The 1929 Bunion Derby: Johnny Salo and the Great Footrace across America

Introduction

xiii Introduction June 6, 1929, Sonora Desert, Arizona On a gravel road that had once been the stagecoach route from El Paso to San Diego, an extremely muscular, leather-brown man was flying through a fifty-four-mile course in rough desert country—running at seven minutes and forty-four seconds per mile with the sun beating down and only the howling desert wind to compete with the rhythmic plodding of his feet. His trainer, Bill Wicklund, followed behind him in the well-worn 1921 Ford that had seen them through more than three thousand miles and sixty-eight days of almost nonstop running, averaging almost fortysix miles a day in daily stage-to-stage racing.1 Just days away were Los Angeles and the twenty-five-thousand-dollar first prize going to the winner of the race—the Second Annual Transcontinental Foot Race across America, or simply the Bunion Derby, as the press had nicknamed the race in 1928. This was a fortune to a workingman when a yearly salary of $2,500 represented a decent standard of living for an American family.2 By now, the two men were a well-oiled machine, with Wicklund giving the runner food and fluids every two miles or so. The runner was Johnny Salo, the “flying cop” from Passaic, New Jersey. At about five feet, five inches, and 145 pounds, Salo’s muscularity was fit for a statue in ancient Greece. His physique was barely covered under a loose singlet and shorts, with his police-badge emblem embroidered on the shorts.3 Johnny’s style was mechanical and stiff, like a bulldozer that plows its way through mud, rough terrain, lighting storms, and desert sun. He was expressionless, blank in his concentration. He gave off a scent of controlled aggression that he directed fully at the task at hand. xiv • Introduction Keeping him in balance at the start and end of each stage of the race was Amelia, his wife. She was a trained massage therapist, cook, counselor , and soul mate. The first woman trainer in this new sport of transAmerica racing, Amelia was the glue that kept Johnny going.4 Chasing him relentlessly was his old rival, Pete Gavuzzi of England, the trilingual star who had led the first Bunion Derby run from Los Angeles to New York the year before. Gavuzzi had been forced out of the race in Ohio because of an infected tooth, giving the derby to Andy Payne of Oklahoma, with Johnny taking second.5 Gavuzzi, at 118 pounds, barely five feet, two inches, and just twenty-three years of age, was the Fred Astaire of the derby—flowing, effortless, and beautiful to watch—and he excelled on flat, open terrain.6 He, too, had an efficient racing team. His mentor and partner was Arthur Newton, the stern, middle-aged Englishman who looked more like a tanned bank executive than someone who had held every world long-distance record from thirty to one hundred miles. Shepherding them both across the country was George Barren, their valet, cook, and driver, who followed in their specially built motor home.7 When Gavuzzi and Salo had raced in 1928, they were making up the rules of running a trans-America road race as they went along. In 1929, they had perfected them, turning the contest from a test of survival to a true competition of skill that pushed the limits of human endurance to the breaking point. Directing the Bunion Derby was Charley Pyle, teetering on bankruptcy after having lost much of the fortune he had earned in a wild four-year ride that took him from obscurity to shining star in the development of professional sports in America. In 1925, he had signed the greatest football player of the 1920s, Red Grange, and together they made a fortune, established the short-lived American Football League, owned a National Football League franchise, established professional tennis in America, and directed the first Bunion Derby in 1928.8 Pyle proved to be a man of almost evangelical vision, but he was woefully short on managerial skills and bled away most of his fortune as his schemes came unraveled.9 In 1929, Charley hoped to rebuild his fortune with one wild grab at glory, staging the second Bunion Derby at the zenith of the Roaring Introduction • xv Twenties, just months before the Wall Street crash. In New York City, Charley...