Hopkinton 1927
A writer's impressions
By Bill Cunningham
The Boston Post
Tuesday, April 19, 1927
To that alert minority, more interested always in
why and how a man does a thing than in just what it is that he
does, the more interesting stories of the B.A.A. Marathon are
the stories that go unwritten.
Unwritten — not because there
is anything to hide but because there is always so much race
(there's 26 miles, 385 yards of it) and so many racers (there
are almost two hundred this year) that all details are swept
under and drowned in the backwash from the wholesale surge
toward Boston.
Yet perhaps no other sporting
event is so rich in sidelights, so fraught with the serious,
the comic and the serio-comic, so warm in human interest, so
picturesque of background, and last, and likewise least, so
thrilling to cover from a reportorial standpoint.
This reporter wishes he could
take you along today on the job, simply because riding that
race in a newspaper car would give you a thrill that you'd
never forget. Years ago (this is the thirty-first time that
the race has been run) the gentlemen of the press covered this
event on bicycles. If the tires held out and they didn't break
their necks on some wayside tree, their papers eventually got
the story.
Now, however, thanks to the
greatly appreciated courtesy of the various automobile firms
of Boston, the reporters ride with all the dignity and
grandeur of journalists. The Paige-Detroit Company of New
England always places a magnificent model and an expert driver
at the disposal of The Post and the performance of both during
the exacting two hours and a half of the race is always a
splendid compliment to both the car and the company.
The race starts exactly at
noon, 26 miles, 385 yards from the front door of the B.A.A.
Club House out that winding ribbon of black macadam that
trails through Wellesley, Framingham, Ashland and Hopkinton.
If you were to ride with us
this trip you'd leave Boston around nine o'clock and roll
leisurely out through the fresh air of the morning toward the
distant starting point. All along the route you'd see the
crowds already gathering for their one fleeting glimpse of
each runner as he plods past. You'd see the State Police
picketing every cross road and ranging the spaces between on
their sputtering motorcycles, for the entire route is kept
clear for the newspaper cars, the official cars and the
on-coming army of runners.
At length, in a little hollow
down the road below Ashland, you'd see our car take a sharp
left up a country road and pull up a grade for perhaps three
hundred yards. We'd drop anchor before a sprawling white farm
house that stands master above broad rolling fields. This is
the Marathon Inn where the runners get ready.
It used to be known as Tebeau's
Farm, and it still is that when not working at the Inn
business. At least a farm seems to be in full operation and
Mr. Tebeau is presumably still extant. The place is alive with
people, mostly men — officials, reporters, runners, trainers,
friends, relatives, advisers and a scattering of gate
crashers. The lawn, the front rooms, the kitchen, the entire
lower deck is aswarm with close packed humanity.
Box lunches and hot coffee are
free to everybody — this through the courtesy of the B.A.A.
But above all, and pervading all, is the pungent aroma of
arnica and wintergreen, for the runners — an army of them —
are mostly upstairs getting a last rubdown before hitting the
heart breaking trail. How they all get there nobody knows.
There's no money in this race. There aren't even expenses.
Marathon runners aren't wealthy people. That's one of the
characteristics of the game. Most of them are bricklayers,
carpenters, plumbers, printers and others of the wage-earning
sphere.
About noon there is a general
exodus from the farm house to the starting point down on the
main road. The newspaper cars lead it and take up position two
or three hundred yards toward Boston from the start, all
headed toward town of course.
Like bandit cars waiting for
brother yeggs to dash from the back door of some bank, they
wait, engines roaring, gears set, for the newspaper
photographers. The photographers have gone back to take their
snaps of the start. Their trick is to snap their shutters with
the bang of the gun, then outrace the runners to the waiting
cars, ahead of the on-charging mob, and precede it along the
route. That start, of course, is a thing to remember. The road
is no wider than the ordinary road, and there are almost two
hundred runners of all ages, shapes and sizes. They are herded
together back on the line in the order of their entering the
run. Perhaps the first fifteen will stand shoulder to shoulder
along the starting line, numbers sixteen to thirty in the
second rank and so on. Starting position means less than
nothing at all in a race of this length anyhow.
There are scenes at the start,
of course, or there would be if things didn't whirl at such
speed. Relatives and friends are shouting encouragement.
Officials are striving to herd the men into line. Nervous
runners are jogging in place to oil up the leg muscles. The
newspaper cars are roaring like thunder a few yards up ahead.
It's a tense and nerve-gripping
moment.
One flashing scene from all
these starts will always remain in this observer's memory. It
happened just last year when, just before the gun, a motherly
looking woman pushed her way to the roadside, wiped the face
of an apple-checked kid with a handkerchief, pushed the
handkerchief into his hand, and kissed him with a smack you
could hear ten yards.
Nobody knew the kid she had
kissed. Old-timers looked at the cheap rubber-soled sneakers
he wore and smiled smiles that were really half sneers. They
looked at the chubby girllike lines of his body and smiled
again. The smiles said that here was another dead-head who'd
finish up riding.
Yet 2 hours, 25 minutes, 40 1/2
seconds later, this same apple-cheeked kid in these same
flapping sneakers raced across the line, still fleet as the
wind, still full of run as a clock, to a new world's record.
Behind him somewhere, whipped, winded and out of it, staggered
the great Clarence DeMar and the great Olympic star, Albin
Stenroos, both burned completely out and licked to a very
hoarse whisper. |
