Telephone Pole Key to Horse Coverage

There was that Saturday in the 1960s when William DuPont - of the Delaware DuPonts - was playing host to the annual one-day steeplechase horseracing program at his large estate in Fair Hill, Md.

"The feature race doesn't start until 5:25 in the afternoon," Ray Kelly, our sports editor, told me the day before the meet. "You won't have time to make our 6 o'clock edition. Think of making the 9 o'clock one. A Western Union operator will be there to help you."

As I traveled by train to the Wilmington, Del., station the next morning, however, I began to think in terms of getting my story into that earlier edition. It was the kind of "beat the deadline" challenge I always relished.

When I reached the DuPont estate, I noted telephone poles neighboring its fringes. The area was rural - deep in the woods - and, of course, with no nearby telephones. It was an ideal setting for a hunt meeting. It had a jump that included the "Chinese Wall," a 6-foot post-and-rail fence.

By the time I reached the estate's small, roofless press box, I had decided to try for that first edition. I would write eight paragraphs about the early races, the crowd and the course. I would have the telegrapher send them by Morse code directly to the paper by 4 p.m.

When the event was over, I planned to hurriedly write three paragraphs about it. The Western Union operator would transmit them and they would be placed above my copy, which would already be in type. The office would have my story with about 20 minutes to spare.

But I was in for a surprise. When I entered the press box, I found five writers from papers in Baltimore, Wilmington and Washington - and the one telegrapher. They'd be in a similar rush to have the results flashed to their offices. Being from nearby newspapers, they knew the telegrapher; I didn't. I might be the last on his list in having my early story sent.

I needed a different plan. I knew about linemen who installed wires for the Western Union from telephone poles to press boxes for one-day events, and that they usually lingered on the grounds. When such programs were over, they would remove the wires.

I went to the announcer's booth and asked him to page the lineman. When he arrived, I asked if he would climb a nearby pole after the feature race and bring down a wire from it so I could use his portable telephone an dictate a few paragraphs to my office. I promised him $15.

"Of course that's possible," he said. "But it has to be a collect call."

I told him that would be no problem.

Then I returned to the press box and began writing. After the end of the third race, I handed the Western Union operator the early paragraphs. He transmitted them immediately because none of the other reporters had written anything that early in the program.

Just before the main event, I joined the telephone lineman at the foot of the pole. He was waiting there with his portable phone, which he had connected to an overhead wire. When that race was over, I phoned my office - collect - and dictated three paragraphs about it extemporaneously.

The early story appeared in the following morning's first edition. My later wrap-up story was in the two editions that followed.

On the next Monday, Kelly called me to his desk. He asked me how I had managed to make that first edition. I explained, and he smiled.

"I knew it wasn't done with a carrier pigeon," he said. "Congratulations!"