Chasing Horse Ghosts-telling Greyhound's story pt. 5-USTA Archives

The next stop on my research trip was the United States Trotting Association archives in Columbus, Ohio.

The USTA offices in Columbus, Ohio. June 2023.

After St. Charles, I visited my family in Kalamazoo, Michigan for a couple weeks. At the end of the June, I packed up the truck and Boedy and I headed south to Columbus, Ohio. I planned to stop there for a few days and dive into their Hoof Beats magazine archives. The offices used to belong to an architectural firm and therefore the interior was ... an interesting design. What I didn't know then was just how much time I'd be spending there over the next eighteen months or so. I came to really feel at home there.

The front foyer of the USTA offices. I didn't take pictures inside but the building has two levels and some interesting architectural features.

June 27, 2023
Gena Gallagher is my contact at USTA. She is the art director/production manager for Hoof Beats and has been with the magazine since 1987. She welcomed me to the offices, gave me a cubicle to use, and turned me loose in the archives! There is an old file cabinet full of index cards ... now that's old school! The index is pretty good considering someone had to page through every magazine, find articles, and record where to find them. But I soon discovered there were little tidbits about Greyhound, Col. Baker, Henry Knight, and Sep Palin spread all throughout the magazines. These little tidbits are not indexed—I mean seriously, can you imagine indexing all of this info by hand? I am really appreciating the beauty of digital archives but part of me loves the thrill of the hunt and the excitement of finding some lost historical treasure!
       I’ve found that basically I need to go page-by-page through every issue of Hoof Beats from 1934-40 which are the years that Greyhound raced and conceivably could have little bits of news spread throughout. I’m scanning visually (with my eyes, kids, not technology) trying to pick out key names but I’m sure I’m missing stuff. I need to remind myself that if I miss one little factoid that doesn’t mean the book is a bust, but still, I sure hate to miss anything at all.                

Below: Totally nerding out here! Decades and decades of harness racing history! These are the bound volumes that span over 100 years of history!

Doing it "old school" -- index cards organized by subject. These are the "Greyhound" cards.

       Oddly, I haven't been able to find the 1933 volume of Hoof Beats. At some point an article about gray horses was indexed from the May 1933 issue. The index card was created with a typewriter so … it was a while ago. Maybe 1980s at the latest. I know the USTA has changed offices since then so it’s hard to say what might have happened to the 1933 volume. I’m also noticing as I go through these bound volumes that some issues are missing (and even parts of issues) so I wonder if maybe there were no 1933 issues at all that survived to be bound? It’s disheartening because I believe I might find information about the Indianapolis Speed Sale of November 1933 which is where Greyhound was sold to E. J. Baker as a yearling.
       The offices closed at 4:30. This has to be about the fastest seven hours ever. I can’t remove the bound volumes but I am able to take a few books from the library back to the hotel. I’ll read these and paraphrase the relevant sections for my bibliography then return them tomorrow.

My phone is filled with hundreds of pictures like this. As I began to realize how big this project was, I knew I needed to stop reading everything and just snap pictures to read later.

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June 28, 2023
The wildfire smoke from Canada is thick, even way down here in central Ohio. I've been reluctant to walk Boedy because of it (plus it's blasted hot out). Hoping the smoke will clear off some and we can get some exercise tonight. 
       I’m back at the archives today. I’ve mostly made it through the Hoof Beats issues from 1934-41. Gena is still working on the scans and I’m diving into the post-1940 issues that have articles indexed. I’m assuming that since these issues are after Greyhound made regular news on the circuit that I don’t need to go page-by-page through these looking for tidbits. I am aware I might be missing something but I just can’t spend the weeks here that it would require to look through every single issue. Figure a couple thousand pages each year for 90 years … that’s a lot of pages.
       A couple indexed articles I searched for today I could not find. As I noted previously, there are some issues missing from the bound volumes. I mentioned this to Gena and she said they have loose magazines as well. She took the ancient index cards and soon returned with issues from 1941 and 1945 … victory! I got to wondering about the missing 1933 issues and asked Gena about that. She didn’t know where the volume could be but she showed me the loose magazines. I looked through the box from the 1930s but not a single 1933 magazine. Bummer. Back to the bound volumes.

It's work but it's fun! I'm really enjoying this deep dive into the world of harness racing!

       Gena of course has a job aside from helping me so instead of having her scan the stacks of articles I found this morning, I made copies. This is no small feat. The bound volumes are huge and very heavy. After I finished making copies, I took the loose magazines Gena had found back up to where they are stored. I made one more attempt to find any 1933 issue and came up empty. So discouraging.
       You might wonder why I want that May 1933 issue so bad since it is unlikely there will be anything about Greyhound in it. After all, he was just an awkward, gangly yearling in 1933. No one would care about him for at least a year. I want to see that issue because there is an article in it about gray horses. I’ve been chasing information about why gray was an unpopular color. I read in an old newspaper article a while back a line that went something like this: "…everyone knows any gray colt should be gelded immediately…" Well, maybe back in the 30s everyone knew that but in 2023, I sure don’t. People like gray horses today. Or at least don't detest them.
       Man, I wish I could find that 1933 bound volume.

Next post--a treasure hunt and a 90 year old mystery at the USTA Archives!

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