An Apocalyptic Stroll Down Memory Lane

The everything-must-go auction to liquidate the contents of Rockingham Park drew an estimated 800 bidders and observers to the defunct Salem, N.H., track Sept. 24, when decades of memorabilia, wall-sized photographs, and archived press and marketing items were the main attraction. A scaled-down crowd of about one-tenth that number attended on Sept 25, when industrial kitchen equipment and thousands of chairs, televisions, poker tables, and bingo equipment were among the bulk items sold to the highest bidders.

James St. Jean Auctioneers, which conducted the two-day sale, would not reveal specifics about the sales, and the main number at Rockingham yielded a recording that said the facility was no longer open for business. But various reports on Twitter, including those posted by Jessica Chapel on @Railbird, revealed that items such as the track's nameplate from under the finish wire ($2,000) and the finish line pole marker ($700) attracted robust bidding.

If the Sept. 23 preview day for the auction was any indication, many of the attendees seemed to place more value on the sentimentality of the items rather than what the keepsakes might actually be worth on the open market.

The massive large-format images of champions Dr. Fager and Roman Brother that once graced the walls of the Rock press office commanded the auction setup in what used to be the track's sports bar, sharing space alongside jockeys' room scales and a tattered collection of long-since-faded silks and harness colors left behind after the track last hosted Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds in 2002 and 2009, respectively.

Hundreds of boxes of chart books, news clip scrapbooks, and troves of racing magazines that looked as if they hadn't been thumbed through in years were given a thorough going-over at Friday's preview, as were the thousands of individual photographs loosely organized by date or subject and grouped into smaller individual lots.

The sheer amount of archived 1940s-60s press photos of “Uncle Lou” Smith and his kindly wife Lutza presiding over innumerable fundraisers and charity drives was testament to the days when giving back to others in the community seemed to be the primary function of track management. The awe-inspiring images of the “old Rock” clubhouse and grandstand being consumed by flames in the catastrophic 1980 fire drew many comments from onlookers who recalled the devastation firsthand.

At one point during the preview, a longtime member of the New England backstretch community grew emotional upon coming across a smiling portrait of recently deceased jockey Jill Jellison, and the woman pleaded with an auction company employee to allow the photo to be removed from its numbered lot. The auction rep respectfully sympathized with the woman, and out of earshot of the other previewers, quietly suggested that she talk to Rockingham general manager Ed Callahan, who he said was making exceptions by letting some small sale items be handed over to people who had personal attachments to them before they went up for bidding.

A good number of items in the memorabilia section appeared to have significant archival value, but were badly outdated in terms of the media that they were recorded on.

Marveling over table laden with a 1965 film newsreel of Walter Cronkite reporting on the New Hampshire Sweepstakes race and boxes of long-playing records containing broadcasts of 1950s racing shows from a local radio station, Callahan gestured with his arm and said, “But what would you even play them on?”

For certain, though, the best reminiscences of Rock weren't up for sale. You could still attempt to access them by exploring long-abandoned areas of the property, although memory lane appeared as if it had been blind-sided by an apocalypse.

The main one-mile oval itself was in remarkably good shape, with the compacted stone dust base of the harness track admirably fighting off the out-of-control vegetation attempting to take over from underneath the outer fence and sagging Fontana safety rail. Most of the homestretch was used as a staging area for the track's aged fleet of vehicles, tractors, and maintenance equipment, including an equine ambulance that occupied a prime spot where the finish wire used to be.

The once-lush turf course, installed in 1986 and formerly maintained like a finely manicured billiards table, was unrecognizable as a racing surface. It was so parched and dry in some locations that even weeds seemed reluctant to take root.

A number of onlookers ventured out to pose for selfies in front of the decrepit tote board. The structure that was once a beacon of officialdom for countless races now seemed like a spooky, surreal shell whose electronic innards had been ravaged by the elements.

A trek across the overgrown infield, its drainage pond layered with green scum, led to what was left of the backstretch stables. Parcels of the barn area had already been subdivided and sold to retail developers, and were actively being demolished behind a fenced-off section.

The few barns that remained closest to the track were remarkably void of any physical evidence that racehorses once lived there. No stray horseshoes were left behind for good luck, although a few whiteboards remained intact with training routines outlined in faded, bleeding ink. Calendars remained affixed to the walls of several tack rooms, where time stopped in 2009, the year of Rock's last harness season.

The veterinary shed at the top of the stretch appeared ransacked, the desks and floors strewn with x-rays of long-forgotten racehorses, a scattering of used syringes, and a curious collection of ribald equine-themed cartoons that no one will ever laugh at again.

The former executive offices in the administration building–the lone frontside structure that survived the 1980 fire–were utterly trashed. Among the scattered detritus were signs of the past (copies of New Hampshire racing statutes) and the unreckoned future (blueprints and architectural drawings of the proposed casino that never got built). Undated letters to season pass holders promising fun times at an upcoming race meet were haphazardly flung about the floor, some of them chewed by vermin.

Signage throughout the plant that once seemed authoritative now lent a touch of absurdity to the abandonment: “Keep off the Grass” warned one posting. The closed door to the stewards' office shooed away visitors with a “Hearing in Progress” warning. A stern “Reserved Only” placard stood silent sentinel over rows of dusty, unoccupied finish-line seats.

Up in the judges/camera/press box tower, the back door to the roof had long since been left ajar, inviting myriad birds to take over the cubbyhole rooms high above trackside. The glass-fronted announcer's booth was littered with dead flies, its swiveled binocular stand pointed in perpetuity toward the six-furlong chute.

The paddock stalls have become a storage area for track-apron benches that nobody will cheer from again. The jockey's quarters was the only frontside structure locked up tight behind an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign, although the outdoor scale house not far from it looked as if the next good gust of wind would bring it crashing to the cracked asphalt.

One significant–even hallowed–item from Rock's past will escape both the wrecking ball and the auction hammer. Obscured from view by overgrown bushes, the granite gravestone of Springsteel has stood solemnly in the track's infield for more than eight decades. A multiple stakes winner and fan favorite of a bygone era, the “Galloping Gray Ghost” was laid to rest not far from where he fell in a June 30, 1934, race.

“Injured In Service” is etched into Springsteel's marker. On Monday, the removal of the headstone was scheduled to commence. It has been donated to Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm in Georgetown, Kentucky.

“Where It All Began,” was the marketing slogan stamped on many of the memorabilia items that sold at auction. Now Rockingham Park has officially reached its end.