There’s a nostalgic way to view Rockingham Park, of course.
Thirty years ago, when the track was still a national jewel on the horse racing circuit, Joe Lewko of Windham would stand with his father near Turn 4, at the start of the stretch run. He could hear the jockeys whistling at their horses, the hooves pounding the dirt, the horses breathing hard as the finish line grew closer on the horizon.
“I can shut my eyes and still hear it,” Lewko said Wednesday in the grandstand, overlooking thick brush and weeds that now surround the 1-mile oval.
There’s also a practical way to view The Rock, which closed its doors for good at midnight, 110 years after it opened. I got that from state Sen. Lou D’Allesandro of Manchester, who was off to the races when asked what might have been had the state House of Representatives approved expanded gambling, and had The Rock been used to host it.
He saw jobs, revenue, prosperity.
“Are you kidding? We gave away $2 billion in state revenue,” D’Allesandro told me by phone. “We just gave it away. I think it’s a great tragedy for New Hampshire, gross negligence by the House.”
It’s easy to see that the end of The Rock elicits strong emotions. The track reaches far back into history, to the early part of the 20th century, a place where Bing Crosby partied and Seabiscuit raced in the 1930s. But it’s also a place that won’t loosen its grip on future discussions, as people lament the building of a five-star luxury resort and casino in Everett, Mass., creating a future gold mine, they say, for our neighbor.
And leaving us with egg on our face.
For now, and until an auction Sept. 24-25, we’re left with black-and-white images scattered around the administrative offices, where The Rock’s general manager, Ed Callahan, brought me down memory lane Wednesday.
“There’s a little bit of sadness,” said Callahan, who worked at The Rock for 33 years. “Change is sometimes difficult for people.”
Back in the day, during the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, The Rock’s outdoor grandstand drew 30,000 to 40,000 fans. Racing there was shown on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The 1973 movie The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, mentioned its name. The 1980s detective drama Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich, was filmed there. Mickey Rooney used to go there. Trains from New York City and New Jersey brought fans and horses there. Closed circuit telecasts of boxing matches featuring Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns were shown there. And on and on.
That’s why people were sad Wednesday, calling their final day at The Rock a funeral. They went for the nationwide simulcast racing, which had replaced the live thoroughbred racing, last held there in 2002, and harness racing, which lasted until 2009. They went for the poker room, too.
And, like the 36-year-old Lewko, a race horse owner himself thanks to The Rock’s influence, they came for another reason as well.
“I’ve been coming here since I was 6,” Lewko said. “I would come here with my dad, my uncles my grandfather.”
Wednesday he came with 67-year-old Vinny Gedaminsky, a retired information technology supervisor at Harvard University. He’s been going to The Rock for 44 years. He recalled squeezing up near the finish line, where a blur of beauty used to finish while thousands roared.
“It caught me right off the bat and I’ve been a player ever since,” Gedaminsky told me. “I felt pride to be a New Hampshire resident, and part of it was The Rock. The Rock is dead, but also part of New Hampshire is now dead.”
I also met 80-year-old Charlie Samataro. His two sons once worked at The Rock, one doing valet parking while attending the University of New Hampshire, the other working a TV camera in one of the towers that still stands. Samataro worked security in the still-standing Jock’s Club, where the jockeys changed their silks, shot pool and ate. He said he broke up fights inside between these short, slight competitive men, adding, “They were little, but they were strong.”
Samataro made sure I knew that the late, legendary owner Lou Smith cut checks to build pools for youth groups and floors for new junior high schools.
“This is depressing,” Samataro said. “I’m hoping for a plaque here or a museum to remember.”
Strangely, the most information I gathered, the most detail, came not from an old-timer, but from a young buck named Scott Oldeman, a 31-year-old Salem High School graduate. He grew up a short gallop from the track, lived next door to a recent owner and now is the unofficial archivist, when he’s not working as a product development engineer.
He told me about the fire that ripped through the grandstand in 1980 and closed the track for four years.
He showed me the old paddock where the horses waited before strolling down a gravel incline to the track; the timing devices near the finish line; the peeling metal and wood tote board; the press box high above, near the camera room with the 30-year-old camera still standing by the window, the one Oldeman used to film the action; and, in a far-off area reached only through wild brush and weeds, the grave and tombstone of Springsteel, who had to be put down after a racing accident on June 30, 1934.
“I want people to remember this place,” Oldeman said.
They will, in those old black-and-white images Callahan gathered in those old boxes in those old offices. Meanwhile, local businessman Joe Faro has plans to build a multi-purpose complex on the site, with approval from Salem officials.
The Rock is dead, leaving some to feel like the state blew a chance to bridge the past with the future. D’Allesandro said he needs a “weeping vase” for his tears.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” D’Allesandro said. “It’s crazy what we’ve given up. It’s a very sad day.”