Ashland
to Boston 1914
 This
descriptive account of the Boston Marathon was
published April 21, 1914, by the Hamilton Herald. It
provides a revealing insight into the race as it was
and its context with the times. At just ten minutes of
ten yesterday the wrinkled village of Ashland blinked
her drowsy eyelids, yawned and awoke from a year-long
slumber. The ''Marathon train'' from Boston had
arrived.
As the regiment of runners, trainers, rubbers, bicycle
attendants, friends and sometimes sweethearts, trooped
through the square to the Boston Athletic club's
temporary headquarters, a weather-scarred inn called
the Columbia hotel, the villagers gazed upon them with
all the curiosity which the people of a dried-up
community always evince on the arrival of strange
faces. Followed by the eyes of the elders and the feet
of the youngsters, the outlanders immediately took
possession of the inn and retained it until five
minutes before twelve.
Here a corps of
physicians sounded the heart of each competitor in the
forthcoming race and without exception pronounced each
in a most beatable condition. While the doctors were
listening to the pulsating music of the stethoscopes,
confusion prevailed all about them. Doors were
constantly slamming, cries for Jack, or Bill, or Pat
echoed through the hallways, bicycle attendants were
hunting their prospective charges, and everybody, at
least once, elbowed his way into the dining room where
the B.A.A. had provided victuals for runners,
attendants, and, whenever luck was with them, for
impecunious young gentleman attendants only for the
moment. But one need not have depended upon the
hospitality of the athletic association for food and
drink. Dotting the village square here and there were
several booths presided over by giggling, chattering
high school girls.
With the business
acumen which distinguishes even the children of New
England, the girls each year seize upon this one day
of the life of the village to sell piping hot coffee,
crisp doughnuts, root beer and real home-made
sandwiches; the proceeds to be expended on that class
statuary for graduation day. While the coffee and
doughnuts were being sold a village junta was in
convocation at the ''depot.'' Here Zeke Warren, the
gray-haired, sharp-featured police department of
Ashland, rolled his quid of tobacco from cheek to
cheek and told the less fortunate of the days when
Jack Caffery, Billy Sherring, Fred Hughson and other
"of those Canucks" came down to Boston to settle their
athletic differences and, incidentally, to show the
Boston folk some real running.
While garrulous Zeke
was holding forth, however, and while the hills of
doughnuts in the booths were dwindling to mounds, the
hands of the clock were nearing twelve and it was not
long before the observation electrics were being
filled with runners and attendants for the one mile
ride to the starting point of the race.
After the heavy camera
corps had swung into action and then retired the
eighty odd runners crouched for the pistol shot and,
when it rang through the quiet air, they scrambled
along the narrow roadway like a crowd of unleashed
schoolboys. As they zigzagged down the winding hill
they looked not unlike a serpentine file wreathed into
a living chain.
In the village they
received the first of a series of ovations which were
to be repeated at every gathering point along the
race. Even the schoolgirls forsook their booths to
applaud the runners.
The three-mile stage to
South Framingham is a straight bit of roadway, but
very dusty on a warm day and exceedingly muddy on a
moist one. Here it was thirteen years ago that Jack
Caffery and Fred Hughson of Hamilton engaged in a duel
which resulted in records that in some instances even
yet remain unbroken. Caffery's mark of twenty-one
minutes at South Framingham and 2:04 at Coolidge
Corner, the twentytwo-mile point, still defy the
onslaughts of present-day champions.
The aspirants for this
title yesterday were breathing easily and running
smoothly as they entered the roped-off lane through
the town of South Framingham. A volley of cheers
greeted them. There was craning of necks and hasty
glances at programs to distinguish each runner as he
swung past. None, however, surveyed the long line of
athletes with greater interest or applauded with
greater enthusiasm than a group of Greek mill
operatives near the railroad tracks. Visions, perhaps,
of the long, dusty, tortuous road between the Plain of
Marathon and Athens, immortalized centuries ago by a
death-crowned runner, arose in the minds of the sons
of Helles as they gazed upon these modern Olympians.
And if the athlete knew not the meaning of the
expression he immediately understood it was a most
friendly one.
After leaving the
Greeks to dream of the past glories of their race the
marathoners swung down the turnpike toward Natick, and
as they cantered along returned the greetings of the
occupants of the cottages that fringed the roadway.
They passed garden patches, clumps of maples and pines
in the surrounding fields, and saw a typical scene of
suburban New England. Countrified as all things were,
the whistle of the robin was drowned out most of the
time by the honk, honk of the scores of automobiles
that were beginning to encumber the roadway. Along the
side of the highway clanged a long line of observation
cars packed to the roof with cheering, shouting,
gesticulating, flag-waving men and women. Stolidly the
runners jogged forward, intent only on the work before
them. When the men had filed through the lane at
Natick Square, eight miles from the start, they were
welcomed by a roar from the awaiting crowd.
By this time the
runners were spun out into a long extended line and
each man had plenty of time to digest his need of
encouragement. At Natick begins the state boulevard
which winds its way into Boston. In construction it is
undoubtedly one of the finest bits of roadway in the
country. Reanimated by the springy response of the
smooth, firm pavement, the men unconsciously increased
the pace and cantered past the country estates of
Boston merchants that were now becoming numerous as
suburban Boston drew near. Before Wellesley Centre,
twelve miles, was reached the runners encountered the
stiffest grade of the course, almost a mile in length.
Noanantum hill snuffs out the hopes of many an
aspirant for marathon fame. As the straggling, ever
lengthening chain toiled up the incline, Kyronen, the
leader, was cheered at its summit by a large gathering
of girls from Wellesley college.
In minaret skirts and
in flowing gowns, with fair heads adorned only with
nature's crowning ornament, in the flaming sweaters of
the college, girls of every style of beauty, and
sometimes plainness, encouraged the passing runners
with smiles and applause. By the time the last of the
college buildings had been passed the boulevard was
crowded with a complex mass of automobiles, bicycles,
rigs, motorcycles and observation cars. Each runner
was cut off from his fellows by a squad of these
vehicles. With twelve miles behind them the men worked
their way along the Washington street boulevard into
Auburndale. Their cheeks were beginning to look drawn
and their stride to lose its elasticity. They were
cheered, however, and urged to greater effort by the
applause of the unbroken line of people fringing the
roadways.
Until the goal was to
be attained, a dozen miles away, that line would have
no apertures. So the men plugged forward, passed the
Woodland Park hotel, an aristocratic hostelry with a
gathering of aristocratic loungers on its broad
verandas, and turned into Newton boulevard amid salvos
of cheers. The boulevard broke the heart of many a
runner during the succeeding three miles, for these
hills comprise nothing but short, steep hills; and
hills are anything but welcome to men who have toiled
over sixteen miles of roadway. With unflagging stride
the leaders breasted these one after the other and
coasted down the long incline which terminated at the
Brookline reservoir.
From this vantage point
they could discern some five miles away the
golden-domed state house which gladdened the eyes and
lightened the footstep of Jack Caffery fourteen years
ago when he realized that he was to bring the first
great Boston Marathon prize to the St. Patrick's club
rooms in Hamilton. So the sight of that golden dome
must have affected Jimmy Duffy, for, with livelier
stride he struck forward toward Coolidge Corner on his
way to the B.A.A. clubhouse. The crowd was twenty to
thirty deep. As the leader pattered through the narrow
lane a roar of applause greeted him and as he sped
down the Beacon street incline it kept pace with him
and beat him stride for stride. Keeping a thin opening
clear the small regiment of bluecoats stationed at
intervals of every one hundred yards worked like
beavers in pressing back the crowds.
They were aided by a
squad of mounted patrolmen, who charged up and down
the line and, with flanks of horses and batons, kept
the frail ropes from being snapped. With hazy eyes the
heavy-footed leader noted all the commotion about him
and lashed himself forward. Before him stretched for
two miles a solid mass of bobbing heads. Through this
living wall he strode and thanked the gods that a
clear, unobstructed passage lay before him. Another
mile was passed and he swung by the noble monument
erected to the Norwegian pathfinder, Leif Ericson. Its
smiling face seemed mutely to encourage him. He glided
by the interminable rows of stately brownstone
mansions, with their crowded windows, and passed the
lone line of blockaded trolleys at the intersecting
Massachusetts avenue.
As he rushed down the
home stretch the roar of the multitude sounded faintly
in his ear; his attention was directed only at the
little flag which marked the turn into Exeter street.
He shot around the corner. A hundred yards away stood
the imposing Boston Athletic Association clubhouse
and, in front of it, stretched across the street, was
the red tape. It seemed but a moment before the tape
was behind him. The race was over and he had won. —
Author Unknown |
