There goes Swifty

A quintessential working-class guy, he had an unusually diverse circle of friends that included governors (Herter and Volpe) and bookmakers, judges, and laborers. He was an accomplished candlepin bowler, a high-handicap weekend golfer, and a denizen - to use a word he would not have used - of what he called simply “the track.’’

In my late teens, he would ask me to go along with him on summer nights and watch the last few races. Wonderland was about a mile from our house. We drove down Beach Street, parked in the huge lot, and walked across Route 1A filled with a low-key anticipation. Remarkably free with money in most respects, my father would save a buck by asking one of the departing patrons to hand over a used program.

Once we were inside, instead of standing near the rail in the cigar smoke and the litter of losing tickets, we’d climb up into the grandstand. You were supposed to pay extra for admission to the grandstand - there were clean seats there that looked out through a glass wall, and ushers who would place your bets in exchange for tips - but, as was often the case, my father had a friend who worked there, and the friend let us in without charge. It was not the money but the gesture that mattered. My father - like every other sane man or woman on the premises - knew that he was probably going to make an unwilling contribution to the owners’ retirement funds that night. The free program and free seat were small compensations.

He’d sit with friends he had known for 50 years or more. One of them, if memory serves, was Revere’s chief of police. Others had less substantial, and sometimes less . . . socially acceptable . . . positions.

Between races, they’d smoke and laugh and work the program’s numbers the way carpenters figure the cut of a rafter. You had to consider so many factors: Was the dog a fast starter? Was she running out of a box she liked? How had he done in his past few races? Was he moving up or down in class? Had his weight changed?

Sometimes, playing a perfecta or trifecta, he’d forget all that and just bet my mother’s birthdate, or part of the telephone number of one of his seven siblings. If his dogs were still in it on the last turn, he’d mutter, “Once, once!’’ Asking the fates - again and again - for one final favor.

Years after my father’s premature death, I was assured by a family friend and compulsive gambler: “Your dad never lost any house money at the track, you know that, right?’’ Which meant, I believe, that he was always able to walk away from the place when he had to. Times when he won, he’d find some way of spreading the good fortune - taking us on a day trip to the Topsfield Fair, or just slipping me $10 and making sure I spent it somewhere else.

Last year, when I saw the ballot initiative banning greyhound racing, I had the kind of mixed feelings he would not have had. Friends claimed the animals were mistreated; people who worked at the track said that wasn’t so. But it didn’t really matter. Wonderland had already gone the way of the amusements at Revere Beach - so close that you could stand on the sidewalk there and hear the race announcer calling out, “Heeeeere comes Swifty!’’ when the greyhounds and whippets were yelping and thumping in the starting boxes. Foxwoods and Vegas were cool, dog racing was not.

The last race on Friday will be on the eve of my birthday, so I’m sure that, if my father was still alive, we’d go “down the track’’ together and lose a little money. My guess is there will be slot machines at Wonderland soon, or maybe a fancy mall. Those of us who spent time there - with a father or friend - will be left with a few wisps of good memory, something like the strands of salty fog that drifted in over the track on certain August nights.

Roland Merullo’s most recent book is the travel memoir “The Italian Summer.’’