Seeking a Trifecta of Food, Bets and Slots

Cracked Claw Has History of Changing With the Times

Above, customers eat and watch simulcast horse racing at the Cracked Claw in Urbana. Richard Yates places a bet, left, and then watches a race, below, through binoculars to better see the monitor. The Cracked Claw has 120 TV monitors to carry races from as far as Australia and 21 tellers to take bets. (Photos Larry Morris -- The Washington Post)

Rain was making chocolate-colored goo of the track at Laurel Park. Same for Aqueduct in New York and Ohio's Beulah Park.

But the sun was shining at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. The TV monitors glowed as the horses cantered to the gate -- a last, best hope for those who placed bets.

Post time had come again at the Cracked Claw in Urbana, a restaurant and off-track betting (OTB) parlor just over the Montgomery County line in Frederick County. Inside this confection of kitsch and clashing architecture, there is always another bugle summoning horses to the gate, another simulcast to cheer, another chance to win.

"Come on! Come on!" a man yelled one day last week. Then he cursed, loudly, before cracking the lid on another seven ounce beer in a bucket of ice.

"Oh, I guess he lost," Mary Yates said dryly.

Yates, 71, seated a table over from the screamer, is a real estate agent from Sykesville and grandmother of eight who takes horse racing much less seriously than her neighbor does. She chuckled at the notion of combing through the Daily Racing Form. If she cannot pick a potential winner by its color ("I like a gray horse. But nobody's running gray horses."), then she bets on the selections her husband, Richard, has scribbled on an envelope. She had $5 riding on Miss Valid Joann in the third race at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla.

"There's ours. They're getting in the gate now," she said.

As the horses broke, Richard Yates, 79, lifted binoculars to his eyes, the better to see the monitor. His wife barely stirred as her horse faded in the stretch.

"Nope," he said from behind the binoculars.

"We lost. I wasted my money," she said.

"Well, I gave you a bummer," he said.

Like most folks at the Cracked Claw last week, their outing was not about a payday. The Yateses said they come maybe three times a year, and last week Mary said she was glad to be sharing it with her husband of 46 years and one of their adult sons.

"I enjoy the waitresses," she said. "It's like a family thing. The ambiance is cute."

The restaurant -- whose full name is the Cracked Claw at Peter Pan, Restaurant and Sports Palace -- was a Maryland landmark long before John "Pappy" Poole and his wife, BJ, bought it in 1989.