kikibalt wrote:Tales From The Simons Brickyard
A Pachie Story
“I Ain’t Squawking”
We’re now about 17 years old, we were shooting pool at the Simons Pool Hall in Simons, Pachie is walking around with a joint on his ear, after a while he left. About a week later he is at the pool hall again, he tells us that after he left the pool hall the week before he was pull over by the cops, and that one cop told him he was under arrest for having a joint, Pachie: “where is the evidence?”, the cop took the joint for his ear, cop: “here it is”
He was put in the back seat of the cop’s car and ask, cop: “where did you get the joint?”, Pachie: “I ain’t squawking”, cops pull him out of the car and kicked his ass and let him go.
Poor Pachie was always getting his ass kicked, first the rooster, now the cops.
Nothing "Chicken" about a Gamecock . . .
Frank, your rooster story is a good one! I kinda know how Pachie might have felt when he tangled with the rooster.
When I was 17, and training at Flores Gym, a man in his 50's showed up with a young heavyweight prospect. The heavyweight had been a USC football player who had washed out. The old man was a lot of fun (50's was an old man to me in those days), and his daughter would become my first love. The man's name was Karl Nelson (Randy De La O would meet Karl)), and the family lived in Monterey Park. The first night I visited his daughter in the family home, Karl asks me, "Have you ever seen a cock fight?" I said "No", and he went on to tell me that every prizefighter should see how gamecock's fight, usually to the death. The following week, he tells me of an old friend of his who raised gamecocks in San Dimas. The guy had several acres and a big barn. On occasion, he would hold secret cockfights in the barn. Karl invited me to one of these secret cockfights the following week. On the night we arrive at the property, we must turn our headlights off as we enter the property, and park in the back where cars could not be seen from the road. Inside the barn we saw a number of cockfights and had a lot of fun betting, etc. I was just 17, and thought it was cool to attend this "secret" event. One of the gamecocks that fought had won three previous matches, and won that night. However, the cock lost one of his eyes in the fight, and suffered a broken leg. He was thrown into a pile of dead cocks and as we were leaving it was discovered that the unbeaten cock was still alive. Gamecocks aren't soft barnyard roosters, they are hard muscled and strong. You cook up a gamecock and that will be one tough bird to chew. One of the young "trainers" a kid from Mexico, was going to pull the cocks head off and then defeather him for a meal. My friend Karl said, "Don't try to eat that bird, he won his fight. I'll take him home." Well, Karl brings the ailing gamecock home and within a few weeks, the bird looked in fighting shape. The leg seemed to heal and although half blind, the cock ruled the roost in my friends backyard. I remember that when I'd spend the night there, that gamecock would wake the neighborhood every morning when the sun came up. One day, Karl asked me to go into the pen, pick up the gamecock and put him in the garage. The bird was in no mood to be handled. It flew into the corner of the pen and I had him trapped. I reached down and attempted to grab the bird and it retaliated by punching my hands with his claws. Like a boxer, a gamecock punches with his feet. In a real fight, it wears metal gaffs, which are like spears. However without the gaffs a gamecock punches, and they punch hard! I finally got hold of the bird by restraining his legs, but I could feel a lump swelling on the back of my hand. Once I had his legs tied up, it reached down and grabbed my arm with it's beak. When I walked out of that pen my girlfriend and her father were laughing so hard they were in tears. My shirt was torn, I had blood running down my arm and I soon had a golf ball sized bruise right below my knuckles. That bird kicked my ass before I got hold of it. Karl couldn't keep the bird and gave it to me. I couldn't keep the cock in family's Burbank home, so I ended it giving it to one of Johnny Flores amateur flyweights, Manuel. Manuel used to take the gamecock around on a leash, but Johnny told him not to bring him to the gym because it would crap all over the place. Manuel would let it off the leash as we trained and the bird would pirch himself up on the ring ropes, on top of the scale and rubbing table, leaving a pile of crap wherever it landed. We didn't see Manuel for awhile, and when we finally did we asked him about the gamecock. Manuel lowered his head and told us, "he bit my cousin". The cousin didn't like being bitten by the gamecock, and later ate him for dinner. After that experience, I had a gamecock emroidered on the back of my red velvet boxing robe. The first night I wore that robe into the ring in a pro fight, Jimmy Lennon Sr. introduced me as "The Burbank Gamecock". I still have that robe, so maybe I'll shoot pic and post it. Thanks for that rooster story, Frank. It brought back some memories.
-Rick Farris
