Some Observations from the Hill
by H. H. "Hub" Brown

 Well, I had my first visit to the new Racino at Tioga Downs in Nichols. It's hard to believe what a change has been made there. After driving past the old grandstand and seeing the old barns, most of them not being used for anything, it's really quite a stretch of the imagination to see what they have done there. The man that has made all this change is a big real estate dealer down in New York. One day there was a piece in another newspaper that there were some local business people that thought Mr. Gural was a little too aggressive. My son Jim said that he had built a cushion into the track. So I'll bet all the horses liked him.
 I don't know how many millions he and this Nevada Gold and Casinos have spent but after the high startup costs, they expect this track and the one at Vernon Downs, at which they have done about the same amount of change, will earn about one million a month for both places are equipped with all sorts of gambling devices. 

 You know so many disturbing and devastating things have happened  recently that it bothers an old man like me to enumerate them all especially to put them in the order of their happening.

 Fritz and I saw lots of drowned out cornfields the other day on our trip to Wyalusing. The largest one and the only one that we saw that had been replanted was on the Bob Strong place. That huge flat, where the corn had had a good start, had all killed by the high water.

 Our two Senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, report that over 4,000 acres of crops were covered and all killed by the flood. It's hard to imagine just how poor Bernie, who was always so proud of how the grounds looked at fair time, must feel to have people see the grounds as they look today, and Jim as track superintendent, said that most drivers complimented him on the condition of the track. It makes me shiver just to imagine just how the stables will smell and look after another soaking in nasty old muddy water. Of course Jim has something to take his mind off that. When the new track opened at Nichols, Jim got a job as one of a panel of seven workers that sample the urine of the winners to see if any steroids or drugs had been used.

 Pat just told me on the phone that they had given Fritz another baby calf, a bull this time, down at the slaughterhouse. This happens when a cow or a heifer shows up at the killing line with a baby calf still attached to its mother. The inspector will say, "We can't process a cow like that. Put her in the suspect pen." This is a pen behind steel doors. If the mother keeps working to expel the calf or perhaps a couple of workers, having a few moments between loads might take hold and pull the calf on out. Then there would be no reason why the mother couldn't be killed and the calf is usually put into an empty room to await some generous person like Fritz to adopt him. It can be quite difficult to raise a calf under these circumstances as that first milk of the mother contains all the vitamins and safeguards a new calf needs to start his new life.