The track used to be called Blue Bonnets. That was when Decarie was known as The Strip, a stretch of real estate that was home to popular restaurants catering to a Runyonesque collection of horse players and bon vivants. Miss Montreal and Piazza Tomasso aren't there any more. And in the era of lottery terminals on every corner, the track lacks the allure it had when horse racing was the only legal action in town. People still go to the Hippodrome but while they'll be sipping mint juleps at the Derby on Saturday, the libation of choice at our track is Geritol.
Slot machines make money.
But easy access to one-armed bandits, as they were called when Bugsy Siegel and I were young, creates social problems, like the tragic suicide at the Casino last week. L'Homme's report does not tackle the issue of whether a resident of Mountain Sights Ave. would head out to the depanneur and promptly drop a month's milk money down the sinkhole of a slot machine. But the social impact of creating a casino in a low-income residential district drew the easily aroused ire of Marvin Rotrand. Over breakfast yesterday, he remembered boyhood outings to the Orange Julep, just up Decarie from what was then a thriving Blue Bonnets. That was then.