About the Race of 14 April

 Editing. I can proofread other peoples' writing with some degree of proficiency, but self-editing...? Kind of a different matter. Fast Digs (the book) has been in editing limbo for quite a while now. Surprisingly (since there was extra free time) 2020 was mostly a bust when it came to getting it done; I honestly thought I would be moving on to volume two by now. But it is moving again, and I try to get a bit done each night.

Anyway...

I knew there were gaps here and there in the story - not many thankfully, but a few and glaring because of them. For instance I knew a race took place on 14 April 1894 at Los Angeles Athletic Park; it was the first race of the new season and, after a year away from the game, marked the return of the ever-formidable D. L. Burke.

Where, in my files, there should have been a photocopy of the newspaper story covering the race, there was nothing. And so I went back to the source. I checked the index of headlines - nothing about the race. I checked the "other sports" headlines, thinking the race might have been tossed into the general mix of daily sporting events - nothing. I checked each heading containing any word such as "win" which might suggest a connection, whether vague or tangible, to racing - nothing.

Finally came the plan of last resort - page by page examination. This would not have been so onerous a task had my hands been able to flip through a paper copy, The scrolling up to down, panning to the side, then scrolling again from down to back up, and repeating so as not to miss a single column on the relatively small laptop screen, must surely be one of those eternal punishments inflicted on sinners in whatever afterlife hell they have been confined. But...

there it was, buried back beyond the society pages, the local market reports, the travel section, even the "little folks" column, sandwiched between a preview of the next game between the Keatings and the Boyle Heights Stars, and the story of "A Remarkable Incident," and surrounded by ads for the Inyo Land Company, de Ville Stylish Silks, the upcoming performance of "the Nobel Rogue" at the Burbank Theater, and another for a Sixth Annual Dog Show, I finally found the singular headline I was looking for - "The Bicycle Races." Ah, success at last, another gap filled. Turns out the day at the races was a little less about Burke, and a little more about "that cunning young Fox of Colton." 

Simple reward. Who said book writing was glamorous? 

Fingers crossed; at this rate Fast Digs ought to be ready by the end of Summer.