In 1942, Cassius Clay was a new-born baby in Kentucky and I was the six-year-old daughter of a boxing fan in Arkansas.
Our radio was a Silvertone floor model from Sears, powered by batteries carefully reserved for H.V.Kaltonborn's daily news of the war raging in Europe.
I wanted to hear "Baby Snooks." My brother liked "Inner Sanctum". Those programs, my daddy was sad to say, could not be permitted.
Batteries were too scarce and war news too important.
But, sometimes ... when Daddy was out of town, working hard on the Rock Island Railroad, earning money to pay for those sacred batteries ... and nobody was keeping watch back at the house ... my nine-year-old brother cheated, and ghostly sounds of Inner Sanctum's creaking door soon flowed from the radio, sending me scampering for safety beneath the nearest bed.
To keep me from tattling ... Ken allowed me to hear the very next episode of Baby Snooks.
We weren't the only rule-breakers. A scheduled Joe Louis-Billy Conn boxing match caused our daddy, home for the weekend, to pull his chair closer to the radio and forget all about bombs falling on the other side of the ocean, as he twisted dials first one direction then another, searching through the static to find a man's excited voice describing bleeding noses, busted lips, damaged eyebrows and cauliflower ears.
Made Inner Sanctum sound quite tame.
Seventy-four years have passed, but I can still close my eyes and see Daddy, sitting bolt upright on the edge of his chair ... fists clenched ... yelling encouragement to the good guy and obsenities to the bad, while delivering jabs and counter-punches of his own ... into the air.
Joe Louis could never have made it without Daddy's help.
email: MelindaGerner+yahoo.com
