The Other Side of the Track

[prist]

Who wants to spend the day handicapping with Andy Beyer at Hialeah?

If the Beyer figs are not your style, then maybe you\'ll enjoy doing some ground work at Belmont Park with Connie Merjos.

Or maybe you just want to relax and listen to some music. Then I suggest you crank up the volume as Len Ragozin jams on the banjo. Yes, I said banjo.

If you\'re interested send an email to archive_requests@wgbh.org

Ask to view a Frontline episode titled: The Other Side of the Track. Program number 211.

Enjoy.

[TGJB]

Shortly after I started working for Len he moved to a shotgun flat on Perry st. I took the place he had been living in, which was basically an attic just off Washington Square, cause the $100 a month was about all I could afford at 20. Four story walk up, bathroom in the hall.

The way the Perry street place was set up the paper files (way pre computers for either of us) were in the middle room. One night I'm working there and Len comes past me taking his date to his room. He closes the door, but I can hear enough to hear them talking. Then...

He evidently thought the way to impress her was with that banjo and his singing. He starts playing and bellowing (term used advisedly) "John Henry was a baby, sitting on his papa's knee"... No inhibitions whatsoever. And I had an instantaneous laughing fit.

At that time Len used to go into towering rages, and he was 6'5, and I was intimidated (which I got over, a few years later I threatened to punch his lights out). So I first locked myself in the bathroom, and when I could still hear him I left.

[P-Dub]

If you\'re taking a date back to your room, the impress part should already be done.

What a dork.

[trackjohn]

Legendary story JB...

[hellersorr]

Just a shame Ragozin\'s not available to tell JB stories over a drink or twelve. . .

)

[TGJB]

I wasn't that interesting back when he knew me.... late bloomer. He would tell you we had a bunch of fierce disagreements (ahem). He couldn't figure out whether to view me as a protege or a threat, and at the end when I started to do a lot better with his data than he did, it definitely became the latter.

What stories there were involved the whole group, Schwartz, Friedman, Jeff Langbert, Bernie Wishengrad, Julian, etc., sharing one set of sheets at a table in the dining room. I was a decade younger than the other guys. Ragozin didn't even have a copying machine in those days, and he never went to the track, all that self aggrandizing garbage in his book notwithstanding. I said this here years ago, but Connie told me after he read that book he was so mad he couldn't sleep for two days.

Friedman and Connie had a lot more and more interesting stories than me, back then. My girlfriend recorded an oral history with Connie some years before he died, he was a character and a half. His story about a hooker calling the cops on him in New Orleans because he smoked pot in front of her was pretty much a movie.

Pretty sure Friedman won't sit down for an oral history, but he should. I have plenty of beefs with that guy, but unlike Ragozin, he's not full of crap. He put his ass on the line in the South during the civil rights movement in the 60's.