Boxing in Winter

I was only half paying attention to the road as we drove home that cold January night in 1963.  It might have been a year earlier or a year later.  The facts here aren't what's important.  For certain, though, it was a night of the kind of cold in Maine that makes you feel the earth will never warm again.

I only half hear my father say: "I think that's Hurricane," as he began to slow the car to a stop.  Now my father stopping to pick up a hitchhiker was enough to get my full attention.  As a new driver, I had heard his admonition several times to never, ever pick up a hitchhiker.  I was quite convinced by now that any hitchhiker would saw off my head with a very dull knife.

But indded it was Hurrican who earlier that evening fought a ferocious 8-rounder in the Portland Exposition Building.  He won of a last round kockout, I think.  Like I said, my memory of facts should not be relied on.  It is sensations that I recall with accuracy.  I am not even sure I believe in facts.  They bring dullness to life and life is much in need of color and dram and excitement.

And excitement is what Hurrican provided on the cold Thursday evening.  His willingness to pummel and be pummeled for those bloody eight rounds was the only reason my father would have stopped.  That's not completely true.  It was also the cold.  My father was a kind man, not soft but kind, and the figher wore only a ligh jacket.

Gene (I think that was his real first name) jumped in the back seat and mumbled: "Thanks for stopping."  Many who had seen the fight had already driven past as if they didn't see him. 

It was easy to literally jump into the back seat of my father's car as he had a big four-door Buick.  He almost always had a four-door Buick.  As my mother likes to remind me to this day: "Your father always said to have a solid care under you."

Dad and I knew that Hurricane lived in our town, 18 miles south of Portland.  Twenty minuts later, we dropped him off on Main Street.  He said a quick thanks and was gone into the night, not a forlorn figure exactly, but watching him walk away I experienced my first real sense of "alone."

Those Thursday night fights at the refurbished Expo -- it has since been refurbished a couple more times but stubbornly maintains its old feel -- introduced me to a lot of "grown up" sensations.  A boy comes to manhood in uneven stages.  Going to those fights with my father was one of those stages, a welcoming into the company of men.  Very few women attended.

And what a glorious "stage" it was to a boy in his mid-teens, sitting there in the dark smoking with the bright lights illuminating the ring under a cloud of blue cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke.  Everyone smoked then.  It wasn't the social pariah it has become.  The only hint of our smokeless future was when the management of the Expo made us stop smoking in the stands and light up only in the lobby.

My father didn't really approve of my starting to smoke, although he still nid, but he never mentioned it when I lit up there.  Marlboro "reds." His brand. A lot of people's brand.  Flip top boxes, which I'm told were created for women's purses but which men quickly appropriated because you didn't lose your last two or three smokes crushed in a soft pack.

We sat in the stands that were used for basketball games which was the Expo's most frequent activity.  I think high school basketball is so popular in Maine because it is a warm bright place to go in the middle of cold dark winters.  But that is another story.

There were a few rows of metal chairs at ringside but my father would not pay for those.  He thought is was an extravagance and said he liked the view from the raised stands better. "No one blocking your view," he used to say.

While Hurrican always provided a free swinging affair on the undercard, he was not the star of our small city boxing world.  Oh no, that distinction belonged to Pistol Pete of the decidedly Italian last name.  Now Pistol Pete didn't look Itlaian, or at least our notion of Italian in Portland, a city of many Calabrese.  He lacked the dark hair and brown eyes and instead had blond hair and blue eyes and his admittedly prominent nose looked more Indian than Roman.  Some said he didn't look Italian because he picked up his name from one of the foster families he moved through as a child.  I never knew for sure and I warned you not to rely on me for the facts.

Subway Sam Silverman, a Boston fight promoter, used to bring up a stable of fighters every week to fight the Maine boys.  Why he had the moniker of Subway or where it came from I never knew, but it had a tinge of approbation, disapproal, figuratively as well as literally the underworld.

Any way, Pete's main nemesis was a big strong Irish guy from Bockton named Jimmy "McD." They said his day job was throwing truck tires around at some 16-wheeler repair shop.

I don't know how many times Pete and Jimmy fought but it was a lot, usually for the nythical New Enlgand light heavyweight crown which I think existed only in Subway Sam's news releases and promotional posters.

They eacy won their share of the fights although I recall Pete winning more.  Of course, that may be because I was in the Pete camp.  The crowd split between thos who pulled for Pete (the majority, he was the local guy after all) and those who rooted against him.  Pete was a little bit of a small time Ali minus the race issue, full of swagger and braggadocio.

Ali is a much revered and treasured figure now but we shouldn't forget the deep levels of anger and hostility he provoked when first on the scene, especially afer he changed his name, embraced the Black Muslim faith and refused the draft.  The was a lot for white middle class and working class people to handle and many didn't.  Ali was one of those icons the generations split on, like Lennon after the more popular than Jesus remark.

Some of the crowd just didn't like Pete's style but I loved it.  I remember one other cold winter night -- in my memory all those Thursday evening were in ddep winter, increasing the pull of the warm, smoky Expo air. When you left about 10 p.m. the first cold was bracing, even refreshing, but you couldn't wait for the car to heat up and glorious warm air to flow from the vents.

Anyway, that night during one of the prlims, Pistol Pete strutted in wearing a smartly cut suit with a flash blond on his arm.  You could see a huge maroon Caddy through the glass entry doors of the Expo parked right in front of the most promiment No Paking zone.  You knew right away it was Pete's car.  He soard over mundane parking restrictions which intmidated the rest of us.

I seem to remember him coming down the center aisle as if I were sitting on high during his grand entrance to smiles on the one hand and muttered curses of who does he think he is on the other.  But there were no high seats in the Expo as there are in the huge arenas of today. It was Pete who lifted us from the earhbound if only for some fleeting moments.

Pete of course fought in the featured bout that night.  He fought often, sometimes twice a month.  Dad and I went just about ever week, school work done or not, often with my best friend Ron and his father, a quiet dignified man whose eyes noneteless gleamed during the wildest bouts.  Prizefighting is ouf course the most primaitive of sports and, therefore, one of the most appealing.

Subway Sam brought up a series of pugs from the Boston area to keep Pete's reputation growing.  He kep winning, often by knockout.  He hit hard.  But a few times it took a hometown decision to put the bout in the win column. That, of course, is boxing.

Pete finally garnered enough wins and attention to get a fight with a contender in the Midwest.  If Pete won, he would be a contender and it didn't dawn on us tha the fight was almost certainly a set-up to enhance the real contender's record and pave the way for a bigger payday. That too is boxing.

Pete lost that fight and while he fought and won in Portland many more times it seemd as if some of the glitz was gone.  Our hopes for his success (and ours) had evaporated and somehow he was just anogher guy (like us).  He had been taken down a peg, brought back to earth, rejoined us in a place and societ of lesser dreams.

The night that Hurricane sat in the back seat of my tather's Buick, I looked straight ahead, too intimidated to say a word to even my father let alone the fighter in the back.  My father, though, was an engaging guy who liked to talk to people.  And they talked to him. It was why he could sell stuff -- from groceries to televisions to insurance while making a decent living for his family over the years.

"How much did you get for tonight," Dad asked, shocking me with his directness.

Hurrican was not offended.  "Fifty bucks but I had to give the corner guy ten and Silverman charges a ten buck locker fee for towels and stuff."

There wan't much to say after that and we rode in silence for the last ten minutes or so.  After we dropped off Hurricane, my thater said only: "Thirty dollars to ake a beating like that."  I just nodded in the darkness of the car.  I don't know if my father saw the nod or not bue he didn't say anything more.

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Years after that I used to see Hurrican working as a window washer around town.  He seemed a happy guy who smiled when people remembered his boxing days.  That made me feel better about the cold winter night when we gave him a ride, like I had a right to feel better or wose about his life.

Even more yeas later, long after the Thursday night fights at the Expo had been discontinued, I read a story about Pistol Pete.  Seems he had been working in a soup kitchen in Hallowell.  How the hell much can that pay, I wondered.  Didn't matter, though.

The previous Thursday Pete had visited his son.  He wasn't living with the boy's mother.  After the visit, Pete drove out to the landfill, what we used to call the dump, and put a bullet in his brain.

Pete and I were never introduced, never spoke or even nodded at one another in passing but I will always feel a sadness about his life's end.  If there was a funeral, I should have gone.

                                    end