As retold by Bruce Lowitt

On a Thursday in Massapequa Park, an old rabbi's hat is blown off his head by a gust of wind.

Down the block, A young man headed toward the train to Belmont Park sees what happened, runs and catches the hat and returns it.

"I couldn't have retrieved my hat by myself," the Rabbi says. "Thank you very much!" He then places his hand on the man's shoulder and says, "May God bless you."

The man thinks, "Hmm, I've been personally blessed by a Rabbi. Maybe this is my lucky day."

When he gets to the race track, he sees that a horse named Stetson is running.

"Stetson. Hat. This has to be a sign," he thinks and bets five dollars on the 20-1 longshot.

Stetson wins. He has one hundred dollars.

In the second race there's a horse named Fedora. Being cautious, he bets twenty dollars on him. Fedora goes off at 30--1 and wins. Between that and  the first race, he has nearly seven hundred dollars.

The man looks at the third race's entries. No hat names. Then he notices a horse named Panama with odds of 12-1.

"Hmm. Panama. Panama hat?"

He bets two hundred dollars. Panama runs away with the race. The man has about three thousand dollars. From then on, every time he sees a horse with a hat reference he bets everything on it.

After the final race he heads home and tells his wife the story of the  rabbi, the hat and the horses.

"So how much did you win?" she asks.

 "I was up to about six hundred and fifty thousands but I bet on a horse  named Chateau in the last race. It came in fourth and I lost it all".

"You jerk," his wife says. "A chateau is a house. A chapeau is a hat!"

"It doesn't matter," he says. "The winner was a Japanese horse named something like Yamaka."