Recently, I watched, mesmerized as those black cars eased through the streets of Louisville. Though by no means a boxing fan, I was feeling the loss of the sassy, classy, gentle presence of “The Greatest,” and his unique sense of timing both in the ring and before a microphone. Yes, felt it, though our lives were as separate as hopscotch is from Olympic gold.
And memory crept in. I was 8 years old in rural Mississippi, so rural the mysterious TVA that had spread all over Columbus, hadn’t been stretched up Highway 12 to my grandfather’s farm.
To the extent my family was “connected” it was by battery powered radio, and even that was more than some of our neighbors enjoyed. I don’t know why we had the radio unless it was provided by thoughtful uncles who lived and worked in town where there was TVA on a regular basis.
Battery power allowed us to have Gabriel Heater in our front room every night with, “Ah, yes, there’s bad news tonight” and hear of tanks and bayonets and death in France. It also allowed my mother, grandmother and me the luxury of listening to chilling episodes of “Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins” while shelling peas for dinner.
Then there was June, 1941. I was vaguely aware of something special going on in the world that touched my family in a way Gabriel Heater did not. It was “The Joe Louis-Billy Conn Championship Fight.”
“Joe Louis” was a name spoken with the same respect as that given “Roosevelt,” but with a difference. He was a Champion, and somebody named “Billy Conn” was trying to take away his title. As an up-coming second grader, I had a healthy interest in new words. To me title was what a story would be about. What happens if the title is taken away? And spelling! Nobody but me was mulling over the names, “Billy Conn” who wanted Joe Louis’ title, and the name of my grandfather, “Bill Conner,” who was deputy sheriff.
Neighboring men and boys, who didn’t have their own, were coming to listen to the championship fight on our radio. Out in the yard. The screen was loosened from the front room window so my father and grandfather could lift the radio onto the porch which was strange to see. Strange, too, was finding my grandmother cutting old woolen trousers into “mosquito rags” for the men who’d otherwise be eaten alive by the swarms that were at their worst that year.
I’d watched them arrive, some still in overalls, though a few had washed off the day’s dirt and sweat and came in cars. All said “Howdydo M’am” to my grandmother, took her complimentary mosquito repellent, lit their cigarettes that glowed brighter and brighter the darker it got.
Finally, my grandfather fiddled with the knobs till he found the right place and the men stopped talking about cotton crops and rain.
The high pitched voice of a very loud man broke into the night trying to talk through the deafening static that was something awful. Mother whispered it wasn’t static. It was the “audience” in the Polo Grounds, up north, cheering for Joe Louis, and I wondered how she knew. But there was static, too, which, with the noise and the loud man and bells that rang to interrupt the bout, confused the match in which I could find no story.
When told that neither Joe Louis nor Billy Conn would talk to the audience, I stopped listening and watched the pulsing glow of cigarettes and smoke curling up from mosquito rags across the yard.
I roused up when the loud man started counting in a way that made you sit up and listen … and when he got to 10, the noise was so big it hurt your ears if you were there. The men in our yard got caught up in it yelling, “Atta boy, ol’ Joe! You doggone got ’em, Big Joe! By gum, by gum! Champion of the world, Joe Louis! Aye, Lordy! Can’t nobody beat that big ol’ feller!”
I didn’t know those men except at church, had never seen them carryin’ on like that and wondered if I’d recognize a single one of them come Sunday morning. Pretty soon they lined up to shake hands and say “Much obliged” to my grandfather before ambling up or down the road toward wherever they lived. My mother held the lamp so my father and grandfather could lift the radio back into the front room and tack the screen in place. And it was over.
Next morning, I tiptoed into the yard where “the audience” had sat. All that was left of our big night with Joe Louis and our neighbors were burnt matches, some crushed Prince Albert cigarettes, and a little pile of ashes where somebody’s mosquito rag had been left burning all night. My father and grandfather were already in the field. My mother was in the garden by the fence bean vines. Pretty soon, the screen door would slam behind her, she’d get a fire going in the stove, then we’d go sit with my grandmother in the front room, string and snap the beans while listening to “Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins.”
Marion Whitley lives in Manhattan where she reads, writes and remembers. Her email address is [email protected].
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