When the Halls were down and the campground was open at Grindell's, one of my weekend chores was to walk over to Grindell's store and pick-up Everett's copy of the Boston Record. The Record-American was the tabloid forerunner to the Herald-Traveler. The morning edition was the Boston Record, and the evening edition was the Boston American. Same with the Herald and the Traveler. All the neighborhood newspapers were delivered to the store, where each was set aside with a subscriber's name penciled on the upper right hand corner. Needless to say, I was entrusted with the Record set aside for Hall.
As I type this mindless episode I can clearly see me stopping in my tracks in front of #5, which was owned by a couple that for years I knew only as "Tina and Morey." (Their cottage was one of the earlier ones of the street built by Wilbur Grindell, just south of #7, the one he had built for his sister Maida.) There were still tall pines along the edge of the dirt road, and I stopped beneath the pines in front of Tina and Morey's to read the story that went with the picture on the back of Record. As with all tabloids, that was the sports page. And the full-page photo was the image of the stunning upset in the world of boxing: Ingemar Johansson had knocked out Floyd Patterson before a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium. THIS was BIG NEWS. In 1959, there were two major sports in the United States. One was baseball; the other, boxing. As we know, baseball was America's pastime, something that filled the days of summer. Boxing, however, was an event. And some events were greater than others. Some were championships of the WORLD!
Forget the fact that this was a white guy defeating a black guy in 1959 America, because Floyd Patterson would come back to pommel Johansson in their next two fights. This was only the fifth time that a non-American had won the heavyweight belt.
Boxing was big in the U. S. of A., but it was even BIGGER on Snatch Alley. Because the Grindell family was from the city of Brockton, Massachusetts, and because a lot of folks who camped in the Grindell's park or who bought land from Ray Grindell had hailed from Brockton, and because Brockton also was the hometown of Rocky Marciano, the so-called "sweet science" of boxing was BIG on Snatch Alley. The Rock had been the undefeated heavyweight champeen of the world (!) from 1952-1956: 49 wins in 49 bouts. (You can do the math on the frequency of those events.)
The Rock with Floyd Patterson.
Anyway, when word reached Snatch Alley that Patterson had been upset by a Swede (by a Swede, by golly!), the beach was abuzz.
Having been born three years before Rocky, my mom had gone through a lot of school years with the champ. So, even she had a mild interest in boxing. But both my folks and the Grindells all lived in the Campbello section of Brockton, which was predominantly populated by immigrants from Sweden, of which my mom was a first generation. So, the name Ingemar floated along Snatch Alley; however, he was nothing compared to "The Greatest," who "floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee."
Despite his rapid rise to fame, Ingemar Johansson proved to be more a palooka than a Joe Palooka. A palooka was an inept fighter, but Joe Palooka was a comic book character who epitomized the best of the American character. (By the same token, most of us kids confused Joe Palooka with Bazooka Joe, who was the character in Bazooka bubble gum comics. Grindell's sold both Bazooka and Double-Bubble gum for a penny.)
Such was life on Snatch Alley in June of 1959. Floyd Patterson had become not only the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, but would become the first heavyweight champion ever to re-gain a championship, and he would go on to fight "The Greatest" on two occasions. Both times, though, Patterson lost.
In 1970, a fictional match between the undefeated heavyweights, Marciano and Ali, had the Rock defeating "The Greatest." That's fiction for ya.
But that was life on Snatch Alley.
No comments:
Post a Comment