Thats what diego said in the e-mail he send the portrait with.bennie wrote:Are you sure that is a portrait of Jerry Quarry, Frankie? It looks very much like your son to me (but what do I know).kikibalt wrote:Bennie; Tequila is good for you...bennie wrote: Lay off that tequila, Frankie.
Classic American West Coast Boxing
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dagosd2000
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 8638
- Joined: 01 Sep 2007, 03:31
GatoEl Gato wrote:Dago,
What an artist you are. I appreciate so much the time you took to create this amazing portrait of me. You have a unique talent. It is a blessing, a wonderful gift. You asked if I would like it for myself or if I would like to have it displayed at the cultural center in Jiquilpan. After thinking it over I would like to have a copy for myself, if possible, but have the original given to the cultural center in the town where I initiated my boxing career. If I am able to be there at the time you present it I would be very honored. It would be so special to meet and see some of the people who supported me in launching my boxing career.
Kikibalt,
I also want to thank you for posting so many nice photos of me with Gene Lavelle, Jerry Stokes, Freddy Morino, Connie Stevens, Edy Williams,
Jacky McCoy, Carlos Ortiz, Paul Gonzales, Chango Carmona and many more. What a great job you are doing for all the readers.
El Gato
Looks like you'll have to have the original because it's too big to carry on the plane.(24 by 30 inches). I'll do a smaller one to take to Jiquilpan in the summer . Check your PM's because I sent you my address and phone number. When will you be ready for some of my wife's "comida estilo Michoacan?"
I'm glad my post was okay. Sometimes, I tend to go on and on about trivial things that are probably of interest only to me.Bobbin & Weavin wrote:Actually that's excactly the kind of stuff I like to hear about. I have always had an outside interest in O'Hollaran since I traveled from San Francisco with a friend of mine to see him fight Jack. His name was Roby Harris and although his record says he lived in L.A. he actually lived in S.F. and we trained in the same gym. I was 16 at the time and Roby made the mistake of KOing Joey Obrillo so his manager figured that he should move him up so he next fought Jose Luis Garcia and got KOed then Jack and got his jaw broken. I went down for both fights and it wasn't pleasent for a 16 year old. Roby was every bit equal to Jack in size at 6'6" and 240 Lbs. and boxed many rounds with Geo. Foreman when George was trained in S.F., Roby's jaw never fully recovered and any time he got hit there it was lights out.raylawpc wrote:Sure, in 1974 O'Halloran decided to make a comeback. He entered into some kind of a deal with Pat O'Grady, and moved to Cushing, Oklahoma to train with Kelly Burden, who was the recreation director for the city of Cushing and a fitness fanatic. I think he stayed with Kelly for about a month. Kelly was the guy to stay with if you wanted to get in shape.Bobbin & Weavin wrote: Hey Raylawpc,
Can you elaborate on hanging around with O'Hollaran; any good stories, I had heard a had a stint in the NFL any truth to that?
Thanks,
Bruce
I was in college at the time, and I stayed with them over Spring Break for about a week, if I recall. Jack was a terrific guy, and the three of us spent a lot of time working out and talking about boxing. You know, I don't recall anything really specific, but I remember him as a great story-teller and jokester with a quirky sense of humor. Very outgoing. Somewhat egotistical, and a bit of a ham. I was not surprised at all when he went into films.
I am not sure about the NFL. When I saw your post, it triggered something in the back of my mind (one of those - 'oh yeah, I remember something about that. . ." moments), but nothing specific.
One thing that I remember is that, at that time, he was somewhat sensitive about his appearance. I'm not sure how it came up, but I remember him telling me that his large jaw and brow came from a pituitary gland disorder he developed in his 20s. They were able to cure it, but the damage was done. Jack showed me an old photograph of himself (I think he carried it in his wallet) to show you that he, at one time, had "normal" features. Made you feel kind of bad for the guy.
Another thing I remember very clearly was that he was absolutely obsessed with fighting Muhammad Ali. He thought that the fight would draw well (the whole white v. black thing), he'd get a big payday, and that he had a good chance to score an upset. He said, "A big guy with a good jab can beat Ali. Well, I'm a big guy with a good jab." The whole reason for the comeback was to try and work himself into position for a fight with Ali.
Ultimately, he relationship with the O'Grady's ended with the Danny Lee fight in Dallas, which O'Grady promoted. The record book shows that Jack got the decision, but I would have given it to Lee. Funny thing, Jack went into the fight telling me that he was in the best shape of his life, but he looked absolutely horrible.
Probably more than you want to know, but those are my memories of Jack O'Halloran.
N.B.: I reread the earlier post from Frank that he took from Jack's imdb bio. The confrontation between Jack and Christopher Reeve doesn't surprise me. I sensed that Jack was the kind of guy who would bully somebody if he didn't get along with them. I was fortunate that I got along with him just fine.
Thanks,
Bruce
February 22, 1971
All The Scotsman Managed To Lose Was $2
Kenny Buchanan had to battle through a hundred prefight hassles before he got to defend his title in the ring, and he won them all. It was excellent preparation for what happened after the opening bell
Pat Putnam
Sports Illustrated
A carpenter of long standing, as well as a Scotsman, Lightweight Champion Kenny Buchanan is ever alert to one of boxing's favorite ploys—the chisel. So last week in Los Angeles when challenger Mando Ramos doubled over in pain from a groin injury suffered in training, the Scot sniffed and said, "Tae hell with that, laddie. I donae care if you coom intae the ring on one leg Friday night. But if you donae coom, forget it." The Mexican asked for a week's grace. The Scot said, and rightly so, "No' even one wee day. They'd have tae cut off me leg before I'd pull out of a fight, and maybe even then I'd still try. I give him an extra week and I'll be way past mc peak, and he knows it."
As for the city of Los Angeles, Buchanan had had it. He had not been all that excited about defending his title there in the first place. Then there was the earthquake. In Scotland, God lets the Scots move whatever earth needs moving. And there was the hotel, just off skid row, where he spent two days before demanding to be moved to another in a less noisy area. And the three teeth that required emergency filling, a cold that wouldn't quit and a sore knee injured in training, plus a hundred arguments with Promoter Aileen Eaton, the California Boxing Commission and an army of Ramos' handlers, all of which the Scot won by simply threatening to go home.
The biggest argument was over officials. Buchanan demanded and got a British judge and a neutral referee, one, he said, who could come from anywhere but California. Mrs. Eaton agreed with reluctance. "But," she said, "we aren't setting any precedent. It's going to cost me $574 to fly a judge here from England. I just hope they pick a referee from Nevada and not from Thailand." As it turned out, the California Boxing Commission picked Arthur Mercante from New York, which cost her $300. ("Mercante," said a Scot with Buchanan, "is that Mexican?")
And so, when Ramos pulled out, Buchanan began packing. That was on Tuesday, just 76 hours before the fight. Ramos has a habit of postponing fights. This was his ninth in five years. Once, probably from conditioned reflex, he postponed his wedding.
"Wait," said Mrs. Eaton to Buchanan, reaching for a telephone. "I just happen to have another challenger ready." She called Ruben Navarro, the No. 3 contender, training a few miles away in San Jacinto for a Feb. 25 fight with Jimmy Robertson.
"I donae like it," said Buchanan darkly. But Jack Solomons, the British promoter who had come along as an adviser, talked him into fighting Navarro. "What's the difference?" said Solomons wisely. "If you can't beat the No. 3 challenger, you don't deserve to be champion anyway. But first let me sec if the British Boxing Board of Control will recognize it as a title fight."
By telephone, the BBC assured Solomons that it would. "Dom nice of them," Buchanan muttered. He holds no love for the British board. After he won his title from Ismael Laguna in San Juan, the British refused to recognize him as champion. Upon Mrs. Eaton's request (she said Laguna had reneged on a promise to fight for her), the BBC had stripped the Panamanian of his title three days before he lost to Buchanan. However, the BBC ruled, if Buchanan fought Ramos for Mrs. Eaton, then it would be recognized as a title fight. Very strange, but no matter.
While Solomons was getting assurances from London, Mrs. Eaton was calling Navarro. He said sure, he'd love a title fight, even on such short notice.
"I heard Ramos was getting $20,000," Navarro said.
"You're getting $15,000," Mrs. Eaton said.
All The Scotsman Managed To Lose Was $2
Kenny Buchanan had to battle through a hundred prefight hassles before he got to defend his title in the ring, and he won them all. It was excellent preparation for what happened after the opening bell
Pat Putnam
Sports Illustrated
A carpenter of long standing, as well as a Scotsman, Lightweight Champion Kenny Buchanan is ever alert to one of boxing's favorite ploys—the chisel. So last week in Los Angeles when challenger Mando Ramos doubled over in pain from a groin injury suffered in training, the Scot sniffed and said, "Tae hell with that, laddie. I donae care if you coom intae the ring on one leg Friday night. But if you donae coom, forget it." The Mexican asked for a week's grace. The Scot said, and rightly so, "No' even one wee day. They'd have tae cut off me leg before I'd pull out of a fight, and maybe even then I'd still try. I give him an extra week and I'll be way past mc peak, and he knows it."
As for the city of Los Angeles, Buchanan had had it. He had not been all that excited about defending his title there in the first place. Then there was the earthquake. In Scotland, God lets the Scots move whatever earth needs moving. And there was the hotel, just off skid row, where he spent two days before demanding to be moved to another in a less noisy area. And the three teeth that required emergency filling, a cold that wouldn't quit and a sore knee injured in training, plus a hundred arguments with Promoter Aileen Eaton, the California Boxing Commission and an army of Ramos' handlers, all of which the Scot won by simply threatening to go home.
The biggest argument was over officials. Buchanan demanded and got a British judge and a neutral referee, one, he said, who could come from anywhere but California. Mrs. Eaton agreed with reluctance. "But," she said, "we aren't setting any precedent. It's going to cost me $574 to fly a judge here from England. I just hope they pick a referee from Nevada and not from Thailand." As it turned out, the California Boxing Commission picked Arthur Mercante from New York, which cost her $300. ("Mercante," said a Scot with Buchanan, "is that Mexican?")
And so, when Ramos pulled out, Buchanan began packing. That was on Tuesday, just 76 hours before the fight. Ramos has a habit of postponing fights. This was his ninth in five years. Once, probably from conditioned reflex, he postponed his wedding.
"Wait," said Mrs. Eaton to Buchanan, reaching for a telephone. "I just happen to have another challenger ready." She called Ruben Navarro, the No. 3 contender, training a few miles away in San Jacinto for a Feb. 25 fight with Jimmy Robertson.
"I donae like it," said Buchanan darkly. But Jack Solomons, the British promoter who had come along as an adviser, talked him into fighting Navarro. "What's the difference?" said Solomons wisely. "If you can't beat the No. 3 challenger, you don't deserve to be champion anyway. But first let me sec if the British Boxing Board of Control will recognize it as a title fight."
By telephone, the BBC assured Solomons that it would. "Dom nice of them," Buchanan muttered. He holds no love for the British board. After he won his title from Ismael Laguna in San Juan, the British refused to recognize him as champion. Upon Mrs. Eaton's request (she said Laguna had reneged on a promise to fight for her), the BBC had stripped the Panamanian of his title three days before he lost to Buchanan. However, the BBC ruled, if Buchanan fought Ramos for Mrs. Eaton, then it would be recognized as a title fight. Very strange, but no matter.
While Solomons was getting assurances from London, Mrs. Eaton was calling Navarro. He said sure, he'd love a title fight, even on such short notice.
"I heard Ramos was getting $20,000," Navarro said.
"You're getting $15,000," Mrs. Eaton said.
"O.K.," said Navarro, keeping in mind that in his previous 29 fights he had made a total of $55,000. Like most Mexican fighters, he enjoys life better at night, and $15,000 can uncork a lot-of bottles.
"Sure, Ruben is a playboy," said Co-manager Marty Denkin. "But he's also deeply religious. He just believes that God didn't intend man to sit home and meditate."
Although suspecting the worst, Buchanan agreed to fight. Payday for him was $60,000. "But I still think they are up tae somethin'," he brooded. "They claim he's only half fit. But a few friends say he's been training hard for a month."
At the weigh-in, the battle over officials erupted once more. Johnny Flores, Navarro's other manager, said it was Ramos, not Navarro, who had agreed to foreign officials. He demanded a new deal for his man. Buchanan's people were summoned.
Eddie Thomas, Buchanan's manager, threw up his hands. He said to Solomons, "Jack, you go talk to them. I can't take any more." Solomons went and listened. Then, raging, he stood up. It was 12:30, just 9½ hours before the fight. He began by pointing a finger at the California commissioners. "You over there," he said. "Who do you want to win? Navarro. And you? Navarro. And you and you, and you, Mrs. Eaton. Who do you want? The whole bleeding lot of you want Navarro to win. I'm sick and tired of coming down here and fighting with all of you every two hours. Let's call the blooming fight off and forget all about it."
That gets them every time.
Ignoring the latest furor, Buchanan spent the uneasy hours just before the fight playing switch, a card game, with his father Tom and two friends. He lost $2. "You all are bandits," he said. "You're cheating."
His dad grinned. "Oh, no, lad. Now let's play just one more hand for your whole purse."
Then they went off to the fight, which started when a Scot unfurled the Scottish flag and a Mexican fan reached for it, and a Scottish fist cracked against a Mexican jaw, sending the flag grabber cartwheeling down a dozen steps where he landed bleeding and unconscious in the arms of a cop, who arrested him. "That mon could have been in serious trouble," said Tom Buchanan. "When he grabbed our flag, I mean."
After several such prelims, they brought in the professionals—Navarro in white with a silver rosary around his neck, Buchanan in the brilliant Tartan colors of his clan. Buchanan came out swiftly, triggering crisp punishing jabs. And Navarro swatted him on the left ear with a right hand and knocked him down. Referee Mercante ruled it a slip. Navarro said it was a knockdown. Buchanan said it was half-and-half—"But I wasn't hurt. If I had been, I wouldn't have jumped up so quick."
"Sure, Ruben is a playboy," said Co-manager Marty Denkin. "But he's also deeply religious. He just believes that God didn't intend man to sit home and meditate."
Although suspecting the worst, Buchanan agreed to fight. Payday for him was $60,000. "But I still think they are up tae somethin'," he brooded. "They claim he's only half fit. But a few friends say he's been training hard for a month."
At the weigh-in, the battle over officials erupted once more. Johnny Flores, Navarro's other manager, said it was Ramos, not Navarro, who had agreed to foreign officials. He demanded a new deal for his man. Buchanan's people were summoned.
Eddie Thomas, Buchanan's manager, threw up his hands. He said to Solomons, "Jack, you go talk to them. I can't take any more." Solomons went and listened. Then, raging, he stood up. It was 12:30, just 9½ hours before the fight. He began by pointing a finger at the California commissioners. "You over there," he said. "Who do you want to win? Navarro. And you? Navarro. And you and you, and you, Mrs. Eaton. Who do you want? The whole bleeding lot of you want Navarro to win. I'm sick and tired of coming down here and fighting with all of you every two hours. Let's call the blooming fight off and forget all about it."
That gets them every time.
Ignoring the latest furor, Buchanan spent the uneasy hours just before the fight playing switch, a card game, with his father Tom and two friends. He lost $2. "You all are bandits," he said. "You're cheating."
His dad grinned. "Oh, no, lad. Now let's play just one more hand for your whole purse."
Then they went off to the fight, which started when a Scot unfurled the Scottish flag and a Mexican fan reached for it, and a Scottish fist cracked against a Mexican jaw, sending the flag grabber cartwheeling down a dozen steps where he landed bleeding and unconscious in the arms of a cop, who arrested him. "That mon could have been in serious trouble," said Tom Buchanan. "When he grabbed our flag, I mean."
After several such prelims, they brought in the professionals—Navarro in white with a silver rosary around his neck, Buchanan in the brilliant Tartan colors of his clan. Buchanan came out swiftly, triggering crisp punishing jabs. And Navarro swatted him on the left ear with a right hand and knocked him down. Referee Mercante ruled it a slip. Navarro said it was a knockdown. Buchanan said it was half-and-half—"But I wasn't hurt. If I had been, I wouldn't have jumped up so quick."
And then Navarro got serious and went to work. A left to the groin and a right to the kidneys. A right to the groin and a left to the kidneys. Unused to such tactics, Buchanan lost the first four rounds. Mercante kept warning Navarro for fouling and finally penalized him a point in the sixth round. "Aw, I didn't hit him low," Navarro protested later. "If I had, he'd be on his Scotch keister." At that point, a lighted cigarette came flying into the ring, striking Navarro on the stomach. He winced and backed up. "He never could take a cigarette to the body," said a local character named The Steamer.
By this time, Buchanan had decided that the best way to keep from being hit low was to belt Navarro in the mouth, which he now was doing with vast relish. As the Mexican tired, the Scot grew stronger. And better. In the eighth round, as Buchanan assumed complete command, a bottle came flying into the ring, just narrowly missing the head of Harry Gibbs, the British judge. "I looked at it," he said. "It was a soda bottle. If it had been a Scotch whisky bottle, I'd never have forgiven them."
About then, Thomas found a strange blue water bottle in Buchanan's corner. "What the devil!" he roared. "They use every trick in the book."
"What's in the bottle?" asked Solomons, who was sitting nearby.
"Darned if I know."
"Blimey, I never even saw the thing," said Solomons. "I had better keep watch."
Navarro's superb chin was all that saved him from a knockout in the final rounds. The scoring wasn't close: Mercante and the California judge, Lee Grossman, had it 9-4; Gibbs 9-2. Gibbs then quickly abandoned his role as a neutral. "I told the Yanks he was a good one," he said. "It's great being with a victorious side for a change. You have to remember that I was with a losing army, the British 44th. When we went into Belgium to fight the Germans, the people gave us bottles of wine. But when we left running for Dunkirk, they threw them at us, the bloody beggars."
While Gibbs gloated, Navarro visited Buchanan's dressing room. "You are a fine champion and a fine fighter," he said. "There is only one man who can beat you."
"Oh?" said Buchanan, holding his groin.
"Yeah," Navarro said. "And he's standing right in front of you. Me. Only the next time I want more than 76 hours' notice."
Solomons assured Navarro that he had earned a rematch, but in London, he said, where the rules are a little different. And Mrs. Eaton mentioned something about a May bout with Ramos, for $100,000.
"Ramos donae deserve a fight," Buchanan said at breakfast the next morning. "Besides, I've got my British title tae worry about. I'm afraid they may take it away now."
So what?
"One more defense and he gets to keep the Lonsdale Belt," said his father. "It's worth about $1,250. And if you win the belt, when you retire you get a pension of a pound a week. Not that a small sum like that is important."
"Oh, no," said Solomons solemnly. "Not to a Scot."
By this time, Buchanan had decided that the best way to keep from being hit low was to belt Navarro in the mouth, which he now was doing with vast relish. As the Mexican tired, the Scot grew stronger. And better. In the eighth round, as Buchanan assumed complete command, a bottle came flying into the ring, just narrowly missing the head of Harry Gibbs, the British judge. "I looked at it," he said. "It was a soda bottle. If it had been a Scotch whisky bottle, I'd never have forgiven them."
About then, Thomas found a strange blue water bottle in Buchanan's corner. "What the devil!" he roared. "They use every trick in the book."
"What's in the bottle?" asked Solomons, who was sitting nearby.
"Darned if I know."
"Blimey, I never even saw the thing," said Solomons. "I had better keep watch."
Navarro's superb chin was all that saved him from a knockout in the final rounds. The scoring wasn't close: Mercante and the California judge, Lee Grossman, had it 9-4; Gibbs 9-2. Gibbs then quickly abandoned his role as a neutral. "I told the Yanks he was a good one," he said. "It's great being with a victorious side for a change. You have to remember that I was with a losing army, the British 44th. When we went into Belgium to fight the Germans, the people gave us bottles of wine. But when we left running for Dunkirk, they threw them at us, the bloody beggars."
While Gibbs gloated, Navarro visited Buchanan's dressing room. "You are a fine champion and a fine fighter," he said. "There is only one man who can beat you."
"Oh?" said Buchanan, holding his groin.
"Yeah," Navarro said. "And he's standing right in front of you. Me. Only the next time I want more than 76 hours' notice."
Solomons assured Navarro that he had earned a rematch, but in London, he said, where the rules are a little different. And Mrs. Eaton mentioned something about a May bout with Ramos, for $100,000.
"Ramos donae deserve a fight," Buchanan said at breakfast the next morning. "Besides, I've got my British title tae worry about. I'm afraid they may take it away now."
So what?
"One more defense and he gets to keep the Lonsdale Belt," said his father. "It's worth about $1,250. And if you win the belt, when you retire you get a pension of a pound a week. Not that a small sum like that is important."
"Oh, no," said Solomons solemnly. "Not to a Scot."
November 06, 1967
The Lady Is A Champ
She is Aileen Eaton, a woman in a man's game—fight promotion—that abounds in stealth and triple trickery. Dictatorial yet feminine, she is loved by some, hated by others and feared by all
Mark Kram
Sports Illustrated
Now there she is sitting under an apple tree, like some sweet, aging lady who looks for unusual birds and thinks that Oil for the Lamps of China was the last great picture made. What a gentle, uncomplicated sweetheart she is, sitting there talking about the Indian summers of her Vancouver youth and the music that was made at twilight of every evening in her father's house. Next time, you think, you must take her for a nice long ride in the country so she can see the billboards and say: "My, how everything has changed."
Certainly this cannot be the feared Lady Aileen of boxing's gold coast, not the woman known by such names as Madame Nhu, The Dragon Lady, Ma Barker, The Man-Eating Lotus Flower and The Woman, the one who knows how to tape a hand or a fight manager's mouth, scale a house to the seat or shave a pitchman who thinks he has all the pitches? That's her, all right, under the apple tree: Aileen Eaton, the biggest and maybe the most powerful boxing promoter in the world today, the same Aileen Eaton who last week staged the Jerry Quarry-Floyd Patterson heavyweight elimination fight in Los Angeles.
So do not think of her as a delicately declining lady on the brink of warm milk and a shawl and nice long drives in the country. For one thing, no one takes Aileen Eaton for a ride. She does the driving, in the longest Cadillac in southern California, and usually to a place where you pick up cards and dice. The Lady moves, that is, when she has time. Politically lethal, she has been a forceful figure in at least two campaigns, in one of which Attorney General Thomas Lynch won and Pierre Salinger lost. She once ran for the city council and lost, too, but that was the exception. Do not try to beat her on her own turf.
Currently, the major areas of boxing promotion in this country are New York, New England, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles. The best of these is L.A. Monolithic Madison Square Garden is impersonal; Subway Sam Silverman of Boston, Worcester, Portland and points unforeseen in New England is a freebooting ferret who makes a score only occasionally; Herman Taylor, Philadelphia, a grumpy patriarch, is an anachronism; and Miami's Chris Dundee knows how to turn a dollar—any way he can.
All of these promoters are professional, meaning they are able to count, are sufficiently learned in the art of buncombe and have just the proper amount of probity in them to survive. Aileen Eaton is no different. She has all these qualities that are considered so necessary to the marksman in boxing, but she never cuts herself in on a fighter's earnings, an illegal practice for a promoter but one that is still rampant in the sport.
"A couple of her matchmakers used to have pieces of fighters or cut them," says Harry Kabakoff, alias Melville Himmelfarb or, as he calls himself, El Ruso Loco (The Mad Russian). Melville must be considered an authority on this subject. Once an assistant matchmaker for Mrs. Eaton but not unreasonably larcenous, Melville was never known in those days for his excessive charity. "But Ma Barker," he says, "never cuts a fighter. She has the power, she could have all kinds of fighters; you know, a manager comes up to her and says, 'Here, take my part of my boy. You can make him.' "
Aileen Eaton does not want part of any boy. She runs her polished operation like a business, one that is refreshingly interested in the people who allow her business to exist. Quite simply, she performs. Dictatorial and charming and often intolerant of imperfection, she is everywhere during her weekly shows at the Olympic Auditorium, an ancient, graying, high-ceiling fortress of boxing on South Grand Ave. She is on television selling her next show, or gently or un-gently reprimanding a customer for bad manners. Her security, despite a riot in 1964 that forced her to take out a bank loan so she could restore the Olympic, is the best one can attain at a fight. Sartorial untidiness—television is the influence—also distracts her. She constantly badgers referees to wear blue shirts and ties and insists ringside customers facing the cameras wear jackets.
Before a show she is just as conscious of detail, busying herself with such things as seating comfort for her spectators. In the days preceding the first Quarry-Patterson bout at Memorial Coliseum, she could be seen on her hands and knees measuring the space between each chair with a tape; there was not a cramped seat in the house. On other days she hears complaints from customers concerning decisions, keeps club members (who get choice seats at $1 off on each ticket) informed of forthcoming cards and schemes to build young fighters into attractions. Finally there is the relentless, daily jousting with managers who, with the skill of the best quarter horses, can cut a buck out of the rubble of a city dump, and have robbery in their souls and disloyalty forever in their minds.
The treatment of these old pirates, a curiously likable tribe, is a delicate diplomacy, requiring at various times cajolery, intimidation, sabotage and tenacity. Be kind, a bit servile and honest, and the manager will be suspicious, if not repelled by your ignorance of his character and ethics. He is only confused briefly, though, and then you are relieved of your ignorance and your bank account. Be crude, profane and stealthy, and the manager is respectful because he knows that you understand the nature of his game, a deeply shadowed realm of migratory and marginal people who live lives of half-truths and no truths, tricks, double tricks and triple tricks.
"In the last 20 years," says Melville, now the manager of Jesus Pimentel, the No. 1 bantamweight behind Champion Fighting Harada, "I've seen her put fear into managers, many of them trying to give her hell. I've seen her attack managers with her purse, kick 'em downstairs and even raise her fist to them. But you always get a good count even if the lights are out, which no doubt she shot out in the first place arguing over a quarter."
Unlike Melville, most managers remain mute concerning Aileen Eaton. All managers must deal with her eventually, and in California, where there are more desperate and busted managers than anywhere else, they need The Woman if they are to survive. Survival comes in the form of a loan—$100, $300—and if and when the manager comes up with an interesting fighter, Aileen, smiling and charming, just reaches out like a giant squid and uses the boy without having to tolerate the usual preliminary gas from the manager. Says one: "When things get bad, I call her number in L.A. collect. I'm in bad shape and I say, 'I've got to have $500.' She says, 'You'll take $300.' She beats your brains out, I'll tell the world, but you get the money."
"Take this incident," says another manager. "There's this retired businessman who now manages fighters, and be also has a reputation for saving a buck. Well, the other day he tries to drive his car into the exit line of the coin parking lot outside the Olympic. Now, he's going the wrong way, maybe to save a few cents, see. Well, they've got these spikes, and they rip through two of his tires. He goes up to The Woman's office to see if she's got insurance for her parking gate. Hah! 'No,' she says, lookin' at him like he's crazy, 'but if your car is still there I'd appreciate the 50 cents.' "
"Sure," says Melville, secretly admiring her unruffled manner and boxing acumen, "she has the face of a rock, but she's not all rock. Just recently I go back to my room and all of a sudden I'm dying. I can't move one of my legs. Who do I call? Nobody's up at this hour. Who's gonna help? Another fight manager? So I call Aileen. 'Aileen,' I says, 'I'm dyin'. I got to get to a hospital.' So she says, 'You ought to die, Melville, you're such a liar.' I say that I know all of that but she was the only one I could turn to. 'That's all right,' she says. 'I had to get up and turn the television off anyway.' So she gets somebody to pick me up and then pays all the bills. She's not all rock."
One guesses that often, perhaps more than ever before, she is relieved at those times when she is away from boxing, that she even is embarrassed that she is in the sport. She appears to have a deep contempt for the people she has to deal with, for those who have eroded The Lady she dreamed of in some long-ago time. "I am a lady away from boxing," she repeats often, as if no one really believes it. She is, though, fond of fighters, many of whom she consoles with a kiss on the cheek when she is not prodding them in an effort to help them capitalize on their short, violent careers in a sport not notable for any form of almsgiving.
Violence does not jar her, but its aftermath does. If a fighter is hurt, she will not leave the hospital until he is cleared by a neurologist. When Davey Moore was killed in 1963, she made all the mortuary arrangements and generally conducted herself like the stand-up person many insist she is. Although she never appears hurt by any comment, she does wince when someone quotes a line circulating around L.A., which goes: "Aileen said Davey Moore wasn't hurt. 'Oh,' she said, 'he just has a broken nose." Yeah, and Paret died of pneumonia."
Whether there is any truth or not in the line, Aileen Eaton is, as one manager put it, "very unstupid." Her weekly boxing shows gross close to $1 million each year, and her wrestling shows, directed by her son Mike, do better yet. Even in her youth there were never any real problems, financial or domestic, unless you count the flutist who lived in her father's apartment house; he never did understand the meaning of pianissimo and often in her father's musical seances he sounded like he was in the front rank of an American Legion band. The apartment in Vancouver, B.C., the town in which Aileen was born to a Polish refugee father and a New Zealand mother, was warm and alive. "It was a happy life," says Aileen, "and a fine place for a little girl."
She would not always enjoy such solvency or happiness. Eventually her parents, who had taken to wintering in California, moved to Los Angeles. Aileen married Maurice LeBell after graduation from high school. Her husband became an osteopath, but she wanted a career of her own. She went to work in a law office and in the evenings studied law. When Mike became ill—there was another son, Gene, and later a stepson, Bob Eaton—she reluctantly chose to quit school. Her husband, paralyzed after a near drowning, died in 1941. Aileen was forced to start scrambling for a living, not any living, she decided, but a profitable one.
"We had no social security," she says, "and we didn't carry the insurance people do today. I had nothing left to take care of the children with. I finally put them in California Military Academy on a trade deal. I handled the academy's advertising in exchange for room and board for the boys."
It was through advertising that Aileen got into boxing. She landed an account with the owner of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, who also had the Olympic Auditorium. The promoter to whom the Olympic was leased was not doing well, and the Athletic Club had to support the arena. Aileen moved quickly. She brought the Olympic owner together with one Cal Eaton, who was an inspector for the state athletic commission. Eaton, a cultured Clifton Webb caricature who wore a thin mustache and his hat tilted at just the right angle, became the boxing promoter. Eaton divorced his wife in 1947, and he and Aileen married two years later.
The Eatons, along with Matchmaker Babe McCoy, cut up a lot of money together, despite the fact the '50s were dominated by Jim Norris' International Boxing Club, sometimes known as Octopus, Inc., and the now incarcerated Frankie Carbo, known variously as Mr. Gray, The Man or The Traveling Salesman. Everybody bought from The Salesman. In the mid-'50s the Cox investigation revealed Los Angeles to be a back-alley slum of boxing. McCoy, because of blatant chicanery and thievery, was in trouble. A beach ball of a man, vengeful and vicious, he hated and liked certain people with great excess. Though he had once been fond of Aileen, he went to his grave hating her, claiming that she and her husband Cal had tossed him to the wolves and that they never did honor a deal that sliced him in on part of the play at the Olympic after his enforced retirement. "I loved Babe," says Aileen. "I paid a lot of his attorney's fees and loaned him money. Why would he hate me?"
Maybe only Babe knew that, but the investigation found that boxing in California was an endless series of fixed fights, cheated boxers, indiscriminate licensing of criminals, monopoly and only the participants know what else. Now only monopoly is cried in Los Angeles, and most of that is done by Aileen Eaton's rival promoters. With assistance from them, she knocked them all out of the box.
Her technique seldom varied. She would open with a pestiferous ploy by objecting to the commission in Sacramento (where she employed a lobbyist) to the licensing of another promoter. Then she would load up a show and schedule it near the opponent's. This, along with her constant scrapping with managers, made her one of the most vilified and acutely disliked figures in sports, and inspired various comment, ranging from base gossip about her personal life to charges that she controlled the commission and was more than adept at subtle bribery of the press.
"Goodness!" shouts Aileen, "the commission doesn't give me everything I want. Look at Governor Pat Brown. I campaigned for him, and he wanted to abolish boxing. And the press. If you give a man $300, how do you know he won't take $600 from your rival?"
The press, like many of the managers, would like to have another promoter in Los Angeles but, unfortunately, most of those who have pitched their tents have been promotional dolts. "A competent promoter who knows the business," says Melville, "could make money in this town. There's been a lot of promoters, but mostly gypsy groups who gave ridiculous guarantees. These guys were kids taking on a world champion. O.K., you go with one of them, get your $1,000 more than you would from Ma. Then the promoter goes out of business, and you have to crawl back on your hands and knees. Ma has flattened them all. It's the organization. The others were like three-ring circuses. Ma's like a machine."
One promoter whom many claim was flattened by Aileen is Leo Minskoff. Says Minskoff: "I consider Aileen to be one of the smartest promoters in the country. She's building up young fighters and making big paydays. I have no bitterness toward her." Yet, wasn't it true that he once did not feel so kindly toward her?
"Oh," he says, "that's right in a way, but I never blamed my failures on her. I partially blamed people like Don Fraser—he is now my friend—who I thought was spreading untruths about me [Fraser was Aileen's publicity man]. O.K., maybe she did go out of her way to hurt me sometimes. Like the night of the Quarry-Alongi fight, she ran a big wrestling show. This was a regular wrestling night but the commission should have done something about it. Then she tried to block me when my license came up for renewal. She said she was building up fighters and I was stealing them. I never did. I only used one of her fighters once, and that was Quarry. She held something against me that she was guilty of. Joe Louis was promoting and I loaned Joe some money. He brought in Cassius Clay to fight George Logan. Then she steals Clay to fight Lavorante and Archie Moore.
"But she withdrew her objections to our getting a license when she saw she wasn't getting anywhere. I know she tried to block Don Fraser, who went on his own. You know what I told him. I said he should see each of the commissioners individually and that he wouldn't have any trouble. His license was granted. One thing is for sure. Having a lot of money in this town won't help a promoter. She's got a 10,000-seat arena and, best of all, she's got a good television contract. She's a machine, all right." The Machine never stops. Except for a few trips to Las Vegas, occasional parties and a weekly trip to the beauty parlor, Aileen Eaton never breaks her routine. She leaves her house early in the morning, goes to the office, then to the bank and back to the office. She returns home late at night. On one such night an incident occurred that tells much about her. She was accosted in the driveway by a pair of bandits. The two slapped her in the mouth and ripped away her necklace and tore off her bracelet. Why not, they decided, tie her up and put her in the trunk and demand a ransom? "No, don't be stupid," she advised. Kidnapping, she told them, as if she were conducting a symposium, would get them gas, but robbery, well, they would only get a few years. The two thought and then agreed to loot only the house. They wanted her to direct the tour. "Not on your life," she said. "My husband is a very sick man and he can't be disturbed." Exasperated, they started arguing with each other and a neighbor hollered out. The pair fled and Aileen, her feet partially tied, got up and stumbled after them, waving her hands. She managed to get the license-plate number, and the bunglers were later caught. "If people are going to steal," says Aileen disdainfully, "they should know how."
So her life races into the 60s, and one wonders why—alone again, now that her second husband is dead—she persists in the face of so much abuse and what really pushes her along this strange and dark side of sport. Greed seems beyond her, but she does appear, behind her mask, to enjoy power over people and situations, and maybe even secretly to like being called vicious and cunning and a ruthless old chick who is No. 1 in a game in which no woman may ever tread again. Or, perhaps, she delights in being the personification of the kind of woman once described by a 6¢-cigar smoker:
"Whatever their outward show of respect for a man's merit and authority, they always regard him secretly as an ass and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow."
Yet, more than anything, she seems chased by loneliness and by the hope that the next deal, the next great bargaining caper, will ease away what it is that aches inside her. But it never does, and on many nights, very late and when the wind is softly stroking the guava and olive trees in her yard, she walks into the big, empty house littered with phones and toy dogs and there The Incomparable Buzzsaw gently releases her melancholy through a piano. It is a long time before a little girl standing in an Indian summer twilight envelops all the fighters with cut eyes and all the managers with won ton soup on their ties.
The Lady Is A Champ
She is Aileen Eaton, a woman in a man's game—fight promotion—that abounds in stealth and triple trickery. Dictatorial yet feminine, she is loved by some, hated by others and feared by all
Mark Kram
Sports Illustrated
Now there she is sitting under an apple tree, like some sweet, aging lady who looks for unusual birds and thinks that Oil for the Lamps of China was the last great picture made. What a gentle, uncomplicated sweetheart she is, sitting there talking about the Indian summers of her Vancouver youth and the music that was made at twilight of every evening in her father's house. Next time, you think, you must take her for a nice long ride in the country so she can see the billboards and say: "My, how everything has changed."
Certainly this cannot be the feared Lady Aileen of boxing's gold coast, not the woman known by such names as Madame Nhu, The Dragon Lady, Ma Barker, The Man-Eating Lotus Flower and The Woman, the one who knows how to tape a hand or a fight manager's mouth, scale a house to the seat or shave a pitchman who thinks he has all the pitches? That's her, all right, under the apple tree: Aileen Eaton, the biggest and maybe the most powerful boxing promoter in the world today, the same Aileen Eaton who last week staged the Jerry Quarry-Floyd Patterson heavyweight elimination fight in Los Angeles.
So do not think of her as a delicately declining lady on the brink of warm milk and a shawl and nice long drives in the country. For one thing, no one takes Aileen Eaton for a ride. She does the driving, in the longest Cadillac in southern California, and usually to a place where you pick up cards and dice. The Lady moves, that is, when she has time. Politically lethal, she has been a forceful figure in at least two campaigns, in one of which Attorney General Thomas Lynch won and Pierre Salinger lost. She once ran for the city council and lost, too, but that was the exception. Do not try to beat her on her own turf.
Currently, the major areas of boxing promotion in this country are New York, New England, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles. The best of these is L.A. Monolithic Madison Square Garden is impersonal; Subway Sam Silverman of Boston, Worcester, Portland and points unforeseen in New England is a freebooting ferret who makes a score only occasionally; Herman Taylor, Philadelphia, a grumpy patriarch, is an anachronism; and Miami's Chris Dundee knows how to turn a dollar—any way he can.
All of these promoters are professional, meaning they are able to count, are sufficiently learned in the art of buncombe and have just the proper amount of probity in them to survive. Aileen Eaton is no different. She has all these qualities that are considered so necessary to the marksman in boxing, but she never cuts herself in on a fighter's earnings, an illegal practice for a promoter but one that is still rampant in the sport.
"A couple of her matchmakers used to have pieces of fighters or cut them," says Harry Kabakoff, alias Melville Himmelfarb or, as he calls himself, El Ruso Loco (The Mad Russian). Melville must be considered an authority on this subject. Once an assistant matchmaker for Mrs. Eaton but not unreasonably larcenous, Melville was never known in those days for his excessive charity. "But Ma Barker," he says, "never cuts a fighter. She has the power, she could have all kinds of fighters; you know, a manager comes up to her and says, 'Here, take my part of my boy. You can make him.' "
Aileen Eaton does not want part of any boy. She runs her polished operation like a business, one that is refreshingly interested in the people who allow her business to exist. Quite simply, she performs. Dictatorial and charming and often intolerant of imperfection, she is everywhere during her weekly shows at the Olympic Auditorium, an ancient, graying, high-ceiling fortress of boxing on South Grand Ave. She is on television selling her next show, or gently or un-gently reprimanding a customer for bad manners. Her security, despite a riot in 1964 that forced her to take out a bank loan so she could restore the Olympic, is the best one can attain at a fight. Sartorial untidiness—television is the influence—also distracts her. She constantly badgers referees to wear blue shirts and ties and insists ringside customers facing the cameras wear jackets.
Before a show she is just as conscious of detail, busying herself with such things as seating comfort for her spectators. In the days preceding the first Quarry-Patterson bout at Memorial Coliseum, she could be seen on her hands and knees measuring the space between each chair with a tape; there was not a cramped seat in the house. On other days she hears complaints from customers concerning decisions, keeps club members (who get choice seats at $1 off on each ticket) informed of forthcoming cards and schemes to build young fighters into attractions. Finally there is the relentless, daily jousting with managers who, with the skill of the best quarter horses, can cut a buck out of the rubble of a city dump, and have robbery in their souls and disloyalty forever in their minds.
The treatment of these old pirates, a curiously likable tribe, is a delicate diplomacy, requiring at various times cajolery, intimidation, sabotage and tenacity. Be kind, a bit servile and honest, and the manager will be suspicious, if not repelled by your ignorance of his character and ethics. He is only confused briefly, though, and then you are relieved of your ignorance and your bank account. Be crude, profane and stealthy, and the manager is respectful because he knows that you understand the nature of his game, a deeply shadowed realm of migratory and marginal people who live lives of half-truths and no truths, tricks, double tricks and triple tricks.
"In the last 20 years," says Melville, now the manager of Jesus Pimentel, the No. 1 bantamweight behind Champion Fighting Harada, "I've seen her put fear into managers, many of them trying to give her hell. I've seen her attack managers with her purse, kick 'em downstairs and even raise her fist to them. But you always get a good count even if the lights are out, which no doubt she shot out in the first place arguing over a quarter."
Unlike Melville, most managers remain mute concerning Aileen Eaton. All managers must deal with her eventually, and in California, where there are more desperate and busted managers than anywhere else, they need The Woman if they are to survive. Survival comes in the form of a loan—$100, $300—and if and when the manager comes up with an interesting fighter, Aileen, smiling and charming, just reaches out like a giant squid and uses the boy without having to tolerate the usual preliminary gas from the manager. Says one: "When things get bad, I call her number in L.A. collect. I'm in bad shape and I say, 'I've got to have $500.' She says, 'You'll take $300.' She beats your brains out, I'll tell the world, but you get the money."
"Take this incident," says another manager. "There's this retired businessman who now manages fighters, and be also has a reputation for saving a buck. Well, the other day he tries to drive his car into the exit line of the coin parking lot outside the Olympic. Now, he's going the wrong way, maybe to save a few cents, see. Well, they've got these spikes, and they rip through two of his tires. He goes up to The Woman's office to see if she's got insurance for her parking gate. Hah! 'No,' she says, lookin' at him like he's crazy, 'but if your car is still there I'd appreciate the 50 cents.' "
"Sure," says Melville, secretly admiring her unruffled manner and boxing acumen, "she has the face of a rock, but she's not all rock. Just recently I go back to my room and all of a sudden I'm dying. I can't move one of my legs. Who do I call? Nobody's up at this hour. Who's gonna help? Another fight manager? So I call Aileen. 'Aileen,' I says, 'I'm dyin'. I got to get to a hospital.' So she says, 'You ought to die, Melville, you're such a liar.' I say that I know all of that but she was the only one I could turn to. 'That's all right,' she says. 'I had to get up and turn the television off anyway.' So she gets somebody to pick me up and then pays all the bills. She's not all rock."
One guesses that often, perhaps more than ever before, she is relieved at those times when she is away from boxing, that she even is embarrassed that she is in the sport. She appears to have a deep contempt for the people she has to deal with, for those who have eroded The Lady she dreamed of in some long-ago time. "I am a lady away from boxing," she repeats often, as if no one really believes it. She is, though, fond of fighters, many of whom she consoles with a kiss on the cheek when she is not prodding them in an effort to help them capitalize on their short, violent careers in a sport not notable for any form of almsgiving.
Violence does not jar her, but its aftermath does. If a fighter is hurt, she will not leave the hospital until he is cleared by a neurologist. When Davey Moore was killed in 1963, she made all the mortuary arrangements and generally conducted herself like the stand-up person many insist she is. Although she never appears hurt by any comment, she does wince when someone quotes a line circulating around L.A., which goes: "Aileen said Davey Moore wasn't hurt. 'Oh,' she said, 'he just has a broken nose." Yeah, and Paret died of pneumonia."
Whether there is any truth or not in the line, Aileen Eaton is, as one manager put it, "very unstupid." Her weekly boxing shows gross close to $1 million each year, and her wrestling shows, directed by her son Mike, do better yet. Even in her youth there were never any real problems, financial or domestic, unless you count the flutist who lived in her father's apartment house; he never did understand the meaning of pianissimo and often in her father's musical seances he sounded like he was in the front rank of an American Legion band. The apartment in Vancouver, B.C., the town in which Aileen was born to a Polish refugee father and a New Zealand mother, was warm and alive. "It was a happy life," says Aileen, "and a fine place for a little girl."
She would not always enjoy such solvency or happiness. Eventually her parents, who had taken to wintering in California, moved to Los Angeles. Aileen married Maurice LeBell after graduation from high school. Her husband became an osteopath, but she wanted a career of her own. She went to work in a law office and in the evenings studied law. When Mike became ill—there was another son, Gene, and later a stepson, Bob Eaton—she reluctantly chose to quit school. Her husband, paralyzed after a near drowning, died in 1941. Aileen was forced to start scrambling for a living, not any living, she decided, but a profitable one.
"We had no social security," she says, "and we didn't carry the insurance people do today. I had nothing left to take care of the children with. I finally put them in California Military Academy on a trade deal. I handled the academy's advertising in exchange for room and board for the boys."
It was through advertising that Aileen got into boxing. She landed an account with the owner of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, who also had the Olympic Auditorium. The promoter to whom the Olympic was leased was not doing well, and the Athletic Club had to support the arena. Aileen moved quickly. She brought the Olympic owner together with one Cal Eaton, who was an inspector for the state athletic commission. Eaton, a cultured Clifton Webb caricature who wore a thin mustache and his hat tilted at just the right angle, became the boxing promoter. Eaton divorced his wife in 1947, and he and Aileen married two years later.
The Eatons, along with Matchmaker Babe McCoy, cut up a lot of money together, despite the fact the '50s were dominated by Jim Norris' International Boxing Club, sometimes known as Octopus, Inc., and the now incarcerated Frankie Carbo, known variously as Mr. Gray, The Man or The Traveling Salesman. Everybody bought from The Salesman. In the mid-'50s the Cox investigation revealed Los Angeles to be a back-alley slum of boxing. McCoy, because of blatant chicanery and thievery, was in trouble. A beach ball of a man, vengeful and vicious, he hated and liked certain people with great excess. Though he had once been fond of Aileen, he went to his grave hating her, claiming that she and her husband Cal had tossed him to the wolves and that they never did honor a deal that sliced him in on part of the play at the Olympic after his enforced retirement. "I loved Babe," says Aileen. "I paid a lot of his attorney's fees and loaned him money. Why would he hate me?"
Maybe only Babe knew that, but the investigation found that boxing in California was an endless series of fixed fights, cheated boxers, indiscriminate licensing of criminals, monopoly and only the participants know what else. Now only monopoly is cried in Los Angeles, and most of that is done by Aileen Eaton's rival promoters. With assistance from them, she knocked them all out of the box.
Her technique seldom varied. She would open with a pestiferous ploy by objecting to the commission in Sacramento (where she employed a lobbyist) to the licensing of another promoter. Then she would load up a show and schedule it near the opponent's. This, along with her constant scrapping with managers, made her one of the most vilified and acutely disliked figures in sports, and inspired various comment, ranging from base gossip about her personal life to charges that she controlled the commission and was more than adept at subtle bribery of the press.
"Goodness!" shouts Aileen, "the commission doesn't give me everything I want. Look at Governor Pat Brown. I campaigned for him, and he wanted to abolish boxing. And the press. If you give a man $300, how do you know he won't take $600 from your rival?"
The press, like many of the managers, would like to have another promoter in Los Angeles but, unfortunately, most of those who have pitched their tents have been promotional dolts. "A competent promoter who knows the business," says Melville, "could make money in this town. There's been a lot of promoters, but mostly gypsy groups who gave ridiculous guarantees. These guys were kids taking on a world champion. O.K., you go with one of them, get your $1,000 more than you would from Ma. Then the promoter goes out of business, and you have to crawl back on your hands and knees. Ma has flattened them all. It's the organization. The others were like three-ring circuses. Ma's like a machine."
One promoter whom many claim was flattened by Aileen is Leo Minskoff. Says Minskoff: "I consider Aileen to be one of the smartest promoters in the country. She's building up young fighters and making big paydays. I have no bitterness toward her." Yet, wasn't it true that he once did not feel so kindly toward her?
"Oh," he says, "that's right in a way, but I never blamed my failures on her. I partially blamed people like Don Fraser—he is now my friend—who I thought was spreading untruths about me [Fraser was Aileen's publicity man]. O.K., maybe she did go out of her way to hurt me sometimes. Like the night of the Quarry-Alongi fight, she ran a big wrestling show. This was a regular wrestling night but the commission should have done something about it. Then she tried to block me when my license came up for renewal. She said she was building up fighters and I was stealing them. I never did. I only used one of her fighters once, and that was Quarry. She held something against me that she was guilty of. Joe Louis was promoting and I loaned Joe some money. He brought in Cassius Clay to fight George Logan. Then she steals Clay to fight Lavorante and Archie Moore.
"But she withdrew her objections to our getting a license when she saw she wasn't getting anywhere. I know she tried to block Don Fraser, who went on his own. You know what I told him. I said he should see each of the commissioners individually and that he wouldn't have any trouble. His license was granted. One thing is for sure. Having a lot of money in this town won't help a promoter. She's got a 10,000-seat arena and, best of all, she's got a good television contract. She's a machine, all right." The Machine never stops. Except for a few trips to Las Vegas, occasional parties and a weekly trip to the beauty parlor, Aileen Eaton never breaks her routine. She leaves her house early in the morning, goes to the office, then to the bank and back to the office. She returns home late at night. On one such night an incident occurred that tells much about her. She was accosted in the driveway by a pair of bandits. The two slapped her in the mouth and ripped away her necklace and tore off her bracelet. Why not, they decided, tie her up and put her in the trunk and demand a ransom? "No, don't be stupid," she advised. Kidnapping, she told them, as if she were conducting a symposium, would get them gas, but robbery, well, they would only get a few years. The two thought and then agreed to loot only the house. They wanted her to direct the tour. "Not on your life," she said. "My husband is a very sick man and he can't be disturbed." Exasperated, they started arguing with each other and a neighbor hollered out. The pair fled and Aileen, her feet partially tied, got up and stumbled after them, waving her hands. She managed to get the license-plate number, and the bunglers were later caught. "If people are going to steal," says Aileen disdainfully, "they should know how."
So her life races into the 60s, and one wonders why—alone again, now that her second husband is dead—she persists in the face of so much abuse and what really pushes her along this strange and dark side of sport. Greed seems beyond her, but she does appear, behind her mask, to enjoy power over people and situations, and maybe even secretly to like being called vicious and cunning and a ruthless old chick who is No. 1 in a game in which no woman may ever tread again. Or, perhaps, she delights in being the personification of the kind of woman once described by a 6¢-cigar smoker:
"Whatever their outward show of respect for a man's merit and authority, they always regard him secretly as an ass and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow."
Yet, more than anything, she seems chased by loneliness and by the hope that the next deal, the next great bargaining caper, will ease away what it is that aches inside her. But it never does, and on many nights, very late and when the wind is softly stroking the guava and olive trees in her yard, she walks into the big, empty house littered with phones and toy dogs and there The Incomparable Buzzsaw gently releases her melancholy through a piano. It is a long time before a little girl standing in an Indian summer twilight envelops all the fighters with cut eyes and all the managers with won ton soup on their ties.
I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Eric, the 11 year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over. Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong? He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'
I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'
Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?'
'No,' I replied. 'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'
So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T
I used to think Eric was a nice kid; .............
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong? He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'
I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'
Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?'
'No,' I replied. 'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'
So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T
I used to think Eric was a nice kid; .............
He's still a nice kid. He fixed your computer even though he thinks you're an idiot.kikibalt wrote:I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Eric, the 11 year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over. Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong? He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'
I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'
Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?'
'No,' I replied. 'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'
So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T
I used to think Eric was a nice kid; .............
Thanks Tom... :Praylawpc wrote:He's still a nice kid. He fixed your computer even though he thinks you're an idiot.kikibalt wrote:I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Eric, the 11 year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over. Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong? He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'
I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'
Eric grinned.... 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?'
'No,' I replied. 'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'
So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T
I used to think Eric was a nice kid; .............
-
dagosd2000
- Heavyweight
- Posts: 8638
- Joined: 01 Sep 2007, 03:31
Every now and then you remember something that at the time seemed insignificant,but later became a very poignant memory. I mentioned a while back that Joe Louis's adopted son ,John,was on our football team at Point Loma High School. I never knew the details of how John Louis became a part of the Old Champ's family because I never thought it was that important. No one else knew why or shared the reasons. I could have found out. All I had to do was ask John.
What I wanted to share with him and what I wanted to grasp with John ,was if he understood what a giant his father(yes,his father)was in the 20th Century. Joe Louis,who got tongue tied in front of a camera,yet displayed incredible poise and courage in the boxing ring. A man abandoned by the managers and promoters after knowing they couldn't make buck with him anymore. Our government that seemed like they hunted him down for his "back" taxes. A man tormented by mental illness,exploited by" low life" types. A man unprotected.
My father remembered Joe Louis when Meadow Moor Dairy in Chicago was trying to market a "Joe Louis Punch". My father worked for the dairy for a short time. He remembers Joe handing out money to friends.He sponsored youth baseball teams,and then after the games treated all the kids,on both sides, to ice cream. Joe loved ice cream. Jack Blackburn would promise Joe if he worked extra hard in the gym,he could have a pint of ice cream after the workout. How Joe was so nice to me and my wife that afternoon in front of Caesar's Palace. How Joe said my wife was pretty, and showing that "big Joe Louis smile" he had when he posed for a picture with her. How Joe Louis asked me for MY opinion on who the greatest fighter was at the time.
I wanted to talk to John Louis about those things and go on expressing how I felt about his Dad.
One day after practice,I asked John something about his dad. I can't remember what I asked him. John smiled and said,"Gee coach,I didn't know him hardly at all. He was only with me towards the end when he was very sick."
"Oh,think nothing of it John," I said. "I'll tell you what,how would you like to go out and get some ice cream?"
"Sure coach. I love ice cream."
What I wanted to share with him and what I wanted to grasp with John ,was if he understood what a giant his father(yes,his father)was in the 20th Century. Joe Louis,who got tongue tied in front of a camera,yet displayed incredible poise and courage in the boxing ring. A man abandoned by the managers and promoters after knowing they couldn't make buck with him anymore. Our government that seemed like they hunted him down for his "back" taxes. A man tormented by mental illness,exploited by" low life" types. A man unprotected.
My father remembered Joe Louis when Meadow Moor Dairy in Chicago was trying to market a "Joe Louis Punch". My father worked for the dairy for a short time. He remembers Joe handing out money to friends.He sponsored youth baseball teams,and then after the games treated all the kids,on both sides, to ice cream. Joe loved ice cream. Jack Blackburn would promise Joe if he worked extra hard in the gym,he could have a pint of ice cream after the workout. How Joe was so nice to me and my wife that afternoon in front of Caesar's Palace. How Joe said my wife was pretty, and showing that "big Joe Louis smile" he had when he posed for a picture with her. How Joe Louis asked me for MY opinion on who the greatest fighter was at the time.
I wanted to talk to John Louis about those things and go on expressing how I felt about his Dad.
One day after practice,I asked John something about his dad. I can't remember what I asked him. John smiled and said,"Gee coach,I didn't know him hardly at all. He was only with me towards the end when he was very sick."
"Oh,think nothing of it John," I said. "I'll tell you what,how would you like to go out and get some ice cream?"
"Sure coach. I love ice cream."