“FE? Where’s That? NHOI!”

NHOI = Never Heard Of It. Popular amongst the younger users in the MyFace crowd these days.

That’s what the Hawthorne grandstanders must have been asking before, and then certainly after, Race 3 there this afternoon.

They had a horse shipping in from the FE. Now, the FE is not some new abbreviation for an old track. Now, the FE is not to be confused with the abbreviation for an element in the periodic table. Now, the FE is not in New Mexico or South America.

It is in North America, though, the northern third of it, to be precise. It is in the province of Ontario in the sovereign nation of Canada. Yes, the FE is Fort Erie, so named for a British military outpost established in the mid-18th century.

Truly, Fort Erie is a low-rent racetrack, probably on the lines of a River Downs. You could not have faulted the Hawthorne folks for not being that morbidly curious about FE.

But did they understand what was coming their way from FE, Fort Erie?
One $15,000 maiden-claimer who had only one in-the-money finish in a $10,000 maiden-claimer. Automatic toss, right?

Better run the numbers, boys, better run the numbers before you stick the fork in. If you did, you saw that #8 Fashion n’ Fun was not at all outgunned in the balance of today’s field. Indeed, V6 said top selection on the vaunted Betting Line, and the LifeLine Speed Analysis concurred. At 12-1 on the morning line, the play was in the works.

The actual odds of 36-1 on-track only confirmed the juiciness of the wager, not to mention the degree of xenophobia running rampant in the Cicero stands. How does that happen?

It happens, not often, but often enough. Fashion n’ Fun won and paid $74-and-change up-top.

Hope you had her! If not, at least you know all about FE now. As the great Dick Mitchell might have put it, “F-in’ excellent!” Yeah.