'He'd tell us these things, and we would be open-mouthed,' said Tina Hickman, who grew up in the neighborhood. The stories were true. The old man was Erwin G. 'Cannon Ball' Baker.
In the Garfield Park neighborhood of Indianapolis lived a tall old man with a bulbous nose who spent a lot of time in his garage. It was a two-car detached, and in it were marvelous things like old, old motorcycles and photographs of the old man taken years earlier. In one, he was in some desert, straddling a motorcycle and holding a rifle."He was home a lot. He was retired," said Bob Biehl, who grew up six doors to the east."It looked like he was starved for company.
Baker was famous. A journalist hung the"Cannon Ball" name on him early on, and he embraced it — he actually trademarked it. And on his tombstone, an imposing, granite job in Crown Hill Cemetery, he had inscribed:"Cannon Ball Baker."Baker died of a heart attack in 1960 at age 78. A decade later, he was remembered with the debut of an unsanctioned cross-country motor race called the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash.
Baker was a physical specimen. He was 6-2, 225 pounds. He crossed the U.S. on a motorcycle in six days, six hours, 25 minutes in 1941, at age 60. Jim Simmons, who in the 1950s was a neighborhood kid in Garfield Park, remembers stopping at Baker's house on his way from baseball practice and visiting with the old man on his front porch."He was a little gruff, but not a lot," Simmons said."He liked to talk about his experiences, but he wasn't a braggart. He just related things as they happened.
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