In our heyday

"Glory days, yeah they'll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girls eye"
                       Bruce Springsteen

Read of the passing of another from my home town.  Someone I only remember as, (myself  being only a fifteen year old),  a scrappy little blond haired kid whose boxing skills belied his young age. Whacking a heavy bag with jabs and rights with gloves larger than his head. I was transported back to a small garage in an alley in the old part of town off of second Ave, that had been transformed into a small boxing gym, barely the size of a single car garage run by a, kindly old  white haired Bill Moran whose house it was located behind. A small ring with boxing posters taped to the walls, the one I recall depicting 1969's National Golden Gloves champs of which Ron Lyle, a former Colorado state prisoner was one. Seems like the season was always Winter as I also remember the cold drive navigating icy streets while picking up and dropping off various friends afterwards.  Windshield of my 61 Ford steamed up by all the sweat.  Or seeing Earl, a former Marine and if memory serves a Vietnam vet jogging up the wet sidewalks in the dark. Green nylon military jacket and old gray sweat pants not unlike those in the Rocky movie that wouldn't be made for several years, with a white towel hooding his head. Earl was the pearl of the gym, (yeah it rhymes) a boxer of considerable skill and toughness.  I'm shooting from memory but as I recall he went to Nationals on several occasions.  And though he benefited exactly zero, Earl would don the gloves and spar with each one of us and amazingly, no one ever got hurt. With skills far beyond ours, he somehow looked like he was actually sparring as hard as say with, Woody Turley, one of the other older greats. An extremely cool thing to watch at that time. But Earl, underage as you might be,  would deliver a stinging hook if you dropped a glove below your ear just to make sure you were taking all of this seriously.    My dad had said no to this whole boxing interest several times before, envisioning the Cauliflower Ears and punch drunk demeanor that can accompany long term involvement, but eventually  relented. Apparently not to concerned about my good looks.  But anyways, so myself  and many of my friends spent many evenings the winter there eating a lot of boxing glove leather, coached patiently by a number of highly knowledgeable old guys, in the hopes of learning something that could give us some kind of edge if we ever found ourselves in a random, unescapable encounter with a number of tough guys who proliferated  in our little town.   So hell, anything that might help you survive.  But there was also just that allure of the test.  Yourself and those other guys. So on any given night that ring would be full of young men from ten to whatever years  of age.   This was the heyday of boxing in the old Magic Valley.  Where some of the locals enjoyed almost as much fame as the greats of the day.  I recall an amateur match in Gooding, Idaho attended by the great Gene Fullmer .  

Years later I would meet Matt whose dad, a one time pro of some stature raised his kids with a good knowledge and experience base of the manly arts.  That journey over several years led to various boxing gyms around Boise.

 I would meet the great Harry Kidd Matthews from Emmett, Idaho,  a one time foe of Rocky Marciano in a fight considered one of the greatest.  Ok, he was presenting trophies but still I got to shake his hand.
  
  Still later, I would get to meet and talk with George Logan  (Toughest Cat in Boise).   George, a one time great would drop by the gyms and spar with some of the better amateurs. The conversation was short but I had the opportunity to talk with him about his fight with Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali)  in 1961 and who had beaten one time champion Ezzard Charles.  Of Charles I remember Logan, a really polite self deprecating guy saying "he was past his prime."  But Ali? I remember the words "really great" spoken.  Yeah I know, it's a little different from the article but remember, George was talking to a kid at a local boxing gym and it was pretty clear he had a great deal of respect for the man.

  This was very heady stuff  in my youth but certainly credited to an interest that I had that brought me experiences that you couldn't buy from me now. Then I rarely gave a second thought to.   Memories like before a match I once had, my buddy  Matt loaned me a cup that he said was once owned by Archie Moore. Another great champion. Jeez.  I'm not sure if it was true or not or he was just trying to give me an edge .  Think about being the guy who fills those shoes, or cup so to speak. All of us played a sport or two, we might reminisce a bit about "back in the day" but there's just something about the connection of being in a ring in a solo encounter with  another whose abilities were at least as much as your own.  And really something everybody should experience.  My few fights were bloody, each time.  Sometimes the other guy a little more.  It didn't matter so much.  Boxing was a sport that tested your will as much as your toughness. A sport touted in the seventies by Playboy magazine of all things to be the toughest of them all.  Yeah, there's comparative sports now (think MMA)  But I don't think that option is as available to guys of questionable athletic bent as we were.  Nor are the kindly old coaches willing to spend time to teach the finer points of an art that they themselves had loved and were willing to pass on to anybody who'd pay attention, not just the prodigy. (As I myself have) But boxing and all of us old guys who share a little bit of that history, from those small towns, who at one time or another put it all up there,   there is a treasured corner for all those shared memories  and believe it or not a feeling of community.  And when an old great like Joe Frazier, Ron Lyle or Ken Norton, to just a local standout like Rick Adams passes, There's a communal wail from a bunch of guys, not a one under fifty who shared a time some thirty to forty years ago when in  our minds, the real glory days of the sport were. 

,

 Harry Kid Matthews vs Rocky Marciano

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You can't go back

Nor would I suspect, want to

I like to scourge the Internet to find quotes that suit my mood, moment or day.  My usual suspects, Mark Twain, Will Rogers or even Unknown meet the "thought for the day" category pretty much, but now and again I find a gem that gobsmacks me right to the bone.  Such as the case of this one stolen from one of the other blogs I occasionally read.

 "You never know when it will be the last time you see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there is always a last time"

Written by some guy John Trooper, whom I've never heard of let alone read one of his books.  Little explanation is needed and one surely can expand this meaning to other loved ones.  It's just one of those little truth's in life.   So, 

Yep, we're outta here tomorrow.  Whether it's to our usual roosts or not, who knows?  Most unreliable schedule I've ever known.  Get a call at any time and if you take the job, you got a couple of hours to get there and set up.  Can be a real pain sometimes. Especially at night. As far as on call though, well, I'll put it like this.  Young guy shows up not fifteen minutes ago.  I thought I recognized him out of the couple hundred guys I deal with every day and asked if he had left some time during the day,  (being not new round here was  the question). He says he left about 3:00AM.  Yep that's my gig.  He had to come back because some "Jagoff" (and isn't there always some jagoff whose name we never hear?) had screwed some (insert a thingamabob that I haven't the faintest idea of recognition or purpose)  Then he added "Don't you get bored doing this?".   I thought back over the years, to all the years owning jobs that I was on call for?  And two memories leapt instantly to the top of the heap.

A time in the early nineties when as a newly divorced, broke Dad with two small children living in a remote location, middle of winter with two plus feet of unplowed snow outside.  Odds of getting out in 4X4 50/50.  Getting a midnight call that I had to deal with, no getting around it.  (This stuff happened alot back then.) because some "jagoff" probationer or parolee was "struttin his stuff".  (yeah i was a PO, another term that needs no explanation)  And also fresh from child custody court and here I am having to find some midnight babysitter's because I really hafta handle whatever bullshit is going on.  Loading the kids up and dealing with that little nightmare, picking up a couple of sleepy little ones a couple of hours later to go back for a few minutes of precious sleep to then start the day again.  Cuz, well I needed the job.

And.............

For thirteen years give or take working at Skywest Airlines,my coveted second job,  bless her soul for doing so much for me, yet taking so much as well.  Many, many nights of walking into a terminal full of screaming angry passengers because, well, because God thought this was a great night for a snowstorm to trap them all in some small town they had never heard of, midway during their flight to whoever knows where.  Sometimes hundreds of them.  Yeah I know, a lot of folks have to do this stuff.  But this was betwixt and between the other stuff.  And the gods of coincidence just loved to make them all happen at once. And to me.  To work eight hours overnight in freezing weather, go  home change clothes, drop the kids at school and then, exhausted, go sit on a witness stand for a couple hours in some courtroom scattered between eight counties. There are limits though.  One prosecutor from a northern county some five hundred miles away faxed a subpoena about quitting time for the next day.  OK, he would be a classic "jagoff"  I called him and the dude really expected that I was going to hop in the state ride and be there AM.   Such is the abuse a state employee gets.  Dismiss or deal dude, it ain't happening's what I told him.  It's been nearly eight years since I retired and wouldn't return on a bet.   Folks who abuse state workers should walk a mile in their shoes.

So anyway, to answer the guy's question, No, I don't get bored here everyday.  Matter of fact, I kinda like it.  Fer now anyway.


 "What day is it? It's today squeaked Piglet. My favorite day said Pooh."

             AA Milne

The Alamo, San Antonio

Between really lousy weather,   Countless contacts with the loan guy at the bank who seems to need more and more stuff while gathering up crap to complete our taxes,   And frankly I am bored with talking about life on a Caliche road in South Texas, oh yeah where the winters are milder, you just have to deal with the consequences of the occasional ocean of water that falls on you seemingly every week during the season. Plus we have been trying to make ourselves available for every emergency or short term job that comes around in an effort  to stretch out this employment as long as possible as the companies sort things out.  My understanding is the more curmudgeonly ilk among us are hard pressed to find work.    And  Oh yeah, my last computer took a crap.

So last Saturday, the planets came together and we were released on perhaps the nicest day we have had around here for weeks.  Ashamed to say, we had never been to the Alamo, although sometimes not more than an hour's drive away.

Though one could argue this place is the reason Texas ever came into existence and provided the rallying cry "Remember the Alamo" allowing the Texians to push the Mexican Army back.   I experienced the  same humbling reverence I  felt while visiting the resting place of the USS Arizona in Oahu.  Though things didn't start nor end here, some 200 to 250 "Texians" died in a Battle with somewhere's near 3000 of Santa Ana's troops on March 6, 1836.  After repulsing two previous attacks, they were overrun in the third attack. The Mexican soldiers swiftly executed the survivors or those who surrendered.  Over 600 Mexican troops died during the battle.  Another stroke of luck, we happened to visit during the annual reenactment that had been rained out the week before.

The Alamo is located smack dab in the middle of San Antonio, Downtown.  Entrance is free but good luck finding parking under 15.00 for the day. 

Tha Alamo chapel itself is not large.  Photography is not allowed so folks will have to google images themselves.  It now has a roof but gazing at the top of the walls with the small walkway,  well, imagination tells the rest of the story.  The inside is currently home to a massive display of early flintlock weapons and Bowie Knives or "Arkansas Toothpicks",  It's said David Crockett, one of the Commanders secluded himself for a period to settle with his maker before the battle.

The Walls still bear scars of the attack.

Lisa got some folks to smile, well me not so much.

     

What?  I'm a friendly guy and I promise not to mug you.  

We also had Dinner on the River Walk.  A meandering walk along the San Antonio River lined with many many restaurants.  A lot of the prices seemed a little steep with the exception of the Mexican variety, which incidentally is what we went with.  Otherwise about every type of food in the spectrum is available.   .

I just have not settled on a platform for the Panoramics yet.  Yes that is the top of Lisa's head.

Dinner visitor.  Tried to get my foot in the pic.  He was just a bit skittish.

And Back.  Note the Caliche dirt road.

My earliest memories of the Alamo, other than high school History.  I must have been five or six when I watched this on old black and white television.  It's worth the eight and a half minutes worth.

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