Showman (1937)

SHOWMAN twenty-four hours riding in circles on a board floornot even a special track laid— just a circle chalked on the boards. Adams won in his contest with the ladies, but I doubt if he could have a few years later when Miss Armaindo became a formidable rider. Seven hundred sixty miles in six days was her eventual record. Just a slip of a girl too, as girls went in those ample timesonly five feet two and weighed barely one hundred thirty pounds. Her ancestors had all been FrenchCanadian strong men. She used to brag about Joe Muffarro, a world-famous Canuck husky: "My Oncle Joe, he one gr-r-r-r-r-and Frenchman! He so strong it take seex poleesmen to hold hees hat!" And she was no slouch at the strong-arm stuff herself. I've seen her lift seven hundred fifty pounds without harness or shoulder-straps. Once six-day cycling races got started, they went like wildfire. Our high-water mark in that line was the sixday race at Madison Square Garden in 1898 when Charley Miller covered two thousand seven miles in the one hundred forty-four hours, taking only nine and a quarter hours' sleep during the process. That always struck me as a much more impressive feat than the record of Charley ("Mile-a-Minute") Murphy, who hit the front pages all over the country by pedaling a mile in fifty-seven and two-fifth seconds down a board track laid between the rails of a straightaway 227