When you read racing stories today in your daily newspaper or in this magazine, they move about from writer to editor's office to press room by a matter of pushing buttons on computers. It wasn't always this way.
In the early days of stock car racing, those writing the stories pounded out their prose on manual typewriters, some of the time in open-air press boxes. Western Union operators took the sheets of paper and retyped stories, sending them to the writer's respective newspaper office. In some cases, stories arrived from the Western Union office to the newspaper in the same form as a telegram.
A Western Union runner would show up at the newspaper office with sheets upon sheets of paper with stories pasted to them in telegraph form. Then someone in the office used a typewriter and copied the stories, which were then sent to the print shop in another part of the building where the stories were copied again by an operator who put each sentence into hot type. Meanwhile, the writer prayed a lot that the end results would in some way resemble the story he started with.
Finally, most all newspapers installed Teletype machines. This way, copy would come straight into the sports department. An editor would remove the copy from the machine, edit it, and send it to the composing room. There, workers would transform copy into hot metal type and place it on a flat page that would end up in the press room.
Those were the days, as they sing on the Archie Bunker show. Everything and anything could happen. Your copy might go to a newspaper in another state, or your office receive copy from a writer who worked 500 miles away. It sometimes depended on the Western Union operator and his or her mood. The system was good for generating stories, though.
The Associated Press operated in similar ways, and it had codes for people in newspaper offices to follow. For example, the AP would sometimes cover an event as it happened. Say a major football game was the headliner. The AP would move a part of the story after the first quarter, and more on the game at halftime. Before the game began, the AP would send a notice such as: "Will overhead Michigan-Ohio State game." This meant the lead on the story would move last.
So the story goes that one spring day at a small Midwestern newspaper, a young sportswriter had the responsibility of putting finishing touches on the Memorial Day afternoon edition. The AP, covering the Indianapolis 500, sent a note to all newspapers that read: "WILL OVERHEAD INDIANAPOLIS 500 WINNER." This, of course, meant that the AP would move bits and pieces of the race as it happened, and then wrap up the story with a lead on who won.
The inexperienced kid looked at the message, tore it off the Teletype and rushed to his typewriter. There he knocked out this story about how an unknown driver by the name of Will Overhead roared from the back of the field to win the Indy 500. That afternoon his paper had an exclusive.
Often, the writer and his editor would message each other on the wire. A Chicago paper sent a young reporter to Pennsylvania to cover the Johnstown flood. The reporter, trying to be colorful and impress his boss, wrote a lead on his flood story. It read: "God stood on a high hill above Johnstown and watched as torrents of rain washed the city away." The Chicago editor received the story. He sent a message back to the reporter: "Forget the flood. Interview God."
Which brings us to our next story. It was the eve of the Daytona 500 in the mid-'60s. The press box at Daytona International Speedway was packed, and writers were pecking away on columns and advance stories about the race.
There was a writer with one of the South's major newspapers who had gotten into the apple cider during the morning hours. He was having himself quite a big time in the press box. It became obvious, however, that the old boy was in no condition to pound out a couple of stories and send them back to his office.