Saturday Night Fights

CHAPTER 13

SATURDAY NIGHT FIGHTS

“How many times go we to comedies, to masques, to places of great and noble resort, nay even to church only to see the company?”
John Donne, Sermons, No. 16, 1622

“It happened long ago,in the thirties’ I reckon. I was eight or ten years old and Jack was, of course, four years younger than me. And up here at Henricks’ Store, right across from Shop-Rite, they had an ape show. A mister Noell passed through the country, and he had this ape in a cage and if you could hold him down for so long you would win something. But nobody could ever hold him down and Sandy Martin, that was Grandaddy Martins’ uncle, he decided he would handle him, and the lights went out a few minutes and when they did come back on, he was knocked out. Daddy said his wife, Oakie, had knocked him out with a stump! But, anyhow, after a while, one of the Spradlins, Haywood or one of his younger brothers decided that he would tackle the ape. He got in there and he put his finger under that piece he had in his mouth to keep him from bitin’ you and he bit Spardlin and everything went wild there. The lights went out and the people started stampedin’ out of there and Jack was just a little shaver and they run over him and Buford caught him by the jacket and held onto him until we could get out of there. Crantz was along, I think and Willard and me and Jack. Buford and Crantz said they saw Jess and Edna with a lantern headed down the road home, wide open. It was a great night!”

The Audio Journal of Harold Martin

Down at Turner’s General Store in Huddleston, farm boys and girls used to gather every Saturday night around a radio for a night’s entertainment. My father said that for a dime, you could buy a Pepsi-Cola and a big handful of peanuts, which Mr. Turner would measure out very carefully in an empty potted meat can. Then, you were ready for a big evening.
Joe Louis was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world in those days, and my father was one of many young people who gathered to hear his fights on the radio. The Brown Bomber captivated those youngsters because he, too, was young and tough, and he never lost a match. These were ideals a farm boy could admire.
Louis captivated some of the young men so much that they even staged their own bare-knuckles contests out in the storage building where Mr. Turner kept the livestock feed. Uncle Bud Martin usually won because he was by nature a real tough fellow. Uncle Willard, on the other hand, usually ended up with a nosebleed after the slightest tap. My father, undoubtedly the smartest in the bunch, recognized early on that some boys belonged in the ring, while others, like him, belonged in the stands.
The general store was at the heart of the community. Patrons bought goods, heard gossip, renewed acquaintances and listened to the radio For a while, those young men at Turner’s Store, like so many other youngsters living in the country in those times, were transported by their mind’s eye to Madison Square Garden to become part of a New York City crowd. As they heard the voice of the announcer, the roar of the crowd, and the play-by-play of the commentator, some of them, surely, dreamed of visiting far-away places or becoming writers, announcers, even boxers. Some of them envisioned living in the big city or, at least, a city. Undoubtedly, radio caused many youngsters to think about life beyond the bounds of their property, and it brought them into a larger community of listeners.

There are no more general stores, but radio has endured. In a world of TV, CD, DVD and iPod, it remains the oldest, yet most intimate form of communication. We may not gather around the radio like those farm boys and girls of long ago did to hear a prizefight and drink a soft drink, but radio still creates communities of listeners, despite their differences. Those farm boys tilled the earth the same way, but they were individuals with different tastes and beliefs. Yet, when they heard Joe enter the ring, none of it, for a while, mattered. On an otherwise lonely Saturday night in the 30s, that was a real knockout.