dlovell, Mon, April 28th, 2008
My grandfather was a sports nut. He didn't leave his room often, and that's likely because he had a television in his room, tuned to ESPN.
For me, a trip to visit my grandfather was an opportunity to hear a story. He wasn't a particularly good storyteller, but he would tell, very matter-of-factly, snippets of fact, as if there were no room to question him.
He told me he saw Harry Houdini escape from the Auburn Prison, which I've since discovered wasn't possible, because Houdini didn't ever escape from there. He also told me he saw Jack Dempsey fight once.
In the back of my mind, I questioned that. But I never really QUESTIONED it. I mean, I just want to believe that in the 1920s, my gramps was sitting in a noisy, smoke-filled arena, watching the great Jack Dempsey pummel someone. I'd like to think of my grandfather enjoying his youth and the excesses of youth, the way the rest of us have done. And I like thinking of my grandfather doing something the I would never have a chance to do, like meeting Babe Ruth, or seeing Lou Gehrig hit a homer.
For some reason, my visions of those days are always in black and white, as if the world didn't have color back then. When my grandfather told me he saw Jack Dempsey fight, I read books about Dempsey. Every one I could find. And I imagined a black-and-white Dempsey, fighting a black-and-white opponent in a colorless world. I never saw him in action, though. Until recently.
I found a video clip of Dempsey's title fight the other day. I'd read about it as one of the most brutal fights in boxing history. And that it is. Dempsey was the smaller of the two, and repeatedly knocked Jess Willard down in the first round. In those days, there was no standing eight-count, no automatic TKO after three knockdowns. Willard took a vicious beating, breaking a cheek bone, his jaw and a couple of ribs.
I'm not a boxing fan. I don't watch the sport. But I did finally find a place to reconnect with my grandfather, who has been gone for many years now. I don't know whether he ever saw Dempsey fight. But I will say that if he had, he'd never have forgotten it.
