While talking about Florida a few days ago, I recalled my experience working at Hialeah Race Track. I had studied horse husbandry in high school and a friend from this program had found employment with the renown trainer of everyone’s darling, Secretariat. I would fly down to spend about a month. It was during winter break of my first semester in college and my initial experience on an airplane.

People usually associate horse racing with big money. But I was working on the lowest rung of the hierarchy at the backstretch. My job, as a hotwalker, entailed walking the thoroughbreds after their morning workouts until they were cool. My day began hours before dawn and ended in the early afternoon, I worked seven days a week, made about $62 for that week, and loved every minute of it.

I had previously been employed at Belmont, would spend the next summer at Saratoga, but Hialeah was a different kind of adventure- I was far from home. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly Cuban and I would practice the little Spanish I knew when ordering the delicious, inexpensive, specials of meat, fish or chicken, rice, beans and platanos. I shared a motel room with my three friends, all women. We doubled up on the pull-out couch and bed.

During the early hours of the day we worked and on occasion took in the nightlife. But I recall most of our time hanging out by the motel pool.

Money was tight.

However our bellies were always sated. When we weren’t treating ourselves to the local Cuban or Chinese cuisine we subsisted largely on peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches. It was for me a new combination of ingredients I never tired of.

I enjoy them still.