Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

  Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Birdie Munger was fully conscious of the fact. A veteran racetracker, he knew two seconds to be an eternity in short-distance track racing, but considering Taylor’s age, Munger believed he was looking in the eyes of greatness. It was obvious, he told himself, that Taylor had to be driven to the next level. But two questions loomed large for him: where, and against what odds?

  On the backstretch, secrets were hard to keep. Locally, at least, word of young Taylor’s precocity spread through the bike-racing grapevine. Indianapolis reporters had chronicled his results; under their breath, local wheelmen whispered his name during training rides and at meets. On occasion, they were whispers of awe and wonderment at how someone his age and of such slight build could achieve that kind of speed. But more often than not, they were sardonic and degrading. When Taylor was a horse tender, porter, and bike-shop duster, locals had paid less attention to him. Then, like his brethren, he was residing in his proper place of subservience, that place where man lingers in a steady state of habitual invisibility.

  Now, the Indianapolis air had suddenly become cold, inhospitable, and outwardly hostile. And not just toward him. For the crime of trying to help get an African American out from under the shadow of obscurity and insignificance, Munger also took heat, even among his business partners and friends.

  Restless and uneasy, Munger began seeking greener grass, further prosperity, and greater freedom for himself and his young friend. He ambled up to a large map of America that hung from his factory wall. He looked at its open frontier, the vast Pacific to the West, the mighty Atlantic to the East, and everything in between. He marveled at its sheer breath and its seemingly endless possibilities. He surely debated, meditated, and brooded before finally jamming a pin in the center of Massachusetts. With little to lose except closeness to his family, Taylor nodded his head. They rounded up their belongings, bought red-eye train tickets for the East, and braced themselves for the great unknown.

  On a fall day in 1895, Munger walked through his Indianapolis factory for the last time. A cadre of friends and associates came to see him off. They gathered around in silent attention, tipping back a round of beers and staring quizzically at him. One of them broke the silence, asking why on God’s earth he was leaving a good thing behind—Indianapolis was the third largest manufacturer of bicycles—to partner up “with that little darkey.” Munger stood up, leveled his back, and raised his head defiantly. “Someday,” he declared with an edge to his foghorn voice, “he will return to this city as Champion Bicycle Rider of America.” Given the sheer number of cyclists vying to be champion of America—virtually all of them white—it was a proclamation astounding for its boldness. His friends shook their heads, turned their backs, and walked away.

  At Indy’s Union Station, Taylor hugged his parents, then loaded his belongings—nothing more than a bag full of tattered clothes, a well-traveled bicycle, and a copy of the Scriptures. Evening fell. Gilbert and Saphronia, who couldn’t bear the idea of parting with him, tried concealing their trepidation as they said their good-byes and handed him over to Munger, his surrogate father. As the train ground forward, Taylor peered out the window and watched his mother’s dark face blurring in the distance. Frightened and empty, Saphronia watched her son steam headlong into the cruel Jim Crow era flat broke amid a wrenching depression. He was not yet seventeen, but his childhood had just ended.

  Chapter 4

  PRISONERS IN A GOLDEN CAGE

  On a Wednesday morning in July 1896, a downhearted young man drifted into a store in Lima, Ohio, to shop for shoes. After sifting through the infant rack, he picked out two of the nicest pairs of shoes he could find, then brought them to the sales counter. Because he had but a few cents to his name, he asked the salesclerk if she would hold on to them until that afternoon when he would return with the money. Before leaving, he pulled out a picture of his two babies and his wife and showed them to the clerk. “I’m going to win one of the races,” he said in a concerned tone. Glancing at the attractive, young family curled up together in a loving pose, the salesclerk kindly obliged.

  The man, “Poor Joe” Griebler, a quiet rider who had recently turned professional, walked out of the store and headed to the Lima racetrack. Standing at the starting line of a half-mile race with twelve other riders that afternoon, some observers thought Griebler looked and spoke nervously. Out of the gate, the riders bunched together in close formation until the final turn when Griebler suddenly broke from the pack. He dropped his head lower to his bike, then oddly raced toward the outside lane at a “frightful speed.” As he charged farther toward the crowd in his all-red silks, racegoers noticed his face had a crazed, almost demonic look to it. When it became obvious he would soon run out of track but had not yet slowed down, they sensed something was wrong. They were right. Griebler catapulted up the track’s four-foot embankment and soared over racegoers’ heads, missing them by inches.

  Behind them, they heard a loud splat.

  The helmet-less Griebler had hit a post, cracking his skull.

  With one of his ears ripped off, chin smashed in, and one eye loosed from his head, he lay prostrate on the ground, blood running out of his nose, ear, and mouth. Not knowing any better, a few people picked him up and carried him under the shade of a weeping willow tree, probably further injuring his neck and pressing a fractured bone farther into his brain. While the races continued unabated, a few general practitioners who were at the race stood vigil over him, but were of little help. Before dying twenty minutes later, Griebler eked out his last words. “Soft pillow-shoes,” he muttered, his one good eye flickering in and out. “I’m awfully sick.”

  Afterward, there was talk of setting up a fund for his wife, Delia, three-year-old son, Walter William, and eight-month-old daughter, Pearl. The idea seemed to resonate with the young riders who could better relate to Griebler’s plight but had little money to contribute. Fred Longhead, one of the few successful riders who seemed shaken, went to the store and bought both pairs of shoes from a tearful salesclerk. He sent the tiny shoes and a touching letter back to Griebler’s inconsolable widow in Granite Falls, Minnesota, along with “Poor Joe” in a coffin.

  Walter Sanger, one of the experienced riders in the race who had seen such desperation before, told authorities that Griebler “passed him with his face set and riding like a wild man.” When the rest of the wheelmen learned of his bizarre death, few seemed shocked. Their seeming indifference had roots in experience. At the time, there was much discussion among doctors and laypersons about the supposed harmful effects of bike riding. One doctor claimed that such irrational riding was caused by vertigo, dizziness, or ruptured blood vessels. Another claimed that cycling caused “irritation and congestion,” which led to chronic disease and insanity. Yet another contended that cycling caused thirst, which inevitably led to beer drinking, which triggered kidney stones. Together, they fashioned terrifying names for these maladies like “bicycle heart,” “bicycle eye,” “bicycle walk,” “bicycle face,” and “bicycle twitch.”

  There was never one definitive diagnosis for Griebler’s tragic death. But for veterans like Sanger, Munger, and Zimmerman, it further symbolized what they had seen or experienced over the years. The life of a professional bicycle racer could be downright brutal. With all the un-air-conditioned train and sea travel, the countless hours training in intense summer heat or cold spring rains, the tremendous nutritional needs, and the high monetary cost of meeting those needs, few sports were more physically and mentally demanding than professional bike racing. In those days before effective helmets, nearly every seasoned racer suffered physical injuries or saw his body wear out. During his career Taylor himself would witness, or know of, more than a dozen riders who died of racing injuries. He would see many more knocked out of racing with debilitating injuries or for more mysterious reasons.

  In Griebler’s case, there were two likely causes. One was long gaps in and incomplete knowledge of nutrition; Griebler wa
s a penniless new pro rider who had trained relentlessly for years without a full understanding of the nutritional demands of such a lifestyle. As a result, he probably yo-yoed between energy gluts and shortages. Second, given the era and several witnesses who said he had “glassy eyes,” drugs likely played a role. Griebler had heard stories of the fame and fortune of riders like Arthur Zimmerman. In his need to provide for his family during those depression years, he had likely punished his body and mind beyond its capacity to cope. For years, he had ridden in the star’s shadow and had eventually been crushed under the wheels of his evasive greatness. As bike racers would often say, Griebler had “cracked.”

  In the days of horse and train travel and before readily available supplements, bike racers often had large gaps in their daily food and beverage needs, resulting in nitrogen imbalances. Water quality also varied drastically from one town to the next, often causing gastrointestinal problems. With little real data with which to work, the first nutritionists basically just winged it. Their first utterance in the late 1880s was for fewer fruit and vegetables. Their ignorance is understandable. Few knew about vitamins and enzymes until the 1910s, and vitamin-enriched foods didn’t hit grocery shelves until the 1920s. No one had even broken down the carbohydrates, proteins, or fats in foods until the federal government’s first director of agriculture began tabulating those figures in the late 1880s. When he did, few people listened to his call for increased fruits and vegetables, preferring instead to mock his findings as “lacking significance.”

  Even if they had heeded his call, without widespread refrigeration in homes, athletes would have found it difficult to do so regularly. Moreover, most Americans were not yet familiar with the benefit of eating more frequent but lighter meals—an approach that stabilizes nitrogen balance resulting in fewer energy spikes and increased endurance, both crucial for athletes. So people ate infrequently and when they did, it was often in marathon feeding sessions involving fat-rich meals. The era rightfully became known as the “groaning tables” period. In line with this ritual popularized during the Gilded Age, people associated corpulence with “success and well-being.” Fittingly, a book named How to be Plump flew off the shelves. Dyspepsia and other digestive problems were so common in the 1880s and 1890s that a handful of men became exceedingly wealthy peddling their supposed cures.

  Eaten mainly by the middle and upper classes, fresh fruit was considered exotic and expensive. And because 50 to 60 percent of the average person’s wages was spent on food, the lower class, and even some middle-class families, often went without these important nutritional staples. During the severe economic downturn of the 1890s, many athletes had to cut back on essentials.

  If a rider could afford and manage a proper diet, he would have found it at least as difficult to avoid harmful drugs. When Birdie Munger forecast a bright future for Taylor, he was careful to insert a disclaimer: He must abstain from drugs and alcohol. As a veteran racer, Munger had good reason for adding that clause. Their era was described as a “dope fiend’s paradise.” Opium was for sale legally at low prices throughout the century. Morphine came into common use during and after the Civil War. And heroin was marketed toward the end of the century as a “safer” substitute for morphine. These opiates and countless pharmaceutical preparations containing them were as freely accessible as aspirin is today. Grocery stores, general stores, and drugstores sold opiates over the counter or by mail without a prescription.

  To avoid any stigma attached to being a street “druggie,” riders could easily buy any of six hundred “legitimate” medicines laced with opiates—magic potions like Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, Darby’s Carminative, Godfrey’s Cordial, McMunn’s Elixir of Opium, and Dover’s Powder. Opium also found its way into alcohol in the form of a highly addictive concoction called laudanum, or wine of opium, which was popular because it was cheaper than gin or wine and produced a vicious initial kick. Some of these products were marketed as teething syrups for young children, some as soothing syrups, and others for diarrhea, dyspepsia, and dysentery. Cocaine, because of its easy abundance, was also used by cyclists, racehorses, and prizefighters—the most popular cocaine mixtures were called “Physic” and “Eagle Soup,” or “fly like an eagle”—as was strychnine and trimethylene. All of these products were addictive and their long-term effects not yet fully understood.

  Despite the drugs’ addictiveness, this term was seldom used. Addicts continued their daily routines instead of being treated or institutionalized. Riders kept riding, children stayed in school, and workers worked. Newsmen largely kept their editorial mouths shut, giving the epidemic, as some called it, scant attention; they had been strong-armed by manufacturers into signing a “code of silence” forbidding them from writing about the addictiveness of their products. They had their rationale: their biggest advertisers were the cycling industry and the patent medicine men. In the 1890s, sixteen thousand newspapers carried ads for Halls Catarrh Cure alone. And the face of their national ad was a popular professional cyclist named Tom Cooper, “the prettiest rider in the business.” The prevalence of the drug habit, warned one reformer in his lonely speech before Congress, “is now startling the whole civilized and uncivilized world.”

  The exact scope of drug use in the professional peloton was murky, but not because it was uncommon. Considering the strain of the profession—“you have to be a masochist to suffer so much,” recalled one wheelman—the problem was surely at least as significant with riders as with the population in general. A caricature in one paper left some clues. It depicted a sweaty, half-crazed cyclist—his body looking skeletal and malnourished—a $1,300 prize dangling in front of his eyes and a deep, dark hole dug in the track ahead, as if waiting for him to fall into the abyss.

  Cyclists took opiates and cocaine for the immediate “rush” or, more often than not, as a form of escapism. Since medicinal ingredients were not required to be listed in most states, sometimes users didn’t even know they were taking them. In the mid-’90s, racing officials became suspicious when, out of the blue, an elite rider named Jimmy Michaels collapsed on the track. Michaels picked himself up, stared airily into space, remounted, then tore around the track. He was clipping along at a surprisingly fast pace—that is, until someone told him he was going in the wrong direction. Apparently his coach Choppy Warburton—whose riders almost always won and nearly as often died young—had a secret he kept from his rider. Hidden in his shirt pocket, Warburton held a tiny bottle housing his secret formula—probably laudanum or cocaine-cola, “the drink that relieves exhaustion.”

  Whatever it was, the ICU, bike racing’s international governing body, didn’t particularly care for it. Figuring he needed a little rehabbing of his own, they eventually suspended Warburton for life, making him perhaps the first casualty in cycling’s long war on drugs.

  All these factors—when combined with brutal travel schedules and demands from managers, fans, and sponsors—could make riders weak, emaciated, restless, delusional, neurotic, peevish, and apathetic. They resulted in injuries, or in Griebler’s case, death.

  Certainly, the resulting injuries could be extensive. Reggie McNamara, a well-known six-day racer, clearly deserved his status as a wheelsman legend and the nickname “Iron Man.” During his career, in addition to almost daily scrapes and bruises, he crashed fifteen-hundred times, broke his collarbone twenty-seven times, his jaw twice, and his skull once. He also had a hard time hanging on to his teeth. At more than one race, he crashed violently, passed out, eventually woke up, plucked several of his teeth out of the track’s wooden slats, handed them to his trainer-dentist, then returned to riding. McNamara knew he was cut out for the rough-and-tumble world of bike racing at an early age. After his finger had been bitten by a snake when he was nine, his brother suggested that they cut it off just in case it had been poisoned. “All right,” he deadpanned, as if someone just asked him if he wanted his fingernails clipped, “chop it off.” And off it went! “Now you w
on’t die,” his ten-year-old brother blurted right before receiving the thrashing of his life from their parents.

  While McNamara somehow rode on, others were not so fortunate. Before a sold-out crowd at the Cleveland Track, a rider named Harry Hovan became a human projectile, flying over the track rail before coming to a flesh-tearing halt. When they finally plucked his hapless form from the crowd, he had a broken leg, a broken jaw, four cracked ribs, a fractured wrist, a broken arm, and a concussion. “Other than that,” remarked one hardened rider, “he was just fine.”

  Being a hardened tough guy like McNamara and Hovan was a by-product of the era and the vocation, and professional cyclists took this ethos seriously. The first crude helmets—nothing more than pillbox-peaked cloth caps or colorized pith helmets—emanated from the hellish facial bloodlettings inherent during the high-wheel period. These helmets were better than nothing, but usually accomplished little more than to soak up whatever blood resulted after one of those infamous high-wheelers took a “header.”

  Helmets improved little once the “safety” bike arrived—leather rings around riders’ foreheads and thick, woolen pads that crossed the top of their heads—yet few cyclists dared to be seen wearing one. After all, the public viewed cyclists in the same vein as matadors. A rider didn’t dare show signs of weakness or dearth of bravado for fear of his rivals swooping in for the kill. When one rider was asked about helmets, he responded as any strapping matador would. “Only the clumsy get themselves killed,” he boasted. Soon after, he did just that, cracking his helmet-less skull on a concrete track.

  Since the first bicycle race took place two years after the first Kentucky Derby, wheelmen borrowed some of the same tactics, language, and even the same tracks as horsemen. And like horse racing, due to the high speeds involved, the sport of bike-track racing was dangerous enough without the riders making it even more so. But some did just that. Elbowing is evident in old photos that show riders dipping their heads toward their handlebars, trying to avoid another elbow blow to their faces or bodies.