“All traffic was suspended, and old Bates took possession of the city for the evening.” high” for a bonfire. The blaze nearly torched a professor’s home on Mountain Avenue, “melting his tar sidewalk.” In 1928, Bates won the championship flight of the two-mile relay, setting off another one-two punch of parade — the track men riding high on a “hayrack of honor”— and bonfire, where “everything from toothpicks and railroad ties to the side of a well-known barn was stacked high on the rocks for the sacrifice to the gods of speed.” By evening’s end, “the Garnet B had been burned into Mount David and the light of a national championship spread all over Lewiston.” The 1930 win in the two-mile relay was anchored by the great Russell “Osie” Chapman ’31, dubbed the “husky half-mile star of Bates” by The New York Times. A year later, running the 880 in New York City, Chapman would come within a tenth of a second of a world record. But while Bates track success would continue, the times they were a-changin’, and the campus greeted the news of the 1930 relay victory with pride but no partying. “The men continued with their baseball, football, tennis,” wrote Student sports editor Everett Cushman ’31, “and the coeds must have been down to Woolworth’s or enjoying an afternoon’s siesta.” Maybe the Student was right, that winning had created ever-greater expectations. Or, the Roaring ’20s being done with and the Great Depression upon them, maybe students had become a bit more serious. After the Hathorn bell announced the team’s victory, Cushman rushed out to the steps of Parker Hall to give an “an improvised war-whoop.” To which a fellow Parker denizen shouted back, “Shut up and come to college.” n
MUSKIE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY
two-mile run with a finishing kick that left runners from West Virginia, Purdue, and New Hampshire gasping for air. The Student gasped, too. “As the [Hathorn] bell sounded the joyful news, our first impulse was that quiet, deep, stirring of the inner man that sends lumps into the throats and renders us unable to speak. Then comes the rush of pride for our champion and the pent-up emotions spring into a hilarious burst of enthusiasm and gratitude for the man who has brought us fame.” Such orgasmic sports prose wasn’t limited to the Student; it was typical of an era that gave us Grantland Rice’s Four Horsemen and other hyped-up sportswriting. At the Boston Herald, sportswriter Tom McCabe was equally smitten with Buker. “The little Bates lad was great, big, fine, wonderful; all those pulsating things together, and then some.” A year later, in 1922, Buker again won the twomile race at the Penn Relays, and a Bates team won its class in the mile relay. Back on campus, the celebration parade, featuring a band and a mule (which refused to let a student climb aboard), gathered in front of Parker Hall, and blasts from a cannon announced the procession’s advance down College Street into Lewiston. Once downtown, “the snake dance was started and the writhing forms danced gaily from one side to another across the bridge to Auburn,” reported the Student. “All traffic was suspended, and old Bates took possession of the city for the evening. Red fire illuminated the way, while the sidewalks were jammed with spectators who thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle.” Back on campus, the throng paraded to the base of Mount David “where boxes, barrels, hay, sleepers, and various other things were piled
The great Russell Chapman ’31 wins a heat of the 880-yard run at the IC4A Championships at Harvard Stadium on May 31, 1930.
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