Where the horses were tied outside

By: Alyse Cohen

Outlets: Maryland Matters

Published: April 13, 2026

Words: 880

Last Updated: 3 months, 2 weeks ago

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My father took me to the Cracked Claw in Frederick, which was a seafood restaurant and also, in the way that Maryland places sometimes doubled as themselves, an off-track betting parlor. You could eat steamed crabs and watch a race happen somewhere else on a screen mounted above the bar.

It sounds improbable. It was completely ordinary. I understood, in the way children understand things before they can name them, that this was how a …

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