Friday Night Fights
Friday night was "Fight Night".
The kitchen was at the rear of the house and the table covered by a red checkered table
cloth sat beneath the window. Towards the back and in the center of the window sat the
shiny brown RCA Victor radio with the big lighted dial that also had a fine tuning knob
so that you could precisely tune the distant channels even when the signal was weak and
interference heavy.
Gpop would sit in his chair between the table and the ice box (the Ice Man still came by
twice a week) and when I was good I got to sit up with him and listen to the fights from
Madison Square Garden. Gpop would smoke one of his Romeo & Juliet coronas, drink a
few bottles of National Bo and eat oysters from the tin that had been shipped fresh that
morning all the way from the Eastern Shore.
We'd sit there, listening to the bouts while the smoke from his cigar danced in the light
and the smell of beer and cigar, the sounds of the crowds, the bell between rounds set
the tone and the pace for the evening. Between rounds and bout we'd talk, slowly,
quietly, about how things had changed, about the Victory Garden that was still down the
hill in the big vacant lot and what we had harvested or planted or planned for the coming
season.
When the last bout ended the station would sign off for the night, and after the last echo
of the NBC chimes the night was filled with static and it was time for bed.
In that time before FM radio, all night programming, before even TV, the AM Radio was
king. And to this day I still remember those evenings, the sound fading in and out, the
smoke rising slowly dancing with the currents that blew in through the open window,
the streets outside silent with no traffic, only the wind, the occasional dog barking and
far away the sound of a steam whistle of a train heading north to New York or Boston or
south to Richmond then on to Miami.