"Jesus in the Out-of this-World Series"

 

"Jesus in the Out-of-this-World Series"

      From The Bible, The Book of Luke, Chapter 10

      Verse 18 of Chapter 10 gave me a chuckle not long ago. When I read about Jesus talking with "The Seventy" concerning their casting out demons, I imagined a baseball great like Albert Pujols standing around talking with some prospects from the minor league Memphis Redbirds as they bragged about their hitting:

      Prospect #1(Excited): “Mr. Pujols, I jacked one out in Nashville last week!“

      Prospect #2(overjoyed): “Sir, I flew around the bags in a triple against the Omaha Storm Chasers!"

      Future Hall of Famer Pujols: “Yeah, good job.  It's a wonderful game we all play.  You know, I was once blessed to hit a two-run game winning homer off Justin Verlander of the Tigers in the 2006 World Series, which we won in five games .”

      Background: It seems Jesus had sent out seventy-two disciples to Judea, the area surrounding Jerusalem. He told them they were going out in power but like “lambs among wolves”. They were not to take a wallet or extra shoes and not to say Hi to anyone on the road. They were to pray peace on people and towns, to heal the sick, to overcome the enemy’s power, and to deliver the message that the Kingdom of God is near. These seventy-two minor leaguers came back bragging about how the demons took orders from them in the name of Jesus. In response, the all-time Heavenly Big league MVP -- Jesus -- said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”(Luke 10:18, NIV)

      In my own mix of baseball vernacular and Looneytunes wisecrack, I would paraphrase Him thus, “You all been doing a mighty good job of unstoppering and snuffing out little demons here and there, and I'm proud of you; but I saw The Mighty Serpent himself crash in flames, with afterburners smoking and sputtering ... all the way down: 'Pffft - choke - Pffft - Pffft - Gasp - Pffft - Pffft- wheeze - Pffft - Kthud!'”(like Wile E. Coyote on rocket shoes off a cliff.)

      Jesus went on to say, though, that the most important thing was not that demons obeyed their commands but that they had a home in eternity.  Or in my baseball paraphrase, "Calm down about your hits in the minors; get excited about your future in the majors."
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"Sniggerlings"(Petard or not Petard)

Sniggerlings(Petard or not Petard)

      Last Sniggerlings post I explained my dilemma. I am like Jack Cole, the Thomas Haden Church character in Sideways, whose dilemma was that he couldn’t stop chasing sexual adventures even though he knew they were going to get him into trouble. They used to call this satyriasis. I call my affliction satire-iasis: I can’t stop seeing the silliness of creation. I don’t resist writing down funny lines when I hear them or avoid shoving dissimilar things at each other to see the fun pop out. I am an addicted iconoclast: I have an irresistible urge to let the air out of windbags and martyrs, and me.

      I think I inherited this from Woody Allen or at least Woody Allen movies. It’s hard to see how a New York Jew could pass down this terrible gene to a California hillbilly. But you never know…. My mother was in show business.

      As it happens, sometimes the fruit of my affliction is a long essay, sometimes a short paragraph. The short ones I’m going to call “Sniggerlings”, and I’m going to run a blog page with several of these until I am satisfied(about 800 words in all.) And then move on. Not every funny idea becomes Babbitt or Please Don’t eat the Daisies or Lysistrata. I’ll append a new one on the old page until it’s time to go. Here’s an example of a Sniggerling I can’t let go of:


      On my Tollteller blog page(tollteller.blogspot.com), I recently wrote a post titled “The Strange Case of Thomas Beatie”, about a transgender wo/man who had some of the operations to achieve her/his gender change goal but not all, then married a woman in Hawaii (where same sex marriage is legal) who couldn’t have children, even with artificial insemination.

      Thomas Beatie(now known as The First Man to Give Birth) then gave birth her/himself to three kids, moved his family to dusty Arizona(where same sex marriage is illegal and divorce cannot be granted to two people who aren‘t legally married), obtained a new girlfriend, and applied for a divorce. S/he was refused, and now her/his biggest worry is that her/his children in Arizona with her/his estranged wife will think that perhaps s/he is not really their “father”. Yes, yes, it’s sad. But at some point I also want to giggle. Does “hoist on Her/his own petard” seem relevant somehow?(I wonder if s/he had a petard-ectomy)  And Beatie seems to think it’s all Arizona’s fault.

      My degradation over chuckling at this incredible situation recently increased when I opened my copy of The Beginnings of Western Science(which I am reading) by Professor David C. Lindbergh, Hilldale Professor of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin(University of Chicago Press 1992). There I saw on page 142 an illustration from Pliny’s Natural History (circa 60 A.D.) entitled “Pliny’s Monstrous Races”. Therein are creatures that Pliny the Elder(a Roman science writer) supposed to have existed at that time, with headless torsos bearing faces, one-legged figures, and people with heads of animals and hooves for feet.   One or two looked like my addled imagination conceives poor Mr/s. Beatie must look. Miserable wretch that I am.

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"Sniggerlings"

"Sniggerlings"

      I have a million wise-ass comments that come to me during the day like profanity to a victim of Tourette’s Syndrome. My affliction includes a rare form of coprolalia in which I’ll suddenly shout a two-bit punchline that makes me laugh. Then I have a very minor seizure and I’m fine until the next time. My wife takes these in good humor and actually laughs occasionally, although never when the subject of my eruption is her family.

      I call these “sniggerlings”. For those whose primary language is not English, I apologize and humbly suggest that working through some of these annoying comments to arrive at some meaning(even if not what I thought I meant) may expand your English somewhat beyond what you can find in English language textbooks, or even a good dictionary. “Snigger” is a word you don’t hear much in America any more. It’s caught, however, in some fetid cavity of my brain, and I, at least, still have a relationship with the word. My The American Heritage Dictionary says it comes from the word “snicker”, which is not the Mars candy bar because the word snicker doesn’t start with a capital “S“. The original formula for the Mars Snickers candy bar required a capital “S” before nicker and was so copyrighted. A “nicker”, says my dictionary, is a soft neigh. A neigh is a horse’s comment or the expletive of a disagreeing politician. Why the Mars people put a capital “S” in front of a horse’s neigh is anybody’s guess.

      But I digress.

      “-lings” is an Old English/Middle English suffix, meaning “one that is connected with” or “one that is young, small, or inferior”(I can just hear some of you asking yourselves, “Old” English? How "old" is this guy?”). Some words ending in “-ling” include “halfling”(from Lord of the Rings -- Tolkien's field was Old English), underling, Ling-ling(a dead Panda), duckling, and Ringling(as in Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.). The little “s" is plural. Q.E.D., we arrive at “Sniggerlings”

      Here’s an example:

       Recently, I wrote an essay entitled “Mikey Likes My Salami”. I said I was happy because Mikey the cat likes my cheap coldcut too, so my wife would let me keep it for sandwiches. Unfortunately, now my salami has holes in it, and all that’s sometimes left, with which to launch my lunch, is a (salami) ring and a prayer.

      I hope that was all worth it. Smile: A grinling is better than a somberling or, God forbid, a tearlet. Consider what it cost you.

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"Riders of the Purple Sage"

 

Riders of the Purple Sage

      Last week, I went looking for something light and fun to read and didn’t have too much in my library of that ilk, that I had not already read. So, I grabbed a Crown Publications collection of novels by the famous western author, Zane Grey. I started reading Riders of the Purple Sage, a book written in 1912 -- the same year as the Titanic and the birth of Kim Il Sung of North Korea(synchronicity! For some reason that year, 1912 -- 101 years ago -- keeps coming up lately.) The novel started a little slow, but within a few pages I was into it. Later I really liked it.

      What is a Zane Grey? Sounds like the wallpaint at a mental hospital, doesn’t it? Actually, Zane Grey is the author of what some consider the greatest western novel ever written, the afore-mentioned Riders of the Purple Sage. Before there was Louis L’Amour and “The Sacketts“(you‘re welcome, Tom Selleck); or Charles Portis and True Grit(Shout out to John Wayne and Jeff Bridges); or Larry McMurtry and Lonesome Dove(Hey, Robert Duvall); there was Zane Grey and the purple sage(Howdy, Tom Mix and Ed Harris.) It’s been made into a movie five times since it was published.

      The novel is a western, but to me it’s more of a Chick book(“Hotty Hardback” doesn‘t sound quite right somehow.) For example, the Riders of the Purple Sage are not specifically cowboys; the only place in the book where people are called “Riders of the Purple Sage” is when the gunman Venters and his girlfriend Beth leave Surprise Valley to outrun the rustlers and the evil Mormon Tull to get to freedom and be married. Another example of Grey's softpedaling adventure for romance would be where the gunfight action occurs. Almost always, the gunfighting -- and there’s plenty of shooting and killing -- happens outside the story line and is told by a witness. My guess is these were more pacifist times before World War I and people would have been shocked by the violence, even in a book. There’s lots of long, romantic, mushy sentences(Grey doesn’t apologize for being a romantic and wrote, “People live for the dream in their hearts.”)

      The women are wonderful, sometimes saints, sometimes misled, sometimes innocent, almost always having sacrificed their romantic dreams for their religion, Mormonism. As you can see, Mormonism comes off very bad. The most Grey can say positively is that one of his characters has met a Mormon or two who are okay. Also, one Mormon rider returns to work for Jane Withersteen -- of many Mormon hired hands and eavesdropping household servants who have abandoned her in obedience to the Church. You see, Jane has refused to marry the Mormon Tull and has helped poor Gentiles(non-Mormons) in the area with food and jobs. Therefore, the local Mormon Church has hatched a plan to take the young heiress’ ranch by stampeding her cattle and stealing her beloved black Arabians, Night and Black Star. The faithful Mormon rider who returns is murdered by assassins hired by the church.

      Jane’s refusal to marry a man she did not love occurs in the context of Polygamy, which is a way of life in the novel. This practice is led by the local Mormon bishop, Dyer, who has run off and then abandoned the sister of the black-clad, Mormon-killer Lassiter, and given away her baby daughter. Grey has a scene where the four Mormon wives of Bishop Dyer try to get Jane Withersteen to marry Tull, conceding that the choice is between marrying for love and thus going to Hell, or living a sad life of obedience to the Church as slaves to their Mormon husbands. It is clear Zane Grey considers Mormon women saints for what they put up with from their Mormon men, and he does not believe that the choice the Church gives Mormon women is from God. In a time of “Marriage Equality”, when same-sex marriage as well as polygamous marriage, incestuous marriage, and man-child marriage are being or will be tested in court, the concerns Grey discusses are sobering.

      This novel is best -- and wonderful -- when Grey is describing the land of Southern Utah, the mountains, valleys, storms, sage, trees, flowers. He says he prefers to write descriptions and then fill them with peoples‘ stories. As a result, the land he pictures is amazing. Also, he is magnificent in his telling of horses and riders racing over the hills and trails. Thrilling is Venters on the big sorrel Wrangle chasing down the Mormon gang leader Jerry Card who switches from one black Arabian(Night) to the other(Black Star) to try and outrun his pursuer:

      “Now, Wrangle!‘ cried Venters. “Run, you big devil! Run!

      …Cruelly he struck his spurs into Wrangle’s flanks. A light touch of spur was sufficient to make Wrangle plunge. And now, with a ringing, wild snort, he seemed to double up in muscular convulsions and to shoot forward with an impetus that almost unseated Venters. The sage blurred by, the trail flashed by, and the wind robbed him of breath and hearing. Jerry Card turned once more. And the way he shifted to Black Star showed he had to make his last desperate running. Venters aimed to the side of the trail and sent a bullet puffing the dust beyond Jerry.… For a mile, with Black Star leaving Night behind and doing his utmost, Wrangle did not gain; for another mile he gained little, if at all. In the third he caught up with the now galloping Night and began to gain rapidly on the other black[Black Star].”

      There’s a famous horse race scene in Anna Kerenina by Russian author Leo Tolstoy in which Count Vronsky, Anna’s lover, is thrown from his horse when his mount breaks its back and Anna runs to his side, leaving her husband in the stands, embarrassed. Tolstoy’s scene is a classic; I like Zane Grey’s racing horses better.

      Give this novel a try. I had fun and want to read the sequel.

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"A Needle Filled with Nothin'"

 

A Needle Filled with Nothin'    

     The usual “Fella-goes-into-a …” joke might start like this:

     “Fella walks into a bar and ankles up to the counter. ‘Bartender,’ says he (with a stutter), ‘I’ll h-have a t-tall, cold glass of S-Septic S-Sweat light, and m-make it s-snappy!”

     ‘S-sure,’ says the bartender, also with a stutter, ’C-coming right up.” The barkeep goes to get the beer. As he’s pouring the beer in a glass from the tap, the thirsty fella is thinking it over.

     Then he says, ‘S-Say, are you making f-fun of the way I t-talk?’

     “N-no way. No s-sir!” says the guy behind the bar.

     ‘Well, o-k-kay.” Reluctantly the customer decides to let it go. A pretty blonde comes into the bar.

     “Bartender,”

     ‘Yes ma’am.’

     ‘I’d like a tall cool glass of mellow Septic Sweat Light.” She has a deep, sexy, female voice.
In a deep, sexy, male voice the barkeep says, ‘It’ll just take a second, ma’am.”

     Immediately, the first customer calls the guy behind the counter over to him and gets in his face, ‘You w-were, too, you were, t-too making f-fun of m-me!’

     The bartender whispers in the first man’s ear, ‘I w-was not! I was n-not making f-fun of you! I w-was making fun of h-her!“

     That’s how it should go, but …

     This is how it went. A fella(me) goes into Emergency at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. The lady behind the window says, “What’s up?”

     I say, “Chest pains and very fat.” My wife is with me.

     So, okay, I’m in for a listen to my chest and an ekg. They musta figured I wasn ‘t too bad off, so they sits me in the waiting room for six hours. Later that night, they find I’m still alive, so they puts me in a room with a woman in pain but allergic to morphine. I am tempted to offer to take the morphine for her -- I‘m that kinda guy, you know. And it’s not bad stuff, but my wife is with me, so I stifles my instinct to be a wise guy.  Not for long, though

     A little later, a pretty nurse comes in and sticks an IV in my arm. I asks her, ’What’s it for? What you gonna put in me?”

     She says, “Nothing. It’s just in case.”

     So I says, “Okay, I’ll probably be better off with a few cc's of nothing’ in me. My doctor says it’s the too much something in me that’s my biggest problem.” Actually, my doctor doesn’t say much about it any more; probably thinks it’s a waste of time. Besides, he’s Moslem, and I think he’s already earned Paradise by helping me. It’s one of the five pillars of Islam, helping the hopeless wise guy.

     The nurse might have thought I was flirting with her, but I wasn’t. My wife is small, but the way I sees it, she could have taken the nurse in the top of the second round even with one rubber glove tied behind her. You know, after all the needles I see that day, now that I think of it, I’d much rather be the victim of a hyperdermic needle than the kind they always come at me with. The other style -- hypo -- kinda gets under my skin, if you know what I mean.

      As I’m lyin’ on the gurney with nothing else to do but listen to the beep beep beep, I starts to think: I wonder if hippos get hippodermics or the silent Marx brother got a Harpodermic?

     Anyway, they walks me over for an xray. Then they loses me in the Nurse’s station, but -- hey, nobody tells me I’m lost.

     While I’m sitting there, feeling kinda out of it, a cute blonde with a wrapped up foot sits down next to me and starts telling me her life story. Seems she works for some old geezer as a home health aide, but the help he wants(and gets) occurs when both of them are under the sheets. What can a girl do? You gotta have a job, right? I figure, another casualty of Obamacare. By the way, she says, she’s single and looking for the right guy.

     Suddenly, I get the idea I might be lost. So I asks, and I am lost! I finds my wife with some help and listens to the old lady in the bed on the other side of the curtain, snoring from whatever they gave her that was better than morphine. Later the doctor wakes her up to ask her about the infection in the wound she has for her colostomy bag. She says her doctor took three years to tell her she had cancer, and by then she had to have all her insides out. But it’s okay; it doesn’t hurt right now.

     Then a pretty doctor tells me they can’t find nothing’ wrong with me(my wife did not make a face at this.) The doctor asks do I want to go home. I says sure.

     So here I am at home. And I’m happy, because it doesn’t hurt right now. But I’m wondering was somebody making fun of me?
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"Life and Death, but No Taxes"

Life and Death, but No Taxes

       Went to the Senior Center to have our taxes looked at by AARP. I am a Senior Citizen, but Sandy is not(no way, no how -- still young!) No taxes due. Good. No refundable credits, exemptions, or deductions -- so getting nothing back(so much for that Republican claim that low income people get tons of money back -- on the other hand, where is the money going?) Not altogether bad. I might have got some money back if I were blind or older, but -- thank God -- I’m not. With Food Stamps we have enough to eat(probably too much when my doctor weighs me next month.) With Riverside County Health Care we have medical coverage. Sandy and I are taking a free computer class at the downtown library. Thanks for all three to the generous people of California. We have a nice park down the street and a car that runs. We are truly blessed. I can hear Steve Martin in the movie “Leap of Faith” saying with me, “Thankya, Jesus!”

       P.S., we asked our AARP tax preparer at the Senior Center whether we should submit our 1040A to the IRS or not. He said certainly not, since we make so little it would only annoy them.  Now there‘s an Anarchist slogan: “Screw the IRS -- Be poor, but report it!"



        We went to Flo's, a local restaurant in Riverside, which specializes in traditional American home cooking.  However, the waiter -- who is a fine, hardworking fellow -- has a bit of a Mexican accent, not unusual, even normal in our part of Riverside.  Plus, his idea of spicy salsa and mine don't seem to be compatible.  I was, however, taken aback when, after I had ordered a dinner salad, he looked at me and asked, "Do you need carcass with your salad?"

        Like I say, I often talk to people with Mexican accents(and they talk to people with Texas accents like me, as well), but it took me a couple of seconds of thinking this one through to realize he had asked if I wanted 'crackers'.  I suppose I could have said, "I are one", but I just said no. 

         This was not the first time I ran into trouble with crackers. I remember being in a restaurant in downtown Houston when I was eighteen with my little brother and a Mexican-American friend, Ricky. The restaurant was what was called in those days a “greasy spoon“, specializing in chili. Our friend offered to pay for our lunch, so we ordered chili(what else?) He assured us his mother made better chili at home.

         We were having a good time when, being gringos, we totally embarrassed our friend by crumbling up crackers in the chili. Ricardo practically jumped out of his chair and lectured us for ten minutes on the social ineptitude of a person adding crackers to chili that way. He was probably right and we remain friends to this day, but we were warned how to fake not being gringos right off the turnip truck, when we next visited his mother’s table.
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"Mikey Likes my Salami"

"Mikey Likes my Salami"

     At Dollar Tree, a small chain of stores that feature no price other than $1, I often buy $1 worth of Bar S Salami. This is the partial culmination of a years long search for a lunchmeat I could stand to eat. Unfortunately, I remember the old days(before Richard Nixon) when bologna tasted good and looked yummy, especially fried bologna. They used to put spices in it, like it actually came from the city in Italy that it was named for -- Bologna, Italy(like frankfurters from Frankfurt, Germany; hamburgers from Hamburg, Germany; Parmesian cheese from Parma, Italy; and nice girls from Nice, France.)  With Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread: mm-mm-mm-mm-mm! Add Twinkies and an ice cold glass bottle of Grape Nehi or Dr. Pepper, a feast!

     But the baloney they have now is made of chicken lips and meat byproducts with the FDA approved maximum of insect parts and rodent feces -- and tastes like silly putty used to. Yes, I was a connoisseur of flavorless toys(Here’s a hint -- avoid Playdough and white paste also; they smell great but taste bad. Also, don‘t chew on Barbi‘s toes -- people won't let you play with their children after that.)

     As I was saying, these baloneys today have no spices or savory appearance, as if they were flavored with, and colored by, paint the same hue and taste as sand dunes near Marrakesh. So, I’ve been searching, and I found the above-mentioned coldcut, which is not bad, and inexpensive, although it seems to spoil easily. Still made of chicken beaks and turkey ears, but it has some taste.  I didn’t know whether my wife, Sandy, would let me buy it without a discouraging word, until the day I opened the leftovers package and found holes in a slice. It seems she’d been feeding it to her cat, Mikey, and Mikey likes it, too(anybody remember the old commercial, “He won’t eat it. He hates everything”? Note: Mikey the cat is a ‘she‘.)

     So, thanks to Mikey, I knew there would never be a word said. I could keep my salami. Now I’m searching for Ice Cream that is just … Ice Cream.  mm

p.s., I recently found out Mikey likes classic Spam, too.  We may have more in common than I thought..m

"Take Me to your Liter"

"Take Me to Your Liter"

Chuckleworthy?

       A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to Happy Buffet, a Chinese stuff-atorium that pits the diner against the management in a contest to see if the consumer can eat as much as he can spend. They always win, but the Happy Buffet often makes us happy, anyway. That was a good day. On our way out, we passed by the fish tank wherein fifteen to twenty hungry koi cohabitate. It’s like a pond on the floor opposite the cash register, ten feet by six feet. The friendly koi will follow you along the side of the pool, hoping for food. Management used to sell a pinch of koi food in a nearby vending machine for twenty-five cents. The machine is gone now, but I imagine that if the buffet food is too spicy or undercooked, you might toss it in the tank and the fish would appreciate it as well. As I said, friendly fish.

       But apparently there are villains who eat at Happy Buffet, just like us. I guess villains want to be happy every once in a while, too. They probably need it more than the guys in the white hats; after all, it’s only a happy ending for the good guys. It’s not very happy for the guys who got boo-ed. After a long day of being chased, and losing the girl to some halfwit in tight jeans and a white ten gallon hat; evil geniuses, misunderstood adolescents, and the framed innocent could use a little Happy Buffet. Mr. Lee Kim and the rest of the staff are evil-neutral.

       You might ask, how did I know there were such evildoers frequenting the restaurant? Because the fish pond had a warning sign above it. No, the sign didn’t say “No Fishing” or “No Tickee No washee” or “Watch for bones“. It said “Do not touch. Do not liter.”

       I took them at their word. As a retired English instructor, I had corrected one of their signs before, but they ignored me with an inscrutable Oriental smile and nod, as if to say, “Stupid Occidental(westerner), we pay extra yen for good sign with wrong words.” It’s true I did have the urge to liter, but, after all, I am a civilized person(here-here.) Also, I don’t think my bladder contained a full liter at that time. So we passed by the voracious creatures without stopping(you‘d think there‘s probably an underwater sign in Fin-nish, warning other pond creatures to stay away from warm streams of yellow fountain water.)

       When I got home, being curious, I turned to Google and asked how much fluid the average bladder contained “when at full capacity“. I was interested to see that the answer I got back was last updated September 7, 2007. The guy must surely be an expert on full bladders by now. The Google response also warned me to “Report Abuse”. I think that was a plea for help from the responder after having sat with his legs crossed and knees shaking for six years.

       What was the answer, you ask, no doubt having a bladder of your own? 500 ml or half a liter is capacity. 300 ml, however, is enough to trigger the need to go winky-tink. I remember picking up Wired by Bob Woodward, about the death of John Belushi, and reading that when the comedian was autopsied, his bladder held(according to my recollection) five times the normal amount of fluid, I’d guess 1500 ml. If he had not been high, he would have been in excruciating pain. Funny how drugs warp your judgment. “Man, I got to go! Wait, let me shoot up first. That’ll take care of it.”

       Full capacity -- 500 ml or about a pint. When I got this answer, I was also referred to a website where I was told I could “find full capacity at Target.” I think they were referring me to washers and dryers.

       Later that night, I revealed all this to my dear wife, Sandy. She hears about a lot of my misadventures. She listened patiently to me, then she seemed to feel the need for some time alone.Heehee

"The Friday Night Fights are on the Air!"

"A merrie heart doth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

 
       When I was a kid in the Sixties, I learned to love boxing. Boxing was called the sweet science, in those days. I learned to feel that way because every Friday night in prime time, for free, a TV show called “The Friday Night Fights” would air. Usually, I wouldn’t know the fellas who populated the televised ring -- a cast of young, up-and-coming athletes; fighters in their prime; and tired has-beens to fill a card. But the fights were free! And I learned to look forward to hearing, “The Friday Night Fights are on the Air!” I was not alone; you can find many references to watching the fights on home TV if you watch I Love Lucy(Ricky and Fred did it), or The Flintstones(Fred and Barney did it), or The Honeymooners(Ralph and Norton did it -- without a Fred.)

       And the best thing about it was I met great fighters and great men in the ring. Guys like Floyd Patterson with the “peekaboo” style(a black American boxer who defeated Ingemar Johansson of Sweden for the world title, right in my living room!) and Smokin’ Joe Frazier and huge George Foreman and “I am the Greates’” Cassius Marcellus Clay(so named when he beat Sonny Liston in 1964, a fight referred to on The Dick Van Dyke Show), who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Again, these fights were televised in prime time on national TV and were big events, like the Super Bowl or the World Series. I think that’s one reason Ali became as well known as he became. His greatness was there for everyone to see.

       Then, boxing began selling tickets in pay-per-view, closed circuit theatres, and the fights became the property of those who could afford them. I lost track. Until, many years later some generous friends paid for my wife and me to see a fight in which one fighter, Mike Tyson, bit off the ear of another, Evander Holyfield. The fights weren’t what they used to be.

       That’s the last fight I saw on TV. So you can imagine how I was reminded of those exciting days of my youth, when I ran across a headline from a Yahoo news report: “Neighbor tells what happened in the Martin-Zimmerman fight.” Immediately, I was transported to my youth, and I tried to rack my brain to remember two recent fighters named Martin and Zimmerman before I turned to the article to read about the action in the ring. Sadly, I soon realized that Yahoo had been talking about that unfortunate killing in Florida. I wish that fight had never happened.mm