Monday Blues: Full of Timber

I tell ya, those old time newspaper reporters had a certain way of retelling stories that you just don't see anymore. I think it was the old Dragnet show, that had the line, "just the facts ma'm," and that seems kind of the motto today, just the cut and dry, just the facts. Somehow, those old time reporters found a way of presenting the facts, while at the same time bringing them to life, and yet not diluting them nor twisting them into something other than the facts. Case in point comes from the Los Angeles Times in one of many stories written about the races on the Stadium track at Washington and Hill Streets.

In one contest two racers from bygone days Charlie Keppen and Giovani (John) De Palma, who had gained his greatest fame racing automobiles, met in a best two out of three, head to head contest (a third man, Reginald Leslie "Snowy" Baker, an Australian all-around athlete who excelled at many sports including boxing, rugby, water polo, running and rowing, arrived at the track with his hands bandaged from an, apparent, injury and did not compete). 

Williams picked up the story from there, analyzing the result before returning to the beginning: "Charley Keppen has done more to brutalize bicycle racing than any other one man in the history of the game." Keppen, arriving at the track in a flowered bathrobe and pearl fedora, got off to a good start in the first heat, "pressing the pedals with his powerful hoofs," he gave De Palma "a fine view of his twinkling heels" for the first one and three-quarter laps. "Then all of a sudden those heels went up and twinkled far above the rider's head, and the swishy sound of an athlete being peeled alive fell amid the sudden hush."

Williams continued with his narration: "Coming off the last bank, and within a few jumps of the tape, Keppen was leading De Palma by about four lengths, when he seemed to forget that the track was circular." At that point Keppen "seemed in the act of riding right off into space at the highest part of the track, when he providentially hit the guard rail. One arm flew over this, but the rest of him couldn't make it. His ribs rattled against the side of the rail for several yards, and then he hit the boards of the track... he had been a long time in falling. He kept falling part at a time, but not until his heels struck, was he able to fall all in one piece and call it a day's work. Experts estimated that he fall an eighth of a lap..." As for De Palma, he "skillfully darted under Keppen's numerous heels," and "rode to victory."

"Charley made the track safer for others by gathering most of the splinters unto himself. He was so full of timber that many feared the friction of his knees in the second heat would cause him to catch fire in the joints. But what he gained in splinters he lost in hair, leaving a cluster of bangs hanging to one of the posts of the guard rail. Hundreds of souvenir hunters each picked a hair from this post after the races... but you must give something to get something and that is what Mr. Keppen did. When the lumber is all picked out of his system he will have enough building material for a bungalow. In place of hair he can have a roof over his head..."

"Despite his degradation and misery," Keppen rode the second heat "gamely and fearlessly, knowing that there was room for no more splinters in his system." There was to be no great comeback, however, as De Palma "upheld the family traditions," winning the second heat in 38 1/5 seconds. "After bleeding for the better part of three laps, Mr. Keppen was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of his unskinned rival... Being beaten in both heats, and hanging large fragments of his own pelt on the guard rail, Keppen was skinned in every way possible."