Iannuccilli: What’s Your Favorite Number?
Dr. Ed Iannuccilli, Columnist
Iannuccilli: What’s Your Favorite Number?
I remember many a late summer evening when Dad took me to downtown Providence to “Go get The Record.” The Record was a Boston newspaper that was delivered to Rhode Island late in the evening. We drove to the corner of Washington and Aborn Streets in downtown Providence where there was a White Tower Diner and a fellow standing in front selling the paper. Dad gave me the money (I’m guessing a nickel), and I handed it to the gentleman who efficiently snap-folded the paper and gave it to me with a “Thanks, Kid.” Every older friend of my Dad’s called me “Kid” as did this paper man.
Dad scooted, distancing the car behind to pull over as soon as he could, opened the paper to the rear section and looked for “the number.” “What’s the number, Dad?”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“It has to do with the horse races, the first three horses’ positions in the last column …” and then he lost me. Most of the time, he said “Dammit.” I knew that meant he lost. I was never with him on the rare occasion when he won.
Dad’s other favored number, now mine, was four. One year, Diane and I went to the Kentucky Derby; a marvelous experience and spectacle humming with excitement. “Put twenty on the four-horse,” Dad said as his eyes widened, seemingly recalling the days of ‘The Record’.
I had played the number four horse in a previous race. Knowing nothing about racing, I figured I had as good a chance as any of the other one hundred thousand people there. I won three hundred dollars!
Well, after a long day of many races and lots of waiting, The Derby was off. Dad’s horse struggled. When I returned home, Dad, who watched the race on TV, said, “I saw my four-horse get nuzzled, actually jammed, into the starting gate with a big push by the handlers, but I never saw him again. What the heck happened?”
The horses had started together, but it didn’t take long for a separation. The other horses seemed not to like the four-horse, so they somehow found a way to keep him boxed in. That’s where he finished. Dead last.
“Dad, he started last and stayed that way all the way around. The other horses almost lapped him.”
“The Bum,” Dad’s common refrain when he was unhappy with the performance of an athlete. “No wonder they had to push him in.”
Ed Iannuccilli is the author of "Growing up Italian" and "What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner?" and "My Story Continues" can be found here.
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