From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Caught The West-Bound Freight

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Caught The West-Bound Freight    

By Bart Webber

This, under penalty of death or destruction, at least figuratively is the last piece I will write on the legendary Boomer Cadger, a guy who back in the day, back in the early 1960s when running the roads was hazardous to the runner’s health ran like the wind. ( No “share the road” with a runner then as drivers would swerve and laugh, the girl pedestrians would throw rocks or swear like troopers.) And beat my ass so many times when our two track and cross-country teams met that I always have a little jealous resentment writing about his exploits even now. Funny how fifty some years late the effect lingers.

The reason, or reasons, for making this the last effort are simple. One Tiger McPhee, one Bees Devine and one Rolly Jenkins, respectively a football player, a basketball player and a baseball player who played for our high school, North Adamsville back in the 1960s. More importantly they were members of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys that I hung out with on lonesome weekend nights. One recent night in Jimmy Joe’s Lounge after I had published the second “Boomer” article while we were having a few drinks the subject of who was the “best you ever saw” in high school sports came up. Tiger mentioned our own legendary Thunder Thornton, a very fast bruiser of a fullback who would carry guys down the field to make a few extra yards and who had led the Warriors to a state championship almost single-handedly. The others mentioned now faded stars and I of course mentioned Boomer. We ended the night on a good note after a few more drinks and that was that.

Well almost “that was that.” Part of my idea about writing about Boomer was to see if he was still around, was alive and kicking and maybe through some social network media have heard what I was doing. What happened though was that his friend from North Quincy High John Franklin got in touch with me and filled me in on some of Boomer’s history shortly after high school and I published that information. Again with the idea of trying to draw Boomer out as the arc expanded. I also when the still standing members of Tonio’s corner boys met for drinks and conversation            

At Jimmy Jack’s would mention the latest happenings on the Boomer story. The other night though the rubber met the road on that idea.

The minute I was ready to tell the guys the latest on Boomer Tiger McPhee exploded. Said and this is pretty close to verbatim that Thunder Thornton would have had Boomer for lunch and had time for a nap. That nobody’s gave a rat’s ass about some “fag” in his underwear bothering automobile drivers by clogging up the roads. That the guy probably only did those runs to expose himself to young girls to get “his jollies off” (implying that too might have been my motive for running even though Tiger knew how hard my home life was, and his too). That nobody gave a rat’s ass about cross-country and track when the real sports were football, basketball and baseball. That maybe instead of “bugging” them with “bullshit on a stick” about some has-been (unlike Thunder who made the state high school Hall of Fame and played for a while in the pros before some Achilles tendon problems shortened his career) that I should leave Boomer conversation at the door. The others chimed in with similar if less robust sentiments. The look Tiger gave after his spiel told me from past experience that I should keep my lips sealed with seven seals.

I am not sure whether before Tiger gave his “don’t tread on me” warning I would have continued to talk about Boomer if for no other reason that nervousness about why after all these years I have been pursuing this story. What I did know was that I was privy to information from John Franklin about Boomer’s later fate, about what was happening to him as of about ten years ago. I have already mentioned that “jock” Boomer was not smart enough to go to college in the days when track scholarships were not plentiful, and some standards existed between academics and sports. He joined the Navy with the idea of seeing the world, the world wound up be stuck on some scow as a cook down in South Carolina. In the Navy he got into drugs and alcohol, had a few drying out periods later, started his own diner, that failed, had a few marriages, those failed and wound up finally, sober, running a paint contracting business with some success. You already know and if you don’t I will mention it again John said I would not recognize Boomer since he had ballooned up to well over 230 pounds (his running weight was probably about 130). Farewell youth. So long Boomer, you ran like the wind and that is the image I will keep in my quiet head.           

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Hit The High White Note

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Hit The High White Note  

By Bart Webber

Yes, I am once again going back to the old days, the old track and cross-country running days which probably saved me from landing in some godforsaken jail like a few other North Adamsville corner boys or down in some ditch, some nameless potter’s field early grave last hurrah. At the very least it blew off enough steam when I could not take the anger which was blowing up my family home that I survived in one piece, although that too was a close thing, very close. But this stuff, these memories pings are not about me, although I wish they were, but about a guy who I ran against who ran like the wind, Boomer Cadger.

I have mentioned previously that I have running this stuff, running his photos too in the hope, the forlorn hope maybe that he would respond. So far all I have been able to find out about him, about his fate, is earlier stuff from his high school friend John Franklin whom I have been in contact with through social media, the place where I thought I might get a draw from Boomer. Without exaggeration pound for pound Boomer was the greatest runner, cross-country runner, running like a deer, of our generation and if a few things had gone slightly differently Boomer would have a much larger place in the archives of the world junior cross-country championships, the place where such skills were seriously recognized.            

An event I had not heard about since I had obviously lost contact with Boomer’s career after we graduated from high school and he no longer could beat my ass to the ground was the NYU Invitational Cross-Country Championship held in Van Cortlandt Park out Bronx-way (I think) in the summer after graduation. As far as I knew at the time from what I had heard about his homelife filled with drunken father and doped-up mother was he had enlisted in the Navy, half expecting to run for that outfit after no colleges offered him anything like a scholarship in the days when road running was seen as a perversion of nature. John Franklin filled me in on this event and I will weave that exploit into my story below and see if this lures the Boomer out.   

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Boomer Cadger ran like the wind, was like the wind. Maybe today you can see guys and gals too who run like gazelles, deer animals like that loping along to your almost jogging like beat but back then if you were looking it was mostly guys like me beating the pavement to some pedestrian beat. I have tried to emphasize that in the various archival captions I have presented of late surrounding my own youth as a cross-country runner running up against my rival from North Quincy High School about twenty miles from North Adamsville where I grew up. I have also tried to cut him down to size a bit although not too much I hope since for most of my career I bit his dust. The only reason all of this even came up initially was that a few of us from the old days were having drinks one night at Jimmy Jack’s Pub and we got into the inevitable “who was the best you ever saw” in various high school sports in our time. In the early 1960s before sports even at the high school level became major money-makers and the aim of sports outfits. (For example, the so-called track shoes of the day today would have the manufacturers in court to explain their role in the rate of increase in knee replacements by those looking for legal recourse. Yes, they were that flimsy maybe worse)         

Most of those present were “real” sports players like Tiger McPhee a football player who naturally picked our own run over everything that moved fullback Thunder Thornton from our high school who led the Warriors to a state divisional championship. Others like Bees Devine picked scoring machine Slim Davis who played for the Knicks for a while before they got Earl “the Pearl” Monroe to carry them from Reading High in basketball. I, of course, picked Boomer Cadger from main rival North Quincy even if with some still present resentment. When I went into the reasons the others were surprised about what I had learned about Boomer recently from his high school friend John Franklin who was something like the class historian at his school. John had told me that Boomer (real name William, Bill only recently learned by me from John) had been training on the sand at Adamsville Beach in the summer. This technique learned from the great mile world record-holder of the time Australian Herb Elliott and his monster of a coach, Percy something but a monster is all you need to really know. It only gets more testing-apparently Boomer also subscribed to the great triple gold medal long distance Olympic champion Emil Zatopek’s regime of interval sprint runs, many of them to build up speed and endurance.              

According to Franklin Boomer did this on his own since his coach was some old wino, some bag of bad humor who knew somebody in the school department who got him in  and who was just serving his teaching time grabbed since he was a World War II veteran with preference hanging around bothering young girls looking up their dresses and who knows what else. Connected to but clueless about training track and cross-country runners. (For example, he knew nada about running shoes but had a friend who owned Sammy’s Sports and so all the team had to buy their worthless shoes from him or run in cumbersome Chuck Taylor’s.) John said Boomer was always reading sports magazines so must have picked it up then when track and running got more play than today.

This is what I do know having raced against Boomer in both cross-country and track. Whatever drove him to excellent (or just to get out of what was a horrible home life) happened after eighth grade. You see I beat Boomer in the mile (the longest junior high school kids could go in sanctioned events) that year in a regional meet. Whipped his ass. Then the next fall in a regional cross-country meet he blew me away; I ate his dust. Thereafter he improved always more than I did and so  

this residual moan and groan. He would go on to a fifth-place finish in the world junior cross-country championships and then not much else. But he was like the wind in his prime. I wonder now whether that time I beat him in eighth grade didn’t spur him on, didn’t get him to the training magazines.    

Maybe yes, maybe no but what Franklin told me recently only makes it so obvious that with some serious coaching, maybe a trip to boarding school if somebody had taken an interest, maybe if he had gotten some tutoring or had been driven by the books as much as by the running he could have been a college wind, who knows in those days the Olympics could have loomed. If you had asked me when I started this so-called tribune to an opponent if that was in the cards I would have said no. But after Franklin told me about that race in New York, the NYU Invitational who knows. All I know is that only the best around get invited or dare to show up as in the case of Boomer.  

This is the race guys, college guys like skinny from hunger Ireland’s Emmett Riley from Villanova, well-trained guys like Jack Raines from NYU and Miles Archer from Saint Joseph’s have won. All those guys if I recall would go to the Olympics although I don’t think any won gold. So Boomer showed up on his way to Naval boot camp out in Lake Michigan I think it was. Showed up wearing his high school dead beat uniform and his tacky coach’s buddy Sammy suicidal track shoes. Showed up, paid his fee and meandered around waiting for the race to start keeping away from the big names he knew from his sports newspapers, Lenny Dodge, Carson Dorry, Lorn Davis. At the start of the race he was in maybe the third fourth row to keep from going out too fast with the speed boys from college. Smart move because that was a hot day. A hot day for Boomer too as he beat the whole freaking field by about sixty yards with one of his greatest sprint finishes. And you thought I was kidding when I compared him to the wind, picked him as the best ever in my sport in high school  

Yeah what old Boomer did that day was what I would later find out in jazz, in any music it seemed had hit that high white note everybody reached for.     

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives-The Day Boomer Cadger Caught Socks And Shin-Splits

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives-The Day Boomer Cadger Caught Socks And Shin-Splits

By Bart Webber

  

Boomer Cadger was a piece of work, although I only knew of him, had been run ragged by him when he was just coming up as a high school star in cross country back in the day, back in the 1960s. Maybe I shouldn’t even be touting this guy since back in those days everybody, and believe me everybody, saw guys running around in their “underwear” (see below) as some kind of perverts. Menaces on the roads in case of cross- country runners who were subjected to honks, near side swipes and angry snarls from irate motorists. Girls, yes, the all important girls, would titter and point at runners, us, with nothing but distain. More than one time trying to “talk up” some girl in school I would mention that I was on the cross-country team would tell me they did not know the school had a team. Even my own mother wondered what she had raised to young adulthood when I would mention the sport of kings.        

But enough of the bad days social milieu, enough of my humiliations for this is about legendary Boomer Cadger who was so lithe he could do cross-country and so fast that the football coach at his school, North Quincy High School some twenty miles from North Adamsville and historic rivals since we were the same size wanted him as a wide receiver. Boomer though had such a wretched home life, his father a drunk and his mother filled with morphine dreams and who knows what else that running was what kept him alive during high school. He would from what I understand flee his home the minute the drunken fireworks started and go out and run say five miles to “cleanse his soul” if he treated the run as I did when I had my own slight home troubles.

Like I said North Quincy High and North Adamsville High were rivals in most sports and so I would run against Boomer (I never did learn why he had such a nickname which seemed more appropriate for a baseball or football player) and get my ass whipped by him starting in ninth grade. It seemed each year that I improved he leaped ahead even more. I would find out from an interview Boomer did with the now defunct, I think, Cross-Country Runner that in summertime he would travel all the way over to Adamsville Beach, the closest beach to North Quincy and spent the morning running the sand dunes down at the Squaw Rock end of the beach. I knew automatically that he had been influenced by an Australian coach who trained the legendary miler Herb Elliott on the sand dunes down under.    

Now, I guess after all this time I would have to call it a tribute to Boomer, what I want to finish up with is what happened to Boomer when he qualified his senior year in high school for the World Junior Cross-Country championships held in New York City. The race was run through Central Park then and maybe four or five hundred runners were at the starting line. Now Boomer’s people were poor Oakie types beyond their drug and alcohol problems.  Boomer only had one pair of running socks, white, which he washed by hand himself but they had given out so the day of the race he had on new socks, new thicker socks which were tight against his running shoes. As the race progressed along the five-mile hill and dale course Boomer was among the pack of several leaders, for a while. Then, and I am not sure how or why it happened when I read about in our local newspaper as a result of those bunched tight socks bothering him he developed shin splints, a very painful condition and a bane to runners. Instead of dropping out though, or maybe stopping and getting rid of those socks Boomer toughed it out. Toughed it out to a fifth- place finish which given the circumstances may have been a victory if he been healthy.

I might have been kinder to Boomer’s memory, certainly during high school, if I had had my ass whipped by a world champion. To see him in memory’s eye running like the wind will have to do. The last I heard of Boomer Cadger, remember those were the days when running was not like today a big- time sport and so no colleges sought his services, he had joined the Navy out of high school to get away from that hellish homelife.   

     

From The World Cross Country Runners Archives- The Day Boomer Cadger Set The Record Straight

As a casual perusal of this photograph will tell back in the days when runners were honed at incessantly by irate motorists and pedestrians, mocked by children and old-timers as menaces to society one Boomer Cadger let all that go as so much wind, like some annoying fly. Boomer started running when he was maybe seven or eight along the sands of La Jolla beaches dodging surfers and laughing sand pail little girls. When he came of age though he blew all his competition away, went like that wind mentioned a moment ago. Won many races against older more experienced if not as hungry men. And for his herculean efforts he received some beef stew and the scorn of two or three young women he was interested in who would not dream of dating a guy running around in his underwear or who was not football hero fit.