[Kasept]

This Morning…With Shirley Povich

FULL COLUMN: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ie-snow-storm/

At 1:30 in the morning the last Bowie horse player was hauled aboard the Pennsylvania Railroad’s mercy train which mushed in from Baltimore and reached trackside, its blinking lights promising passage to the outside world again for the beleaguered bettors of Bowie.

After the train was arriving, the hoards of sleepy, angry horse fans bolted from the harsh barracks Bowie had provided in the clubhouse, and sloughed the 100 yards to the rescue coaches. The snow that got in the way of their stampede was simply kicked away.

These were the last left over — 2000 Bowie fans of whom a day at the races had stretched into dusk, darkness, cold, hunger, food, warmth, beer, fun and then less fun. Stabbing at them all the while was a growing suspicion that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place to let the biggest snow in 22 years close the trap on them. There had been warnings against the weather.