My father went to France for the Great War. That’s World War I, in case you didn’t know. Daddy never spoke of the war except for a few humorous events.
One day, when I was a GI and home on leave (not WWI), Dad and I were having a beer at a bar. Okay, okay, a few beers.
Daddy is second from the right.
Well, what happened was this. The ship on which he crossed the Atlantic wasn’t quite Queen Mary First-Class. I believe it was a bit closer to a cattle boat. Daddy told me that is was a rather long and tiresome trip and the accommodations were somewhat lacking. The boat was crowded and the men were bored. If you didn’t know, when young men, especially those who have recently been trained to shoot other men, are bored, they dream up things.
At this point, I’m sure you are extremely excited.
Anyway, one of the men on the boat was a middleweight Golden Gloves champion from, if I remember correctly, Missouri. If not from Missouri, from one of those states in the middle which are all shaped kind of square. None of that really matters except that the guy was a middleweight Golden Gloves champion.
To overcome the boredom, the champ said that he would fight anybody on the boat. For some strange reason, nobody wanted to trade punches with a middleweight Golden Gloves champion.
Daddy took a sip of beer and a drag from his cigarette and said to me, “Son, I decided I would fight the guy.”
“What happened, Dad?”
“Son, he beat the hell out of me.”
Listen to the Middleweight Fighter Audio Version
You may also enjoy Explicit Orders by H.D. Ingles.
