finds a ticket with its top right-hand corner torn away.
”That`s the kind you don`t want. Another stooper`s already picked it up, seen it wasn`t any good and torn off the corner so the rest of us wouldn`t waste our time with it.”
The bell rings for the second race. The wagerers crowd toward the fence as the horses surge out of the gate. Peggy-a petite, pretty woman in a striped sundress-works the floor along the windows, stuffing slips into a canvas satchel marked ”Le Bag.”
Like her husband, she prefers to keep her last name to herself. And she`d rather not talk about the money stoopers can make.
”Jerry and I, we`re not dumb-we wouldn`t do this if we weren`t making money,” she says. ”But the competition is stiff. Between here, Turfway and Lebanon, you already have 35 stoopers. The pie isn`t that big.”
Besides, she says, stooping is hard work. On weekends, she and Jerry usually fill three plastic garbage bags with tickets, take them home to Blanchester, Ohio, and stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning looking through them.
”And we still might go two weeks at a time without finding anything. We end up eating a lot of bologna sandwiches.
”But as long you try, you`ll be taken care of. I always ask God, `Let there be something in the bag today.` And just when we need it most, there`s always something there.”
Peggy and Jerry reconnoiter after the third race. They`ll wait until the next race begins to work the windows. That way they won`t disturb the bettors. Stooping is more a privilege than a right, Jerry says. A good stooper is a courteous stooper, he says.
Sometimes, they dream about what it would be like to work the bigger tracks-the Keenelands, the Saratogas, the Santa Anitas. Peggy has heard that Oaklawn brings in a daily handle of $1 million.
”We could make a fortune at Keeneland, but they don`t allow stooping,”
Jerry says.
Maybe someday, Peggy says. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. The bell rings for the fourth race. The tickets are waiting. –
