Sparrow
Chapter 3. Fightin'
Bout the only person I ever saw Uncle Deke have any real respect for was my dad. He used to call him Erroll, when he was joking with him. He'd always laugh when he said it but I knew he wasn't mocking him. It was complimentary mocking. It was a reference to the fact that a lot of folks thought dad looked like Erroll Flynn.
Dad not only was a handsome dude, he was quite a fist fighter. He had an old scrap book, pun intended, with some of his athletic high points in it. I used to love to go through it. It was kind of like the pride a father feels for his son, except the other way around. There was one article still blows me away. We don't have it any longer so I'm going to write it pretty much as I recall it. It was in the Sunday edition of the Florida Times Union somewhere in the 30's. It went something like this. "Hundreds were in attendance at the basketball game last night between_____at the Knights of Columbus. The score was tied when a fight broke out in the waning seconds over a bad call. The stands emptied onto the court as everyone squared off with the person nearest him. After a while the crowd was brought under control but for one duo that had continued under the home teams basket. A crowd gathered round the two as they exchanged blows. After some time they came to a halt and shook hands with neither claiming victory but in this writers opinion the young man Earl Denney got the best of his opponent. "I don't know who he was but that guy had a heck of a right" Denney told me."He was a great sport" What Denney didn't know was that 'great sport' was none other than____the Southeastern welterweight champion..
Reads like fiction doesn't it? A way of life and living gone forever. Today, knives would be drawn, bullets fired and SWAT units deployed. The story would be on the front page, not a blurb in the sports section. In the aftermath, people would be mourning, not calmly congratulating each other for the noble fight they fought.
I don't know when society began to de-emphasize character as a valued commodity but we did so at our peril. Today people look at those John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies, with all their chivalry and attention to fair play, as a total distortion of the reality of their time. A 'Pollyanna' view of the world as we would like it to be but with no basis in reality. They contend that the stories, with well mannered losers, fair fights and happy endings were conjured from the imaginations of the script writers, where the messy details and dark side of mans character was conveniently withheld. Surely some of that is true but this story of that Knights of Columbus basketball game is significant. Certainly not every scene acted out in America ended like that night but the complete lack of surprise by the writer, as he described the events, speaks to the reader, that this sort of good natured brawling and pandemonium was more common than our pop sociologists and historians would have us believe.
Another story he and mom told us, was when they first got married and mom was pregnant with Earl jr. A little road rage thing was going on and 4 guys in a car ran them off the road out near the Naval Air Station. The 4 guys all poured out of their car to go beat up dad but apparently one of them was in a bigger hurry than the others. Because of that, he met dads fist before the others got there. They saw what went down, their buddy! So when they did get there, they just picked their pal up and put him in the car and drove off.
In the next scene, Eroll said that he broke his hand on that punch and if those guys had known it, it might not have ended so romantically. He said he learned from that experience to never hit a guy in the forehead. So I never did.
Actually I didn't ever hit anybody, anywhere on the head with my bare fist. Not that I didn't want to or that I didn't try. Like most young American boys I even trained for the moment and it was dad that did his paternal pugilistic duty. Yep, he taught me how to box.
He'd done the same for my older brothers when they were at the appointed age. That age was not chronologically determined, it was need based. When you and your first bully had been introduced it was time. A black eye or torn shirt was usually what set the whole thing in motion. So dad got out his boxing gloves.
Those old boxing gloves dad taught us with had been around forever. I suspect they were a prototype of the real boxing gloves, you know, the ones with padding in them? Dad's were basically a leather mitten that covered your fists. A Thanksgiving turkey had more stuffing in it than one of those gloves. If you had a glass jaw, you were going to find out real early around our house.
Well, my first instruction class was scheduled because Herbie Gorman was terrorizing us, well me, at the bus stop. He was two years older, two feet wider and one foot taller. I told dad it was fine with me if he wanted to take care of Herbie for me but he thought it might be better if I handled him myself. Something about building character. I can recall thinking, "if I'm not alive, what good is character?"
Dad strapped me into my mittens and he put his on and we stood like you're supposed to stand, at an angle to each other. Most people think the reason boxers do that is so you can take some jabs while saving that other arm. The one that's just hangin around quietly behind you and out of sight, waiting to pulverize the guy. It's funny how that arm comes as a surprise to you when it hits you because you know that thing's there and that it's dangerous. I suppose you get to worrying about how those jabs are starting to hurt and before you know it, you think your fighting with a one armed guy. Until he reminds you he's got another one.
But the real reason you're at that angle is to protect your privates. Oh yeah. You do not want to be squarely facing a man, or a woman, particularly a woman! In that squared off position. You'll be down for the count son. It's quite possible your sperm count could go down a bit as well!!
So dad and I exchanged a few very... slow.... motion .. jabs, so he could show me how to duck and punch and step and jab and how to execute that sneaky hidden arm round house, without shutting my eyes. But all in.... slow.... mo...tion.
Dad told me, he thought I was ready to advance to a regular frame speed so I recall getting a little tense. Now keep in mind who I was in the ring with and about to go toe to toe. I didn't mention it earlier but dad was also a Golden Gloves boxer not too many years earlier, so I knew he could do whatever damage he wanted. But I also knew there were laws against child abuse, so I had the law on my side. Plus, mom would really beat him up if he hurt me. So right out of the gate I had a legal and psychological advantage.
Believe it or not I thought I had discovered a physical advantage as well. I know but don't laugh. Yeah dad was 6 feet of young muscle, with the will of John Wayne and the quickness of a rattlesnake but I swear I thought I spotted a weakness in his defense.
You see, when we were doing our slow motion instructions, I noticed when I would jab with my left, sometimes, at the same time, he would jab with his left too. All in slow motion of course. What I noticed was, my arm was longer than his. I wasn't sure about the other one but I was almost positive my left was longer than his! Sure, they were toothpick skinny and had barely enough muscles on 'em for me to operate my fingers, but that arm was a bit longer than his. I was sure of it.
Well, when the bell rang at the beginning of round 1 ya'll, it was over before it even got going. Cause I jabbed with my left, right when he jabbed and I'm here to tell you... long beats skill and muscle! I put that first jab right on the end of his big Irish nose and his eyes watered up. And he calmly said "I think you've got the idea." It was the only time I'd seen Erroll cry. Well, he went and cried to mom about how I'd hurt him and she got mad at me for hitting my father!! How was I to know he had a glass nose! We all laughed about it. But I was reigning champ. I was 1 and O... and not about to give him a rematch!
Armed with my lesson and my new confidence I was ready for anything Herbie could throw at me. Next morning at the bus stop when Herbie provoked me, I was ready to teach him what I had shown that Golden Gloves fighter the night before. Herbie started messin' with me. "Hey skinny Denney," he asked. "What Herbie", I replied. He continued. "What time is it?" "I don't know" I said. I really didn't know, but what I wondered was why in the heck does he care. And then I got my answer when he answered his own question. "It's time for me to mess you up."
I didn't think he cared about the real time. Herbie never cared about anything but fighting. But I was primed and ready for him. I threw my books down and said "Ok Herbie, you asked for it!" The girls all gave a collective gasp like in the movies when the wimp's about to get even. They also were giving me that Prince Charming has just arrived to sleigh the beast, look.
Then Herbie said"Denney I'm gonna pulverize you!"
Pulverize me? Herbie had obviously been watching "Leave it to Beaver" and had borrowed the line but it did adequately convey his intentions. Pulverizing someone was about the worst thing you could do them. Worst than "whoop your butt." So Herbie had landed the first psychological blow. But I shook it off and said "Go ahead Herrrrbie!" Emphasizing the girly HER part. And so we began the prefight dance. No hitting, just circling each other, jousting with an occasional swing. One thing I knew right off the bat was my arms were way longer than his. You could just look at us and tell that. I'd known that in our previous fights but it wasn't until I learned on Dad's glass nose that I discovered it was such a lethal weapon.
I even kind of hoped dad was watching from the house, thinking he'd get that same warm beam of pride watching me fight, as I got from reading about his. I also figured he might feel some of that joy that comes from teaching someone to do something, then see them execute it perfectly in the real world. Yeah, everything was pretty much going my way. Well, all the way up until the fight actually started.
After I took my first swing, the first thing I found out was Herbie was not dad. In fact it was evident that Herbie had been taught a thing or two about hand to hand combat, not by a boxer but rather by a 'rastler'!!
A wrestler to a boxer is like a mongoose to a cobra! Defense is futile. They just plow right through your silly Marcus of Queensbury jabs and get you in a big ol bear hug and squeeze you like a starving python. Yeah I was gettin' my clocked cleaned, even with all my training. I couldn't believe what was happening.
Sad thing is, I'd even told some of the guys earlier 'bout all I'd learned and to stick around and watch what I was going to do to Herbie. With all the hype and the way this thing was going, I felt like Jerry Cooney.
Well I thought the beating was actually getting bad enough where one of my 'friends' might step up and help me, like they do in the movies but noooo. They probably would've except I'd done all that pre-fight bragging and when people pre-bragg, it's somehow a just little sweet to see 'em go down. Only 3 guys in history ever got away with it Babe Ruth, Mohammad Ali, and Broadway Joe. It was becoming increasingly clear that I was not going to make that list. The list I was gonna be on was the list of disasters, the Titanic, the Hindenburg and Napoleon at Waterloo.
Well Herbie didn't even stop the beating when he saw blood, heck, I think it might have actually inspired him. It didn't seem to be of any concern to my friends either but lo and behold my older sister had heard the commotion from down the street. She came running up like the cavalry. Albeit a girl outfit. But when you're 'bout to be burned at the stake you don't care what sex the hero is.
Well the lovely Dorinda grabbed ol Herbie and punched, clawed and kicked him til he let me go. Now he was even more embarrassed than I was. Fact is, it wasn't a good day for guys in general that morning. I mean my sister beat up the guy that beat me up?
Silently, I was becoming a believer in women's lib, even before they had a name for it.
Later when I pondered the whole matter, like we do when we're trying to rebuild our self esteem. I figured this is what happened. I tried to box a wrestler, mistake number 1. Number 2, the wrestler was older and bigger. And number 3 my sister was 3 years older than the wrestler and though girls are sweet and all that, they are still human beings.
But turns out her ace in the hole, other than the motherly instinct she felt sensing I was in danger, was she was a brilliant and beautiful ballet dancer! Huh?.. Yep those legs were as powerful as Jim Browns and as flexible as Barishnikov's and those long arms, well you know all about the advantages of those!
So what we have learned is, a wrestler beats a boxer but a ballerina can kick all their asses!
So impressed by the destructive power of ballet, a few days later I asked dad if I could take ballet lessons instead of continuing the obviously ineffective boxing drills. Dad gave a quick and firm "NO".
______________________
Like most guys I hung out with, we watched the same shows, like Daniel Boone and The Rifleman. That's where I learned to first try to resolve things by cunning but if that failed , well, it was time to scrap. 99 percent of those scraps aren't memorable because none resulted in much more than a torn shirt or deflated ego. Shirts were cheap and egos re-inflate quickly.
Yeah most conflagrations were merely dust ups. But there was one that was a big deal in my world.
I was in 10th grade at Englewood High School. I was on the basketball team and was fortunate enough to be asked to play on the varsity. It was a really cool experience because these older guys were my idols. They were only two years older but that's a lot when you're all growing and maturing so fast. These guys had hair that grew all over their body, they all owned cars and had all engaged in premarital intercourse. Yes, the sexual revolution had just begun, well, for everybody but me. But that's another story.
Another beautiful aspect of being on the varsity was I finally got to be on the same team with my buddy Lynn Murray.
Lynn and I grew up in Bridgewater circle together until the new expressway took his house. They moved 6 miles away when I was in 7th grade and though we were still friends we never saw each other much. It was solely a matter of logistics and his being 2 years ahead of me. But I kept track of him reading of his exploits in the sports section. Lynn was a star athlete and we were now reunited. Perfection!
About halfway through the season we had a Saturday practice. If you had a Saturday practice that meant you lost Friday night, so needless to say nobody was too happy about being there.
To add to the tension we had lost more games than anyone expected. On paper we should have been a lot better than we were. There were some obvious reasons why we lost some games early on. One is, about 3/4ths of our team were football players. That's a lot. Normally you'd only have a couple. The problem is it takes a while for a guy that's been pumpin iron and not using his hands for anything but pushing and stiff arming to become loose and fluid. Those first few weeks on the basketball court would have been seen as comical if we'd have won. But it was not funny. Our games were full of dropped, easy to catch passes, missed layups and just plain plowing into people out of frustration. But that doesn't last long and those guys were soon morphing into bball players.
Another reason for our losses and I say this with great hesitation but I promised myself when I started this book I was going to be honest. Our coach! I only had him for that one year because he left the next season. Seems one of the older guys on the team had a father that was setting him up with a good job when he left. I'm telling you all that, not to be spiteful but because it's important as they say on Perry Mason, it goes to motive.
That son we'll refer to as Freddie. And Freddie wasn't any happier about being there on Saturday than anybody else was, so he began to take his frustration out on the skinny sophomore, me! Fred was about six feet tall and wide. He was built real stable. It's a good basketball body. It's also a good fighter's body.
Fred was utilizing the fighter aspect of his physique on that morning. When we'd run up and down the court, he had decided he would elbow me occasionally. But discretely. In such a way where you wonder "did he just elbow me?" Soon it was clear he had it in for me because it was evolving into pushing. I kept waiting for the coach to tell him to cut it out because I had already told him to cool it. But we heard nothing from the soon to be re-employed coach.
I'm not an insensitive person, so it wasn't lost on me why Freddie or anyone else on that team, except Lynn, might have a problem with me. Heck I was a lowly sophomore, I was supposed to be on the JV. Plus I was starting. That meant the guy that was supposed to be starting, wasn't. And he was a senior. But one fine guy he was. His name was Tom Glass. But Tom wasn't the one that was messing with my body and my mind. It was Fred.
After a few more 'trips' down court I'd had enough. When 'that son of a new employee' intentionally stepped on my foot I began to fall backwards, as I did I cold cocked him. To the others, it might have appeared unprovoked but you and I and Fred and the coach knew differently, that Fred got what he deserved.
Well, when Fred realized what had just happened to him, he was pissed. He got up and came after me like a rectangular steam roller. That's when I was real glad that we had so many football players on the team because a couple of them grabbed him and saved me from what I figured was certain death.
So now I'm feeling ok. He started it all by elbowing me. Then stepped on my foot. I retaliated. Knocked him down. Now let's get on with practice.
Well Freddie would have none of that. Noooo. He wanted retribution. He felt like his honor was at stake because I had hit him but he wasn't allowed to hit me back. He also knew what the whole team knew, that I popped him pretty good. And I was just a sophomore. Well to Freddie, that just could not stand.
He was one of the starters, so besides being the darling of the coach, he was important to the team. Now he was saying he wasn't going to practice until he got a chance to fight me. You know, to save face, redeem his honor and family name. I stood there thinking, where does this guy think he is, France? Freddie was from a 'proper' area up north so I suppose he thought, symbolically, like I had hit him with my handkerchief or something because the boy was demanding satisfaction!
Ok, here's what a good coach would do. He would say, no, he would yell. "Fred, you pushed, elbowed and stepped on Denney and he hit you back! It's over son. Now I'm going to tell you one more time, get your ass in gear and your head out of it and get back in the game or you're going home, you hear me son?! We are a team and you two had a little dust up. It happens all the time but if you think for one minute I'm going to let you fight him because you're pride's hurt, well son you have a lot to learn about me"
Here's what a coach says that doesn't want to upset the son of the man who's going to get him a job. "Warbritton, go get the gloves". I thought to myself, "did he just tell Scott to go get the gloves? The boxing gloves?" Warbritton said "yes sir" and left the gym.
There was an audible 'oh my God' kind of sound by the other players. There was going to be a sanctioned fight. I'm sure on one level they were quite happy to be doing anything other than running up and down that court but even the most heartless among them had to be fearful for what was about to happen to me.
And me, I stood there waiting for somebody to come to their senses and put an end to this. And where was my sister the ballerina, I could use her help right now!
Well, in comes Scott with the gloves. It was clear now there was going to be a fight and I am in the main event. I am going to have to fight Freddie in front of my entire team. He is angry and no doubt a skilled Irish boxer. I was, shall we say, concerned!
The coach told everyone to leave the gym and they did. But within seconds all 6 windows around the gym had 2 players faces pressed tight. They weren't going to miss this bout for anything.
I got to tell you folks, I felt like a lamb being lead to slaughter. At that moment I hated that gutless coach for bowing down to that kid that was about to mow me down at center court. I beat the odds and made that basketball team, fair and square, by competing on the court. I had tried to be considerate of the older players that I knew would be bothered by my youthful presence. As far as I knew a sophomore had never started on the varsity before and these guys could have taken great offense to it all. It was a concern of mine. But I had tried hard to win their respect on and off the court. And what had me so angry was that what was about to happen to me had nothing to do with basketball. I was going to be publicly humiliated and all because of this incestuous relationship between a coach and a player.
We were told it was going to be a 3 minute round.
He strapped the gloves on us and as he was doing it, I recall thinking, why did I take those ballet classes and quit my Golden Gloves instructions. Why!?
Ok, gather yourself, I thought. Yes, it's true dad did discontinue my instructions. But me and the guys in the neighborhood had gotten in the habit of putting on those 'mittens' and fighting each other. There were no instructors and it was everyman for himself but we had been doing it for a couple of summers. But thinking about that wasn't all that consoling because none of those guys was the man Fred was.
Fred was a fully formed and functioning adult in every way, except perhaps mentally because obviously he was delusional, thinking he was in France and all!
When the bell rang Freddie decided he wasn't going to waste a second of his precious 3 minutes with no Cassius Clay footwork because he headed for me pretty much like that steamroller I described earlier. He started swinging at me like a Tasmanian Devil. He'd had over an hour to contemplate his hate for this skinny sophomore and it all poured out onto me in the form of wild flailing arms. What? Wild flailing arms? I asked myself. Could it be? Yes, it was true! His arms were flailing at me.
Now if any of you reading this have ever boxed, the most beautiful sight on earth is to see your opponent coming at you flailing. That's another way of saying that Freddie didn't know the first thing about boxing. Nothing. If he did, he had temporary amnesia.
Oh, it's true, if he had gotten to me earlier, before the players grabbed him, he might have done some damage with those swings or perhaps do a "Herbie" on me and wrestling me to the ground. But we were boxing now with gloves and we had a ref even. Biased as he was, even he wouldn't settle for any wrestling.
Armed with this new knowledge, it changed everything. It was that moment in a fight movie where the underdog that was getting pummeled, turns it around. It's when the music changes from minor chords and gets a little more inspiring. It's where the losers fans begin to stand up, one by one, because they sense, "this kid might just win this thing". And it's where I began to kick Fred's butt. I stepped back from his wildly misplaced but powerful swings and proceeded to beat the living crap out of him!
Do I feel sorry for him? Do you? Heck no. This was his scene. He wrote the script for every danged thing that happened that day that started when he decided to elbow me. He asked for it, no he demanded it. He stopped practice. He made the coach look like a fool for not putting a stop to it. And the more I thought about it, the harder I hit him. When I looked into his eyes it was obvious he was confused.
Sure it was obvious Fred had never boxed with boxing gloves and if he had, he had some very poor instruction. Boxing is a learned experience. A streetfighter wearing gloves may as well be wearing a straightjacket. None of your hard effort is rewarded.
When it ended I was shocked at one thing. Fred hugged me. It caught me off guard and for a second I wasn't sure if it was a yankee sneak attack or genuine, so I halfway expected it to turn into a bear hug. But it didn't. So the 3 of us walked toward the main door.
By this time all the guys that had been watching through the windows, had now formed a sort of receiving line that we walked through. Future employee first, then Freddie, then following up the rear with my big ol gloves still attached, me.
What immediately struck me as we walked through the line, was the seniors, the guys that should have, in the natural order of things, been bitter. I had publicly diminished one of their own. But it wasn't that way at all. It was almost like I was in a movie and the end was just being revealed to me. And as far as I was concerned I liked the way it was heading.
And Lynn, my dear friend. I know he hated what was going on out there but he was helpless to stop it. He was beaming like a proud brother because of the outcome but also because he was one of those guys I'd practiced boxing with.
And of course I was pleased as well, for many reasons, but mostly I was able to do it by myself, you know, with out my sister having to finish it for me!
__________________
I don't go looking for fights. No sane person does. But sometimes fights just find you. And almost always when and where you least expect it. Truly, if you knew you were going to be in a fight, would you be wearing your coolest shirt. Would you be in your favorite hang out, with your best friends? Would it be on a night that you're performing, you know, your love songs and such? No, no and no way.
Me neither but sometimes fights just find you. I was on break at the Chatterbox. It was a beer and wine joint that I cut my performing teeth on in my late 20's in the 70's. There was another room that had two pool tables. I hardly ever played pool on a night that I was performing because usually I'd get off stage and go talk with folks that had been applauding. As a singer, you want to encourage that kind of thing!
And really, if you were playing at the Chatterbox you weren't there for the money so about all you got was applause. But for a performer, it is a thing of value. Sometimes it can be interpreted as a form of approval. Other times, an act of mercy. All depending on your voice and the audience mood, or makeup.
The Chatterbox, on a Friday was usually full of people in a good mood. And since I knew most everyone in the audience it was hard to tell if their applause was approval or mercy. But whatever it was, it's good for the owner to hear it because it makes him think he made the right choice by investing that 25 bucks on your butt. Yeah it was big time baby!. 25 bucks. 5 packs of strings. Or six whoppers. Or one date to the movies if you brought your own popcorn and coke.
But as I said, at the Chatterbox it wasn't the money it was an esteem thing! Yeah. You of course have no way of knowing this but the Chatterbox had a pedigree. Before it was an acoustic hangout, it was a first rate transmission shop. Still had oil stains on the floor to prove it. It was of course hidden under the green indoor outdoor carpet but every now and then when the room heated up, you'd get a whiff that reminded you of it's glorious past.
But it's mechanical pedigree had no impact on us, other than the occasional person that might pull up outside and ask "hey, is the owner of the transmission shop in, this thing's shiftin' funny". That my friends should convey to you that the current bar owner put zero money into wasteful areas, like paint. They did remove the lift though, but only after they discovered that it took up 3 tables and that meant less beer sales.
I kinda liked the lift though. I always thought they should a put a couple of tables on it and charge extra for the view and the fact it was out of the line of fire of beer bottles and bullets was just a plus. Bullets? did you say bullets? Yeah you heard right.. bullets!
I was on stage in the middle of a song and I heard someone yell "don't do it moose!!" then I heard a gun shot. I suspect you've never heard a gun shot inside a transmission shop before but let me tell you it's 100 times louder than outside.
Like I said, I was mid song, in fact, before I heard the gunshot, I just thought someone was yelling out a request for a song. I was thinking, no I don't think I know the song "don't do it moose" so like we do to all the things we have no answer for, I just ignored it. Until that shot.
In case you didn't know this, cause I sure didn't, entertainers are viewed a lot like captains of ships. Yeah, when the ships going down the captain is supposed to walk the decks calmly while directing others towards safety and only considering their own well being after the paid customers are safe.
I suppose it was those musicians on the Titanic that set that captain-like example for musicians everywhere, by playing to the very end. But honorable as it was for those guys, that ship was going down whether they played or not and all the lifeboats were gone. And besides, why not go out of this world doing what you love.
But as far as I was concerned there were lifeboats available and death, though knocking at my door, was not certain.
Plus, like I said, I didn't know about no captains rule, much less if the Titanic even had a band, so at the time, I knew 0nly the universally practiced barroom rule. Hit the floor! Easier said than done. Without a doub I was the most exposed person in that room. I was perched up 2 feet in the air, sittin on a 3 foot stool with a big ol light shining on my 6 foot 3 inch bullet friendly frame, holding a guitar with a hole in it, that had concentric circles painted around the hole, that to a shooter, could only look like a TARGET. Everything about that scene said 'shoot me' except the actual words written on my rapidly pounding heart.
But even if my mind did immediately tell my body to "save us", I still had things to contend with. My guitar, the mic stand and wires and of course the actual distance I was to that lower area, that area where now the entire audience was laid perfectly flat, hugging that oil stenched astroturf. Those people got down there so fast it seemed like they had rehearsed it. And they fit together so tight they looked like a puzzle of people, perfectly pieced together. That did prove to be a problem because after I contended with the wires and stuff and was now ready to join my friends on the floor, at the only place a person could survive the shoot out, there was no room for me down there. None! You couldn't even see any green tween those scared flat people. I felt vulnerable. I felt like a palm tree in the eye of a hurricane. Or one of those houses you've seen that gets burned away after a nuclear bombs explode.
Now remember all this was happening with lightning speed. It's just that I'm a slow typer but believe me, those people had completed that puzzle before the shots quit reverberating off the shops walls. Having accepted the inevitability of my death, I began to contemplate something .
Maybe, just maybe the shooter is a fan of mine. Yeah, I know it's not likely, but anything's possible and I was desperate. Maybe he liked my stuff. If he did, that might be the big story tomorrow, you know, when they're all talking about how they saw the gun pointed at the singer and the shooter says "Mike?, Mike Denney,? is that you up there? I love your stuff man" and then he lowers his gun and brings it up to me and apologizes for ruining my set. It would be good ending to a potentially deadly situation and some pretty good promotion for me.
Ok, apparently it's true, the mind does crazy things in stressful moments but have you ever been trapped in a transmission shop with a crazed killer?
Well, they didn't have to give out any purple hearts to me or anyone else. Turns out it was Pops, the bar owner shot that round off. He was yelling at Moose because Moose was about to hit a bar maid with a beer mug. After yelling "don't do it Moose" Pops thought he was still a threat. So he fired off a round.
Like any good singing sleuth, I wondered why we didn't hear that bullet pinging off the 2 foot thick concrete walls. Turns out ol' Pops had that S&W snubnose revolver set with a blank in the chamber. First shot's a warning. Second shot, well you'd never hear that one.
So the hero in this story just packed up his stuff and called it a night. That was Pops! What I did was turn that amp on and commence to earning my 25 bucks.
________________
Like I was saying, Chatterbox had these two pool tables. One night I was on break between sets and I decided I would play a game of pool with the little filly that I'd met. One of the tables was empty, so I plugged in my nights pay and began to rack the balls, when the guy playing on the other table says "Hey, that's my table, you gotta play me first." Thinkin he had to be joking I said "well you look busy so I'll just go ahead and play her" and I continued to rack 'em. He yelled again "didn't you hear what I said asshole, I won that table so you're gonna play me." I said "wrong" and I began to shove the balls into the holes.
Well apparently I had severely misread the psychotic's mind because he took off from the other end of that pool room toward me with his abalone carved custom pool cue high in the air and heavy side up. First thing I thought was 'oh shit, this is not going to be a boxing moment'. I don't even think ballet would be helpful against this guys pool cue. What I needed was Karate.
Karate was real popular about that time with Kung Fu being a big hit. I'd even watched the show a bit. They even did the scenes in ...very...slow... motion like dad and I did but I never seriously practiced any of it. Sure, like all guys then, we Karate chopped a lot of things but Karate was a discipline. It was as much mental as physical, at least that's what they told us. Besides how else could you explain the amazing feats very skinny, small, even female people did with their hands and feet. I tell you something, back then it was every young mans nightmare that he might say the wrong thing to a boy or girl that knew Karate. Even before David Carradine we'd all seen Bruce Lee rip that guys heart out. And the unconfirmed rumor going around at the time, was that's how you got a black belt. Heart ripping. So without a doubt I would have loved to know how to Karate chop that pool cue right in half.
I knew better than to try that though because I had played with a few sticks and real thin boards and had determined it was impossible for flesh to break wood. At least my flesh. Point is the Karate option was not on the table.
Things were happening very fast and negotiation just didn't feel like much of an option either. With no options left, I decided to use the weapon I usually use last, my brain. Yeah, I incorporated a little Geometry and Physics. I know I didn't make A or even C's in either of them but apparently I came away with some useful facts.
So yes kids, there is a reason to study those stupid angles and numbers. Here's what I'd learned. It is a whole lot easier to stop a long piece of wood that is positioned at a 90 degree angle traveling at 5 mph than one that is at a 45 degree angle traveling at the speed of light! In layman's terms. I grabbed that suckers pool cue before it started moving toward my head. That life saving maneuver had the effect of putting him and me face to face. So I spun him around in a kind of disco move and bent him over the pool table with me on top.
Now what? I remember thinking. I mean I really wasn't all that mad, truly, because just 15 seconds ago I was racking balls making jokes about something. But now here I was with a mad man under me and if I don't do something quick people gonna think we're having sex because my life saving physics and disco moves had me on that table with that guy, in what could only be described as the Missionary Position.
It was partly my fault because of my indecision about what to do next but he started kicking. He was kicking me in the chins. Well, I knew something he didn't know and that is, that I had about 20 stitches on one shin that I'd hurt a few days before playing with some kids on monkey bars. Warning: When you pass 12 don't get on monkey bars. The fall is to far, too fast and the embarrassment is almost as painful as the injury your surely going to get.
I had my injury under control but this idiot was kicking my wound and now I was getting mad. I reminded myself that he didn't know he was hurting me. But still what to do? If I let him up what's to stop the fight from continuing. This wasn't no movie I was in and people don't just quit trying to kill you when you're done with things on your end.
Besides that, there were plenty of horror movies where you think they killed the nut and he gets up and kills the good guy and as you may recall, I was the the good guy. I had him pinned down but there was no question about it, he started it. That clearly cast him in the role of the bad guy.
So I figured it was time for communication lines to be opened. Looking him face to face, I looked into his black shark like eyes and I said firmly "apologize to these people". That comment right there, goes to show you that sometimes you just don't say smart things when you're fighting. I knew it was not your normal, heat of the battle, discourse but I was in the missionary position with this guy and we were cheek to cheek.
Well, even he thought it was inappropriate language to use in a fight cause he looked at me like I was the psychotic one!
Ok, I got it, I know it doesn't sound like your typical line to use but I was desperate. And by now my leg was bleeding and I was about ready to make his stupid head part of that green slate table if he didn't quit kicking me.
What I'm saying is folks, it was time to do something but if I choose to hit him in the face I could well have killed him with his head pressed against that slate. Yeah I was mad but honestly, other than my shin hurting, I had no real interest in this fight. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. He was drunk. I was with a girl. He was psychotic. I just wanted it to end.
So I asked him again to apologize. And he said "kiss my ass m...f..." Well that did it. I was done. I used the only option I had left. I had been physical, patient, and even tried to negotiate so I did the one thing I had left...
I kissed him.
I know, it shocked me too. But I planted a big ol kiss right on his forehead. There was that familiar collective sigh in that pool room. Folks were shocked. Apparently it shocked him too because he quit kicking. I felt his body ease up a bit and then quit altogether. Little by little I released parts of his body to test him to see if he was done. He was.
I got up and told him how he'd ruined everybody's night because of a stupid pool game. Then I told him about my leg. And lo and behold he apologized for that and then to everyone in the room. And apparently he liked my kissing so much we went out on a couple of dates...Naa just kidding bout the date.
But it was funny, we did end up becoming friends. Not pals, just nodding friends. That's a weird side effect with people you fight. The same thing happened with Freddie, when we hugged after the fight. You've even seen the pros do it after they've pummeled each other for 15 rounds. There should be hate but it's gone. Rarely do you become good friends but there ends up being a sort of camaraderie. Probably not unlike fellows that have been at war feel.
I've seen films made 50 years or so after WWII where Japanese and American soldiers were reunited. Years before they would have been happy, if not proud, to destroy the man they are now looking eye to eye but at these reunions there is only crying and forgiveness.
I can't help but think that what men feel, is a kind of shame along with the camaraderie, for having been so stupid, whether fighting for a hill or a pool table.
One of the things I always disliked about movies is they limit what they show you about the characters and then go to another scene. Of course life isn't like that. We have to finish all our scenes and deal with the consequences. I know it's just impossible to show all aspects of a characters life but they're big on not making the good guy look bad The odd thing is, is that people love to see the 'other' side of people. The failed side. The foolish moments. Heck, why do you think "Americas funniest home videos" is so big or even the 'out takes' from movies. We love' out takes'. We love the stories left on the cutting room floor. We love the rest of the story.
I said all that to say that I've been guilty of doing the same thing with how I presented myself in these fights. As the underdog and as the victor. They were all true stories but they were not all the stories. There were others. Some where I literally got whooped. I was a kid at the time but the fact is I lost some fights. Neal McClung, Phillip Merkel, and Mike Milkey all whooped me. But there's one common thread with every fight I was ever in. The other guy was the bully.
Bullies have been with us from the beginning and they aint goin anywhere any time soon, so kids and concerned moms and dads, don't think you can make it go away by outlawing it.
I suppose people bully people for different reasons. Sometimes it's just because they're bigger than other kids and it's just a phase. Other times it's deeper. Some people bully because they're bullied. Some people have such low self esteem that diminishing others, makes them feel superior. Some people, for reasons unknown, are just plain mean right out of the birth canal. The point is, the pathology of bullying is varied, as is how they choose their victims. Sometimes they go after the strongest to raise their own stature. Other times they'll go after someone smaller because they can't risk losing.
One thing someone that's being bullied must understand, the one with the problem, is the bully!
Negotiate if you can. Fight, if you have no choice. Avoid contact if at all possible. And run to safety if your gut tells you to. There is no shame in that because some kids these days are not just mean they are armed. They are also not fair fighters. There is no honor in them and they often prefer to outnumber their victim. Many are not like those guys in that basketball game dad was in 90 years ago or even like the guy in the pool hall 40 years ago. The rules have changed and with that so have the standards by which we judge character, by that I mean, avoiding fights these days can be the honorable and smart thing to do.
Finally, learn how to fight but perfect the art of avoiding it and if you feel it's necessary, learn one of the martial arts like Karate or boxing, or the meanest, baddest of them all..ballet!!
Bout the only person I ever saw Uncle Deke have any real respect for was my dad. He used to call him Erroll, when he was joking with him. He'd always laugh when he said it but I knew he wasn't mocking him. It was complimentary mocking. It was a reference to the fact that a lot of folks thought dad looked like Erroll Flynn.
Dad not only was a handsome dude, he was quite a fist fighter. He had an old scrap book, pun intended, with some of his athletic high points in it. I used to love to go through it. It was kind of like the pride a father feels for his son, except the other way around. There was one article still blows me away. We don't have it any longer so I'm going to write it pretty much as I recall it. It was in the Sunday edition of the Florida Times Union somewhere in the 30's. It went something like this. "Hundreds were in attendance at the basketball game last night between_____at the Knights of Columbus. The score was tied when a fight broke out in the waning seconds over a bad call. The stands emptied onto the court as everyone squared off with the person nearest him. After a while the crowd was brought under control but for one duo that had continued under the home teams basket. A crowd gathered round the two as they exchanged blows. After some time they came to a halt and shook hands with neither claiming victory but in this writers opinion the young man Earl Denney got the best of his opponent. "I don't know who he was but that guy had a heck of a right" Denney told me."He was a great sport" What Denney didn't know was that 'great sport' was none other than____the Southeastern welterweight champion..
Reads like fiction doesn't it? A way of life and living gone forever. Today, knives would be drawn, bullets fired and SWAT units deployed. The story would be on the front page, not a blurb in the sports section. In the aftermath, people would be mourning, not calmly congratulating each other for the noble fight they fought.
I don't know when society began to de-emphasize character as a valued commodity but we did so at our peril. Today people look at those John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies, with all their chivalry and attention to fair play, as a total distortion of the reality of their time. A 'Pollyanna' view of the world as we would like it to be but with no basis in reality. They contend that the stories, with well mannered losers, fair fights and happy endings were conjured from the imaginations of the script writers, where the messy details and dark side of mans character was conveniently withheld. Surely some of that is true but this story of that Knights of Columbus basketball game is significant. Certainly not every scene acted out in America ended like that night but the complete lack of surprise by the writer, as he described the events, speaks to the reader, that this sort of good natured brawling and pandemonium was more common than our pop sociologists and historians would have us believe.
Another story he and mom told us, was when they first got married and mom was pregnant with Earl jr. A little road rage thing was going on and 4 guys in a car ran them off the road out near the Naval Air Station. The 4 guys all poured out of their car to go beat up dad but apparently one of them was in a bigger hurry than the others. Because of that, he met dads fist before the others got there. They saw what went down, their buddy! So when they did get there, they just picked their pal up and put him in the car and drove off.
In the next scene, Eroll said that he broke his hand on that punch and if those guys had known it, it might not have ended so romantically. He said he learned from that experience to never hit a guy in the forehead. So I never did.
Actually I didn't ever hit anybody, anywhere on the head with my bare fist. Not that I didn't want to or that I didn't try. Like most young American boys I even trained for the moment and it was dad that did his paternal pugilistic duty. Yep, he taught me how to box.
He'd done the same for my older brothers when they were at the appointed age. That age was not chronologically determined, it was need based. When you and your first bully had been introduced it was time. A black eye or torn shirt was usually what set the whole thing in motion. So dad got out his boxing gloves.
Those old boxing gloves dad taught us with had been around forever. I suspect they were a prototype of the real boxing gloves, you know, the ones with padding in them? Dad's were basically a leather mitten that covered your fists. A Thanksgiving turkey had more stuffing in it than one of those gloves. If you had a glass jaw, you were going to find out real early around our house.
Well, my first instruction class was scheduled because Herbie Gorman was terrorizing us, well me, at the bus stop. He was two years older, two feet wider and one foot taller. I told dad it was fine with me if he wanted to take care of Herbie for me but he thought it might be better if I handled him myself. Something about building character. I can recall thinking, "if I'm not alive, what good is character?"
Dad strapped me into my mittens and he put his on and we stood like you're supposed to stand, at an angle to each other. Most people think the reason boxers do that is so you can take some jabs while saving that other arm. The one that's just hangin around quietly behind you and out of sight, waiting to pulverize the guy. It's funny how that arm comes as a surprise to you when it hits you because you know that thing's there and that it's dangerous. I suppose you get to worrying about how those jabs are starting to hurt and before you know it, you think your fighting with a one armed guy. Until he reminds you he's got another one.
But the real reason you're at that angle is to protect your privates. Oh yeah. You do not want to be squarely facing a man, or a woman, particularly a woman! In that squared off position. You'll be down for the count son. It's quite possible your sperm count could go down a bit as well!!
So dad and I exchanged a few very... slow.... motion .. jabs, so he could show me how to duck and punch and step and jab and how to execute that sneaky hidden arm round house, without shutting my eyes. But all in.... slow.... mo...tion.
Dad told me, he thought I was ready to advance to a regular frame speed so I recall getting a little tense. Now keep in mind who I was in the ring with and about to go toe to toe. I didn't mention it earlier but dad was also a Golden Gloves boxer not too many years earlier, so I knew he could do whatever damage he wanted. But I also knew there were laws against child abuse, so I had the law on my side. Plus, mom would really beat him up if he hurt me. So right out of the gate I had a legal and psychological advantage.
Believe it or not I thought I had discovered a physical advantage as well. I know but don't laugh. Yeah dad was 6 feet of young muscle, with the will of John Wayne and the quickness of a rattlesnake but I swear I thought I spotted a weakness in his defense.
You see, when we were doing our slow motion instructions, I noticed when I would jab with my left, sometimes, at the same time, he would jab with his left too. All in slow motion of course. What I noticed was, my arm was longer than his. I wasn't sure about the other one but I was almost positive my left was longer than his! Sure, they were toothpick skinny and had barely enough muscles on 'em for me to operate my fingers, but that arm was a bit longer than his. I was sure of it.
Well, when the bell rang at the beginning of round 1 ya'll, it was over before it even got going. Cause I jabbed with my left, right when he jabbed and I'm here to tell you... long beats skill and muscle! I put that first jab right on the end of his big Irish nose and his eyes watered up. And he calmly said "I think you've got the idea." It was the only time I'd seen Erroll cry. Well, he went and cried to mom about how I'd hurt him and she got mad at me for hitting my father!! How was I to know he had a glass nose! We all laughed about it. But I was reigning champ. I was 1 and O... and not about to give him a rematch!
Armed with my lesson and my new confidence I was ready for anything Herbie could throw at me. Next morning at the bus stop when Herbie provoked me, I was ready to teach him what I had shown that Golden Gloves fighter the night before. Herbie started messin' with me. "Hey skinny Denney," he asked. "What Herbie", I replied. He continued. "What time is it?" "I don't know" I said. I really didn't know, but what I wondered was why in the heck does he care. And then I got my answer when he answered his own question. "It's time for me to mess you up."
I didn't think he cared about the real time. Herbie never cared about anything but fighting. But I was primed and ready for him. I threw my books down and said "Ok Herbie, you asked for it!" The girls all gave a collective gasp like in the movies when the wimp's about to get even. They also were giving me that Prince Charming has just arrived to sleigh the beast, look.
Then Herbie said"Denney I'm gonna pulverize you!"
Pulverize me? Herbie had obviously been watching "Leave it to Beaver" and had borrowed the line but it did adequately convey his intentions. Pulverizing someone was about the worst thing you could do them. Worst than "whoop your butt." So Herbie had landed the first psychological blow. But I shook it off and said "Go ahead Herrrrbie!" Emphasizing the girly HER part. And so we began the prefight dance. No hitting, just circling each other, jousting with an occasional swing. One thing I knew right off the bat was my arms were way longer than his. You could just look at us and tell that. I'd known that in our previous fights but it wasn't until I learned on Dad's glass nose that I discovered it was such a lethal weapon.
I even kind of hoped dad was watching from the house, thinking he'd get that same warm beam of pride watching me fight, as I got from reading about his. I also figured he might feel some of that joy that comes from teaching someone to do something, then see them execute it perfectly in the real world. Yeah, everything was pretty much going my way. Well, all the way up until the fight actually started.
After I took my first swing, the first thing I found out was Herbie was not dad. In fact it was evident that Herbie had been taught a thing or two about hand to hand combat, not by a boxer but rather by a 'rastler'!!
A wrestler to a boxer is like a mongoose to a cobra! Defense is futile. They just plow right through your silly Marcus of Queensbury jabs and get you in a big ol bear hug and squeeze you like a starving python. Yeah I was gettin' my clocked cleaned, even with all my training. I couldn't believe what was happening.
Sad thing is, I'd even told some of the guys earlier 'bout all I'd learned and to stick around and watch what I was going to do to Herbie. With all the hype and the way this thing was going, I felt like Jerry Cooney.
Well I thought the beating was actually getting bad enough where one of my 'friends' might step up and help me, like they do in the movies but noooo. They probably would've except I'd done all that pre-fight bragging and when people pre-bragg, it's somehow a just little sweet to see 'em go down. Only 3 guys in history ever got away with it Babe Ruth, Mohammad Ali, and Broadway Joe. It was becoming increasingly clear that I was not going to make that list. The list I was gonna be on was the list of disasters, the Titanic, the Hindenburg and Napoleon at Waterloo.
Well Herbie didn't even stop the beating when he saw blood, heck, I think it might have actually inspired him. It didn't seem to be of any concern to my friends either but lo and behold my older sister had heard the commotion from down the street. She came running up like the cavalry. Albeit a girl outfit. But when you're 'bout to be burned at the stake you don't care what sex the hero is.
Well the lovely Dorinda grabbed ol Herbie and punched, clawed and kicked him til he let me go. Now he was even more embarrassed than I was. Fact is, it wasn't a good day for guys in general that morning. I mean my sister beat up the guy that beat me up?
Silently, I was becoming a believer in women's lib, even before they had a name for it.
Later when I pondered the whole matter, like we do when we're trying to rebuild our self esteem. I figured this is what happened. I tried to box a wrestler, mistake number 1. Number 2, the wrestler was older and bigger. And number 3 my sister was 3 years older than the wrestler and though girls are sweet and all that, they are still human beings.
But turns out her ace in the hole, other than the motherly instinct she felt sensing I was in danger, was she was a brilliant and beautiful ballet dancer! Huh?.. Yep those legs were as powerful as Jim Browns and as flexible as Barishnikov's and those long arms, well you know all about the advantages of those!
So what we have learned is, a wrestler beats a boxer but a ballerina can kick all their asses!
So impressed by the destructive power of ballet, a few days later I asked dad if I could take ballet lessons instead of continuing the obviously ineffective boxing drills. Dad gave a quick and firm "NO".
______________________
Like most guys I hung out with, we watched the same shows, like Daniel Boone and The Rifleman. That's where I learned to first try to resolve things by cunning but if that failed , well, it was time to scrap. 99 percent of those scraps aren't memorable because none resulted in much more than a torn shirt or deflated ego. Shirts were cheap and egos re-inflate quickly.
Yeah most conflagrations were merely dust ups. But there was one that was a big deal in my world.
I was in 10th grade at Englewood High School. I was on the basketball team and was fortunate enough to be asked to play on the varsity. It was a really cool experience because these older guys were my idols. They were only two years older but that's a lot when you're all growing and maturing so fast. These guys had hair that grew all over their body, they all owned cars and had all engaged in premarital intercourse. Yes, the sexual revolution had just begun, well, for everybody but me. But that's another story.
Another beautiful aspect of being on the varsity was I finally got to be on the same team with my buddy Lynn Murray.
Lynn and I grew up in Bridgewater circle together until the new expressway took his house. They moved 6 miles away when I was in 7th grade and though we were still friends we never saw each other much. It was solely a matter of logistics and his being 2 years ahead of me. But I kept track of him reading of his exploits in the sports section. Lynn was a star athlete and we were now reunited. Perfection!
About halfway through the season we had a Saturday practice. If you had a Saturday practice that meant you lost Friday night, so needless to say nobody was too happy about being there.
To add to the tension we had lost more games than anyone expected. On paper we should have been a lot better than we were. There were some obvious reasons why we lost some games early on. One is, about 3/4ths of our team were football players. That's a lot. Normally you'd only have a couple. The problem is it takes a while for a guy that's been pumpin iron and not using his hands for anything but pushing and stiff arming to become loose and fluid. Those first few weeks on the basketball court would have been seen as comical if we'd have won. But it was not funny. Our games were full of dropped, easy to catch passes, missed layups and just plain plowing into people out of frustration. But that doesn't last long and those guys were soon morphing into bball players.
Another reason for our losses and I say this with great hesitation but I promised myself when I started this book I was going to be honest. Our coach! I only had him for that one year because he left the next season. Seems one of the older guys on the team had a father that was setting him up with a good job when he left. I'm telling you all that, not to be spiteful but because it's important as they say on Perry Mason, it goes to motive.
That son we'll refer to as Freddie. And Freddie wasn't any happier about being there on Saturday than anybody else was, so he began to take his frustration out on the skinny sophomore, me! Fred was about six feet tall and wide. He was built real stable. It's a good basketball body. It's also a good fighter's body.
Fred was utilizing the fighter aspect of his physique on that morning. When we'd run up and down the court, he had decided he would elbow me occasionally. But discretely. In such a way where you wonder "did he just elbow me?" Soon it was clear he had it in for me because it was evolving into pushing. I kept waiting for the coach to tell him to cut it out because I had already told him to cool it. But we heard nothing from the soon to be re-employed coach.
I'm not an insensitive person, so it wasn't lost on me why Freddie or anyone else on that team, except Lynn, might have a problem with me. Heck I was a lowly sophomore, I was supposed to be on the JV. Plus I was starting. That meant the guy that was supposed to be starting, wasn't. And he was a senior. But one fine guy he was. His name was Tom Glass. But Tom wasn't the one that was messing with my body and my mind. It was Fred.
After a few more 'trips' down court I'd had enough. When 'that son of a new employee' intentionally stepped on my foot I began to fall backwards, as I did I cold cocked him. To the others, it might have appeared unprovoked but you and I and Fred and the coach knew differently, that Fred got what he deserved.
Well, when Fred realized what had just happened to him, he was pissed. He got up and came after me like a rectangular steam roller. That's when I was real glad that we had so many football players on the team because a couple of them grabbed him and saved me from what I figured was certain death.
So now I'm feeling ok. He started it all by elbowing me. Then stepped on my foot. I retaliated. Knocked him down. Now let's get on with practice.
Well Freddie would have none of that. Noooo. He wanted retribution. He felt like his honor was at stake because I had hit him but he wasn't allowed to hit me back. He also knew what the whole team knew, that I popped him pretty good. And I was just a sophomore. Well to Freddie, that just could not stand.
He was one of the starters, so besides being the darling of the coach, he was important to the team. Now he was saying he wasn't going to practice until he got a chance to fight me. You know, to save face, redeem his honor and family name. I stood there thinking, where does this guy think he is, France? Freddie was from a 'proper' area up north so I suppose he thought, symbolically, like I had hit him with my handkerchief or something because the boy was demanding satisfaction!
Ok, here's what a good coach would do. He would say, no, he would yell. "Fred, you pushed, elbowed and stepped on Denney and he hit you back! It's over son. Now I'm going to tell you one more time, get your ass in gear and your head out of it and get back in the game or you're going home, you hear me son?! We are a team and you two had a little dust up. It happens all the time but if you think for one minute I'm going to let you fight him because you're pride's hurt, well son you have a lot to learn about me"
Here's what a coach says that doesn't want to upset the son of the man who's going to get him a job. "Warbritton, go get the gloves". I thought to myself, "did he just tell Scott to go get the gloves? The boxing gloves?" Warbritton said "yes sir" and left the gym.
There was an audible 'oh my God' kind of sound by the other players. There was going to be a sanctioned fight. I'm sure on one level they were quite happy to be doing anything other than running up and down that court but even the most heartless among them had to be fearful for what was about to happen to me.
And me, I stood there waiting for somebody to come to their senses and put an end to this. And where was my sister the ballerina, I could use her help right now!
Well, in comes Scott with the gloves. It was clear now there was going to be a fight and I am in the main event. I am going to have to fight Freddie in front of my entire team. He is angry and no doubt a skilled Irish boxer. I was, shall we say, concerned!
The coach told everyone to leave the gym and they did. But within seconds all 6 windows around the gym had 2 players faces pressed tight. They weren't going to miss this bout for anything.
I got to tell you folks, I felt like a lamb being lead to slaughter. At that moment I hated that gutless coach for bowing down to that kid that was about to mow me down at center court. I beat the odds and made that basketball team, fair and square, by competing on the court. I had tried to be considerate of the older players that I knew would be bothered by my youthful presence. As far as I knew a sophomore had never started on the varsity before and these guys could have taken great offense to it all. It was a concern of mine. But I had tried hard to win their respect on and off the court. And what had me so angry was that what was about to happen to me had nothing to do with basketball. I was going to be publicly humiliated and all because of this incestuous relationship between a coach and a player.
We were told it was going to be a 3 minute round.
He strapped the gloves on us and as he was doing it, I recall thinking, why did I take those ballet classes and quit my Golden Gloves instructions. Why!?
Ok, gather yourself, I thought. Yes, it's true dad did discontinue my instructions. But me and the guys in the neighborhood had gotten in the habit of putting on those 'mittens' and fighting each other. There were no instructors and it was everyman for himself but we had been doing it for a couple of summers. But thinking about that wasn't all that consoling because none of those guys was the man Fred was.
Fred was a fully formed and functioning adult in every way, except perhaps mentally because obviously he was delusional, thinking he was in France and all!
When the bell rang Freddie decided he wasn't going to waste a second of his precious 3 minutes with no Cassius Clay footwork because he headed for me pretty much like that steamroller I described earlier. He started swinging at me like a Tasmanian Devil. He'd had over an hour to contemplate his hate for this skinny sophomore and it all poured out onto me in the form of wild flailing arms. What? Wild flailing arms? I asked myself. Could it be? Yes, it was true! His arms were flailing at me.
Now if any of you reading this have ever boxed, the most beautiful sight on earth is to see your opponent coming at you flailing. That's another way of saying that Freddie didn't know the first thing about boxing. Nothing. If he did, he had temporary amnesia.
Oh, it's true, if he had gotten to me earlier, before the players grabbed him, he might have done some damage with those swings or perhaps do a "Herbie" on me and wrestling me to the ground. But we were boxing now with gloves and we had a ref even. Biased as he was, even he wouldn't settle for any wrestling.
Armed with this new knowledge, it changed everything. It was that moment in a fight movie where the underdog that was getting pummeled, turns it around. It's when the music changes from minor chords and gets a little more inspiring. It's where the losers fans begin to stand up, one by one, because they sense, "this kid might just win this thing". And it's where I began to kick Fred's butt. I stepped back from his wildly misplaced but powerful swings and proceeded to beat the living crap out of him!
Do I feel sorry for him? Do you? Heck no. This was his scene. He wrote the script for every danged thing that happened that day that started when he decided to elbow me. He asked for it, no he demanded it. He stopped practice. He made the coach look like a fool for not putting a stop to it. And the more I thought about it, the harder I hit him. When I looked into his eyes it was obvious he was confused.
Sure it was obvious Fred had never boxed with boxing gloves and if he had, he had some very poor instruction. Boxing is a learned experience. A streetfighter wearing gloves may as well be wearing a straightjacket. None of your hard effort is rewarded.
When it ended I was shocked at one thing. Fred hugged me. It caught me off guard and for a second I wasn't sure if it was a yankee sneak attack or genuine, so I halfway expected it to turn into a bear hug. But it didn't. So the 3 of us walked toward the main door.
By this time all the guys that had been watching through the windows, had now formed a sort of receiving line that we walked through. Future employee first, then Freddie, then following up the rear with my big ol gloves still attached, me.
What immediately struck me as we walked through the line, was the seniors, the guys that should have, in the natural order of things, been bitter. I had publicly diminished one of their own. But it wasn't that way at all. It was almost like I was in a movie and the end was just being revealed to me. And as far as I was concerned I liked the way it was heading.
And Lynn, my dear friend. I know he hated what was going on out there but he was helpless to stop it. He was beaming like a proud brother because of the outcome but also because he was one of those guys I'd practiced boxing with.
And of course I was pleased as well, for many reasons, but mostly I was able to do it by myself, you know, with out my sister having to finish it for me!
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I don't go looking for fights. No sane person does. But sometimes fights just find you. And almost always when and where you least expect it. Truly, if you knew you were going to be in a fight, would you be wearing your coolest shirt. Would you be in your favorite hang out, with your best friends? Would it be on a night that you're performing, you know, your love songs and such? No, no and no way.
Me neither but sometimes fights just find you. I was on break at the Chatterbox. It was a beer and wine joint that I cut my performing teeth on in my late 20's in the 70's. There was another room that had two pool tables. I hardly ever played pool on a night that I was performing because usually I'd get off stage and go talk with folks that had been applauding. As a singer, you want to encourage that kind of thing!
And really, if you were playing at the Chatterbox you weren't there for the money so about all you got was applause. But for a performer, it is a thing of value. Sometimes it can be interpreted as a form of approval. Other times, an act of mercy. All depending on your voice and the audience mood, or makeup.
The Chatterbox, on a Friday was usually full of people in a good mood. And since I knew most everyone in the audience it was hard to tell if their applause was approval or mercy. But whatever it was, it's good for the owner to hear it because it makes him think he made the right choice by investing that 25 bucks on your butt. Yeah it was big time baby!. 25 bucks. 5 packs of strings. Or six whoppers. Or one date to the movies if you brought your own popcorn and coke.
But as I said, at the Chatterbox it wasn't the money it was an esteem thing! Yeah. You of course have no way of knowing this but the Chatterbox had a pedigree. Before it was an acoustic hangout, it was a first rate transmission shop. Still had oil stains on the floor to prove it. It was of course hidden under the green indoor outdoor carpet but every now and then when the room heated up, you'd get a whiff that reminded you of it's glorious past.
But it's mechanical pedigree had no impact on us, other than the occasional person that might pull up outside and ask "hey, is the owner of the transmission shop in, this thing's shiftin' funny". That my friends should convey to you that the current bar owner put zero money into wasteful areas, like paint. They did remove the lift though, but only after they discovered that it took up 3 tables and that meant less beer sales.
I kinda liked the lift though. I always thought they should a put a couple of tables on it and charge extra for the view and the fact it was out of the line of fire of beer bottles and bullets was just a plus. Bullets? did you say bullets? Yeah you heard right.. bullets!
I was on stage in the middle of a song and I heard someone yell "don't do it moose!!" then I heard a gun shot. I suspect you've never heard a gun shot inside a transmission shop before but let me tell you it's 100 times louder than outside.
Like I said, I was mid song, in fact, before I heard the gunshot, I just thought someone was yelling out a request for a song. I was thinking, no I don't think I know the song "don't do it moose" so like we do to all the things we have no answer for, I just ignored it. Until that shot.
In case you didn't know this, cause I sure didn't, entertainers are viewed a lot like captains of ships. Yeah, when the ships going down the captain is supposed to walk the decks calmly while directing others towards safety and only considering their own well being after the paid customers are safe.
I suppose it was those musicians on the Titanic that set that captain-like example for musicians everywhere, by playing to the very end. But honorable as it was for those guys, that ship was going down whether they played or not and all the lifeboats were gone. And besides, why not go out of this world doing what you love.
But as far as I was concerned there were lifeboats available and death, though knocking at my door, was not certain.
Plus, like I said, I didn't know about no captains rule, much less if the Titanic even had a band, so at the time, I knew 0nly the universally practiced barroom rule. Hit the floor! Easier said than done. Without a doub I was the most exposed person in that room. I was perched up 2 feet in the air, sittin on a 3 foot stool with a big ol light shining on my 6 foot 3 inch bullet friendly frame, holding a guitar with a hole in it, that had concentric circles painted around the hole, that to a shooter, could only look like a TARGET. Everything about that scene said 'shoot me' except the actual words written on my rapidly pounding heart.
But even if my mind did immediately tell my body to "save us", I still had things to contend with. My guitar, the mic stand and wires and of course the actual distance I was to that lower area, that area where now the entire audience was laid perfectly flat, hugging that oil stenched astroturf. Those people got down there so fast it seemed like they had rehearsed it. And they fit together so tight they looked like a puzzle of people, perfectly pieced together. That did prove to be a problem because after I contended with the wires and stuff and was now ready to join my friends on the floor, at the only place a person could survive the shoot out, there was no room for me down there. None! You couldn't even see any green tween those scared flat people. I felt vulnerable. I felt like a palm tree in the eye of a hurricane. Or one of those houses you've seen that gets burned away after a nuclear bombs explode.
Now remember all this was happening with lightning speed. It's just that I'm a slow typer but believe me, those people had completed that puzzle before the shots quit reverberating off the shops walls. Having accepted the inevitability of my death, I began to contemplate something .
Maybe, just maybe the shooter is a fan of mine. Yeah, I know it's not likely, but anything's possible and I was desperate. Maybe he liked my stuff. If he did, that might be the big story tomorrow, you know, when they're all talking about how they saw the gun pointed at the singer and the shooter says "Mike?, Mike Denney,? is that you up there? I love your stuff man" and then he lowers his gun and brings it up to me and apologizes for ruining my set. It would be good ending to a potentially deadly situation and some pretty good promotion for me.
Ok, apparently it's true, the mind does crazy things in stressful moments but have you ever been trapped in a transmission shop with a crazed killer?
Well, they didn't have to give out any purple hearts to me or anyone else. Turns out it was Pops, the bar owner shot that round off. He was yelling at Moose because Moose was about to hit a bar maid with a beer mug. After yelling "don't do it Moose" Pops thought he was still a threat. So he fired off a round.
Like any good singing sleuth, I wondered why we didn't hear that bullet pinging off the 2 foot thick concrete walls. Turns out ol' Pops had that S&W snubnose revolver set with a blank in the chamber. First shot's a warning. Second shot, well you'd never hear that one.
So the hero in this story just packed up his stuff and called it a night. That was Pops! What I did was turn that amp on and commence to earning my 25 bucks.
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Like I was saying, Chatterbox had these two pool tables. One night I was on break between sets and I decided I would play a game of pool with the little filly that I'd met. One of the tables was empty, so I plugged in my nights pay and began to rack the balls, when the guy playing on the other table says "Hey, that's my table, you gotta play me first." Thinkin he had to be joking I said "well you look busy so I'll just go ahead and play her" and I continued to rack 'em. He yelled again "didn't you hear what I said asshole, I won that table so you're gonna play me." I said "wrong" and I began to shove the balls into the holes.
Well apparently I had severely misread the psychotic's mind because he took off from the other end of that pool room toward me with his abalone carved custom pool cue high in the air and heavy side up. First thing I thought was 'oh shit, this is not going to be a boxing moment'. I don't even think ballet would be helpful against this guys pool cue. What I needed was Karate.
Karate was real popular about that time with Kung Fu being a big hit. I'd even watched the show a bit. They even did the scenes in ...very...slow... motion like dad and I did but I never seriously practiced any of it. Sure, like all guys then, we Karate chopped a lot of things but Karate was a discipline. It was as much mental as physical, at least that's what they told us. Besides how else could you explain the amazing feats very skinny, small, even female people did with their hands and feet. I tell you something, back then it was every young mans nightmare that he might say the wrong thing to a boy or girl that knew Karate. Even before David Carradine we'd all seen Bruce Lee rip that guys heart out. And the unconfirmed rumor going around at the time, was that's how you got a black belt. Heart ripping. So without a doubt I would have loved to know how to Karate chop that pool cue right in half.
I knew better than to try that though because I had played with a few sticks and real thin boards and had determined it was impossible for flesh to break wood. At least my flesh. Point is the Karate option was not on the table.
Things were happening very fast and negotiation just didn't feel like much of an option either. With no options left, I decided to use the weapon I usually use last, my brain. Yeah, I incorporated a little Geometry and Physics. I know I didn't make A or even C's in either of them but apparently I came away with some useful facts.
So yes kids, there is a reason to study those stupid angles and numbers. Here's what I'd learned. It is a whole lot easier to stop a long piece of wood that is positioned at a 90 degree angle traveling at 5 mph than one that is at a 45 degree angle traveling at the speed of light! In layman's terms. I grabbed that suckers pool cue before it started moving toward my head. That life saving maneuver had the effect of putting him and me face to face. So I spun him around in a kind of disco move and bent him over the pool table with me on top.
Now what? I remember thinking. I mean I really wasn't all that mad, truly, because just 15 seconds ago I was racking balls making jokes about something. But now here I was with a mad man under me and if I don't do something quick people gonna think we're having sex because my life saving physics and disco moves had me on that table with that guy, in what could only be described as the Missionary Position.
It was partly my fault because of my indecision about what to do next but he started kicking. He was kicking me in the chins. Well, I knew something he didn't know and that is, that I had about 20 stitches on one shin that I'd hurt a few days before playing with some kids on monkey bars. Warning: When you pass 12 don't get on monkey bars. The fall is to far, too fast and the embarrassment is almost as painful as the injury your surely going to get.
I had my injury under control but this idiot was kicking my wound and now I was getting mad. I reminded myself that he didn't know he was hurting me. But still what to do? If I let him up what's to stop the fight from continuing. This wasn't no movie I was in and people don't just quit trying to kill you when you're done with things on your end.
Besides that, there were plenty of horror movies where you think they killed the nut and he gets up and kills the good guy and as you may recall, I was the the good guy. I had him pinned down but there was no question about it, he started it. That clearly cast him in the role of the bad guy.
So I figured it was time for communication lines to be opened. Looking him face to face, I looked into his black shark like eyes and I said firmly "apologize to these people". That comment right there, goes to show you that sometimes you just don't say smart things when you're fighting. I knew it was not your normal, heat of the battle, discourse but I was in the missionary position with this guy and we were cheek to cheek.
Well, even he thought it was inappropriate language to use in a fight cause he looked at me like I was the psychotic one!
Ok, I got it, I know it doesn't sound like your typical line to use but I was desperate. And by now my leg was bleeding and I was about ready to make his stupid head part of that green slate table if he didn't quit kicking me.
What I'm saying is folks, it was time to do something but if I choose to hit him in the face I could well have killed him with his head pressed against that slate. Yeah I was mad but honestly, other than my shin hurting, I had no real interest in this fight. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. He was drunk. I was with a girl. He was psychotic. I just wanted it to end.
So I asked him again to apologize. And he said "kiss my ass m...f..." Well that did it. I was done. I used the only option I had left. I had been physical, patient, and even tried to negotiate so I did the one thing I had left...
I kissed him.
I know, it shocked me too. But I planted a big ol kiss right on his forehead. There was that familiar collective sigh in that pool room. Folks were shocked. Apparently it shocked him too because he quit kicking. I felt his body ease up a bit and then quit altogether. Little by little I released parts of his body to test him to see if he was done. He was.
I got up and told him how he'd ruined everybody's night because of a stupid pool game. Then I told him about my leg. And lo and behold he apologized for that and then to everyone in the room. And apparently he liked my kissing so much we went out on a couple of dates...Naa just kidding bout the date.
But it was funny, we did end up becoming friends. Not pals, just nodding friends. That's a weird side effect with people you fight. The same thing happened with Freddie, when we hugged after the fight. You've even seen the pros do it after they've pummeled each other for 15 rounds. There should be hate but it's gone. Rarely do you become good friends but there ends up being a sort of camaraderie. Probably not unlike fellows that have been at war feel.
I've seen films made 50 years or so after WWII where Japanese and American soldiers were reunited. Years before they would have been happy, if not proud, to destroy the man they are now looking eye to eye but at these reunions there is only crying and forgiveness.
I can't help but think that what men feel, is a kind of shame along with the camaraderie, for having been so stupid, whether fighting for a hill or a pool table.
One of the things I always disliked about movies is they limit what they show you about the characters and then go to another scene. Of course life isn't like that. We have to finish all our scenes and deal with the consequences. I know it's just impossible to show all aspects of a characters life but they're big on not making the good guy look bad The odd thing is, is that people love to see the 'other' side of people. The failed side. The foolish moments. Heck, why do you think "Americas funniest home videos" is so big or even the 'out takes' from movies. We love' out takes'. We love the stories left on the cutting room floor. We love the rest of the story.
I said all that to say that I've been guilty of doing the same thing with how I presented myself in these fights. As the underdog and as the victor. They were all true stories but they were not all the stories. There were others. Some where I literally got whooped. I was a kid at the time but the fact is I lost some fights. Neal McClung, Phillip Merkel, and Mike Milkey all whooped me. But there's one common thread with every fight I was ever in. The other guy was the bully.
Bullies have been with us from the beginning and they aint goin anywhere any time soon, so kids and concerned moms and dads, don't think you can make it go away by outlawing it.
I suppose people bully people for different reasons. Sometimes it's just because they're bigger than other kids and it's just a phase. Other times it's deeper. Some people bully because they're bullied. Some people have such low self esteem that diminishing others, makes them feel superior. Some people, for reasons unknown, are just plain mean right out of the birth canal. The point is, the pathology of bullying is varied, as is how they choose their victims. Sometimes they go after the strongest to raise their own stature. Other times they'll go after someone smaller because they can't risk losing.
One thing someone that's being bullied must understand, the one with the problem, is the bully!
Negotiate if you can. Fight, if you have no choice. Avoid contact if at all possible. And run to safety if your gut tells you to. There is no shame in that because some kids these days are not just mean they are armed. They are also not fair fighters. There is no honor in them and they often prefer to outnumber their victim. Many are not like those guys in that basketball game dad was in 90 years ago or even like the guy in the pool hall 40 years ago. The rules have changed and with that so have the standards by which we judge character, by that I mean, avoiding fights these days can be the honorable and smart thing to do.
Finally, learn how to fight but perfect the art of avoiding it and if you feel it's necessary, learn one of the martial arts like Karate or boxing, or the meanest, baddest of them all..ballet!!