Guardians of Grail

cheapbag214s · Posted: Tue 7:49, 06 Aug 2013 Post subject: Only slightly less raucous

a piece titled "A Very Pious Story," about a "Christian bettor." It's an all-time classic, but I'll only give you the punch line: "'Thank you, Lord,' the guy says. 'I'll take him from here. Come on, you son of a bitch!'"Only slightly less raucous, but no less funny, was his November 1967 piece, titled "Dead Sea Downs," written in "Occupied Jordan" following its Six-Day War with Israel. The subtitle of the column—"A Racetrack Where it All Began"—led to this:The lowest gambling hell in the world lies hard by the shore of the Dead Sea, 1,291 feet below sea level. Nowhere on the face of the earth can you get lower, not at CharlesTown or Suffolk Downs, not even at Aqueduct on a Tuesday in November. The gambling hell has no official name. Call it Dead Sea Downs or Qumran Park. It is a little Shoeless Joe of a racetrack on the desert, at present a casualty of last June's Six-Day War but in its time a center of cheerful debauchery in a region where sin isn't