How to get a horse-racing job

Pete Lawrence, a writer who got his first racetrack job at the Monticello Raceway in 1972, recalls in Hoof Beats Magazine how he walked his way into the gig: 

So one spring morning in '72, my dad, my good friend Danny Rosenblatt (who's Dr. Rosenblatt these days, a chemist in Silicon Valley) and I bounded into the car in search of summertime groom's employment.

Where to start? At the top, natch. We dropped in, uninvited, on track president Leon Greenberg, not having any idea how ridiculous a plan that was. He handed us off to racing secretary Ralph Swalsky, who in turn, pointed us in the direction of trainer Tony Del Priore, who wasn't hiring. But another trainer, Mike Vicidomini, took us on. He offered the princely sum of zero salary for July, which would be our first month, and $50 weekly each to Danny and me for August.

We cleaned lots of equipment, mucked lots of stalls, and eventually got to jog some horses. We saw guys like Clint Galbraith, Eldon and Levi Harner, Jim Grundy, John and George Gilmour, Jack Quinn, Bobby Camper, George Forshey, Herman Carbone (and the star driving contingent from Montreal that followed Swalsky down from the north, which included Benoit Cote, Serge Grise, Robert Samson, the aforementioned Gilles Lachance, and Albert Hanna) up close and personal in the barn area every day. It was fantastic.