Finally, after all of these cautious years, I tried an activity that has been compared to crack cocaine. I hadn’t come close up until now, unless mowing has been called the crack cocaine of vegetation control.

On a Friday evening, I wandered around Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino, slightly disappointed by my first experience with quarter horse racing. With Thoroughbreds, you get a nice, long race with a storyline and surprises. Can a slow starter make up for it on the backstretch? Will the fastest horse find its way through the pack? And the one I bet on – why is he galloping east on Adventureland Drive?

But with quarter horses, it’s just a desperate rush in a tight bunch, pounding down the front stretch for 300 yards or so, and it’s over. It’s like the story of your career, told in 16 seconds.

I went inside the casino and played the slots. But that gets old fast. Slot machines are quite popular, but only because so many people just can’t face going home and unloading the dishwasher.

I ventured among the table games to check out the players and the action. Like this guy at the roulette table, who slides a chip to the intersection of 4, 5, 7 and 8. But wait! Before he takes his finger off the chip – the universal sign of commitment – he reconsiders and moves it over to 11, 12, 14 and 15. He wouldn’t do that without a reason, would he? My bet is that he got fresh information via a transmission that most of us do not receive.

It so happens that I’m an expert on this topic, because I once won $50 in an hour of roulette in Las Vegas while taking a break from a conference of business editors. Later, I sat at a big dinner table across from Chuck Jaffe, who dispenses mutual fund wisdom on TV and other places, and announced that maybe I would just play roulette for a living.

“You would have to pay taxes on your winnings, you know,” Jaffe said. See, this is why you don’t want to have a gathering of responsible, sensible business editors in Las Vegas. Jaffe struck me as the kind of guy who would go to a Cirque du Soleil extravaganza and shout out lighting advice.

Back to Altoona. I kept moving through a strange world where the usual rules do not apply. For example, smoking is unacceptably dangerous for patrons of privately owned bars in this state. Here, citizens sit in a dense cloud of smoke for hours at a time, but it’s approved by the Iowa Legislature. So they should be fine.

Suddenly, I found myself at a machine with cards on the screen. Without thinking, I had stepped from the innocent, time-killing world of slots into the insidious lair of video poker – the crack cocaine of video gambling.

Here, you don’t just watch a machine play a game for you. You apply the kind of brilliant, punishing strategy that limits casino owners to one new Aston Martin per year. You keep some cards and draw some new ones, and wow, how the time flies.

All entertainment should be so interactive. When you go to a football game, you should be allowed to trot onto the field and throw a pass once in a while. Headed out to hear the Des Moines Symphony? Don’t forget your clarinet.

I don’t believe I got hooked on video poker, although I have legally changed all three of our kids’ names to “Jack.” Best of all, I broke even – which, coincidentally, is my current hope for the bets I’ve placed with the New York Stock Exchange.

Ah, the stock market. Seated at your computer, you can hold these shares, sell these, buy those – it’s the crack cocaine of retirement planning.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record.
He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com