The Olympic Auditorium

 By KiKi

The Olympic Auditorium: I belong to the Olympic Auditorium's Dying Breed Club: members that experience the Golden era of Los Angeles boxing.

My first time attending a boxing show at the Olympic Auditorium was in 1947. Some uncles of mine took me to see the rematch between Enrique Bolanos and John Thomas. They had fought earlier in the year. Their first fight, which I also attended, was at Wrigley Field, which was won by Bolanos by 7-round KO. Bolanos also won the second fight, this time by 4-round KO.

Within a couple of years, the Olympic Auditorium became my second home.

Among some of the fighters that I watched fight at the Olympic in those early years, besides Bolanos and Thomas, were: Art "Golden Boy" Aragon, Jimmy Carter, Freddie Babe Herman, Keeny Teran, Carlos Chavez, Harold "Baby Face" Jones, Lauro Salas, Phil Kim, Eddie Chavez, Gil Cadilli, and the Docusen brothers, Maxie and Bernard, and the list goes on and on.

In the mid-50s, I was training my cousin Tony Adame at the Teamsters Gym when he was fighting in the juniors. In 1958, he fought in the Junior Golden Gloves finals held at the Olympic, but he lost. That was the first time I worked a corner at the famed arena.

By the early '60s, I started to get to know the management and was on a first-name basis with some of them.

In the mid-'60s, the Olympic started holding public workouts on a Sunday a week or two before a big fight card. I would set up 2 or 3 sparring matches between junior fighters to warm the crowd up before the big guns would take the stage. Give the fans free workouts, sell them beer, and soon they would line up to buy tickets. I would get free tickets for my doings. I did that for several years.

By the early 1970s, I was fully embedded with the Olympic management. I became good friends with matchmaker Don Chargin. As hard as it was, I got to know Aileen Eaton, not well enough, though. I would take over for gloveman Norm Lockwood when he had to be out of town with a fighter or for other reasons.

In 1976, my oldest son Frankie turned pro and became a favorite of the house. Tony turned pro in 1979, and he, too, became a house favorite.

Around 1980, Rogelio Robles became the promoter after Aileen Eaton retired, and I became the amateur matchmaker for the pro/am cards. Now I was working closely with Don Chargin. The Olympic closed its doors for boxing around 1985. Some promoters tried to reopen it. Some held a show or two and then folded, including Oscar De La Hoyo.

The Man

By kiki

One Saturday night in the summer of 1953, I was on my way to hang out with my friends at Nacho's Pool Hall on Date Street in Simons, really South Montebello; I drove out of Pico and through the Montebello Gardens. As I drove out of the Gardens and onto Whittier Blvd, I saw a red light in my rearview mirror. But, of course, that was nothing new for me. Chicano teenagers were constantly being pulled over by the Man in their black and white's for no reason other than we were Chicanos.

No problem, I thought; I am legal, and the car's registration was up to date, no insurance, though, in those years, insurance was not required to register a vehicle. So I pulled over to the curb. I waited for the Man in his nice uniform to tell me that he had stopped me because of a broken car taillight or that I didn't have a light on the rear license plate; that was their standard excuse for stopping us Chicano teenagers back in the '50s: or maybe he would write me up a ticket for whatever reason he wanted to, which I didn't really mind because I never paid them anyway. But, no, I didn't see the Man in his nice uniform. Instead, I saw two men wearing ill-fitted rumple suits and cheap ties sprinkled with donut crumbs and jelly flashing their badges as they walked up to each front door of my 1938 four-door Chevy. "Get out and stand against that wall," one rumple suit yelled at me in a threatening voice while pointing to a store wall. I was just a sixteen-year-old guy, and yes, I was shaking in my worn-out shoes as I made my way to the wall. As I was standing against the wall, one rumple suit proceeded to trash my car by taking the rear seat out and throwing it on the sidewalk; the other rumple suit opened the trunk and threw everything I had in there onto the curb. They continue to trash my car while mumbling to themselves. I finally found my voice as a small crowd started to gather and asked one of the rumpled suits, "What are you guys doing" as if I didn't know, "looking for drugs" one rumple suit answered, "well, you wasting your time because I don't do drugs" I retorted. After checking my car and not finding even one tiny roach, the rumple suits jumped on their ride and drove off into the night as I yelled at them, "Hey, how about putting my car back together?" The small crowd laughed!

Once I made my way to the pool hall, things didn't improve as I lost all but one of the games I played. We would play for a quart, a game, a quart. Sure, but remember, in the early '50s, a quart would buy you a pack of  Pall Malls and maybe a beer…Those were the days of innocence, or so I thought!

HOW MUCH IS THAT GENEROSITY THING WORTH?

                            Oh Captain...My Father Emilio Torres.

                                              By Arlette Torres

I am 12 year old again. It is Mexican time. Eternal illusion. Past, present, future suspended in amber.

My father's hand grasps mine. We walk briskly on a busy street in Torreón Coahuila, México.

Ahead, an elderly blind man sits on the filthy sidewalk outside a shoe store. He asks for metal mercy, copper confetti. The man holds a can between his ruined brown hands, crumpled like ancient parchment paper.

The young thug came like a left jab. Boxers work in milliseconds. He kicked the can from the old man's hands. I didn't see the blow. I heard the guy yell: "Gooool!" The thug ran. His blasé cruelty remained, thickened the air and made ribbons of my entrails.

The elderly man sat. Blind. His hands shaking softly while coins flew everywhere. The sting of his humiliation slit my eyelids. Tears welled between my skin and my soul. Before water spilled, my father sprang forward. Feral speed. Fierce grace. Senses refined. I saw my father become deadly. He excreted ferocity. I felt lightheaded; didn't want to see what came next.

But my father didn't chase the thug. Instead, he kneeled next to the blind man.

I went looking: around the newspaper stand and the lottery stand and the phone booth. The coins would not be reclaimed. They became part of the filthy pavement. The blind gentleman lost. Then my father gestured. "Come here, Arlette." He pulled me down, held the old man's hands between his own. Then he leaned forward and whispered in his ear. Those pupils, veiled and milky bluish danced they danced... he was alive.

Dad handed me something round, cold. He told the elderly man, "Don Eufrasio this is from my daughter. Take it and go home. I'll be watching." I squeezed the thing, placed it between those ancient palms, the cartography of our suffering collected in each deeply etched line. His skin was thick though, not delicate. He held on to my fat square hands. I waited. My father added his hands around mine and he knitted the tears that were and would be.

We stood up, walked away quickly hand in hand. Stopped at the corner. I looked back. Don Eufrasio sat on his cardboard. He was beautiful, petrified, luminous. His face remained turned toward us. Could he see us? Yes he saw us and then through us and beyond to a place only he knew.

Dad smoked. We waited. A couple of hours passed. Finally Don Eufrasio's grandson came to collect his grandfather, who tripped over words, yelling, smiling, shaking disbelief from his dry bones. The young man looked over at us. He nodded, discombobulated by his grandfather's wild gestures. They left. We left. Dad drove slowly. I broke the silence. "Papá, is Don Eufrasio your friend?" My father looked over and smiled with sad divinity. "Don Eufrasio was not my friend. But now we are. His friends."

At home, my mother scrutinized dad. Something was missing. Aha. She finally knew what was off.

"Emilio where is that ghastly gold Centenario you hang from your keychain?" Dad's Centenario, that cold, round thing. A fifty peso solid gold coin bearing the Angel of Independence, worth around $2100 dollars today. Dad looked at her. "Oh I got tired of it. I sold it. Gold prices are good." My father lied. My mother believed. I kicked ethics in the teeth. "Good. I don't know why you like to use them as keychain charms. They're so vulgar...ostentatious really."

That night my father sat across from me, elbows on his knees. He seemed somehow different. Human. Tired. Small. Beautiful leviathan. Endless. His eyes filled with crystalline belief and spoke:

"Never sell something you can give away Arlette."

My father died two years later. I was fourteen. His death the guillotine of my life. Before and after.

Don Eufrasio is also dead. I am 42. My hands are dirty and empty. Yet sometimes I feel pure because my father comes to fill them. I cup them tightly around his endless pour and then spread my fingers, giving it all away.

'One Morning'

Connie and I were lying in bed one morning.

We had just awakened from a good night's sleep.

I took her hand and she responds, 'Don't touch me.'

'Why not?' I asked.

She answered, 'Because I'm dead.'

I asked her...'What are you talking about? We're both lying here in bed together and talking to one another!'

She said, 'No, I'm definitely dead.'

I insisted, 'You are not dead. What in the world makes you think you're dead?'

'Because I woke up this morning and nothing hurts.'

"Somebody send me this via Email. I edit it and took the liberty of bullshitting you"

KiKi

Jimmy Montoya and the Old Man

By kiki

When Hall of Fame boxing manager Jimmy Montoya lived in Carson, Ca. He had an old man and some fighters residing with him. In the early 1980s, Jimmy had a party for Bobby Goodman from New York, and Connie and I got invited to the party.

At the party, Jimmy told me how the old man known as Pops came to live with him: Jimmy met Pops at the Golden Gloves Gym in Las Vegas when Pops was living in Las Vegas with some kin of his. Jimmy befriended Pops, and soon Pops was traveling all over the country to boxing shows with Jimmy.

One day at the Golden Gloves Gym, Pops, who was in his eighty's approached Jimmy with tears in his eyes: "Jimmy, my family wants to put me in an old folk's home, and I don't wanna go there."

Jimmy really liked Pops and said: "Pops, how would you like to go live with me in California?"

"Gee Jimmy, I would love that," Pops answered Jimmy.

After talking to Pops kin, Jimmy moved Pops to his Carson, Ca. home.

I came to know Pops through Jimmy, but I wasn't aware of Pops's strange habit when getting ready for bed.

 As we were all having a good time partying, Pops dressed causal got up from his chair, and walked to his bedroom.

Jimmy whispered in my ear, "Pops is getting ready to go to bed; watch him when he comes out to say good night."

Soon Pops, dressed in a suit and tie, came out of his bedroom to say goodnight to all.

I turned around to Jimmy and said, "I thought you said he was getting ready to go to bed; it looks to me like he got ready to go out on a date."

"No, he is not going out on a date; he is going to bed."

"But he is dressed in a suit and tie," I said

"I know, and the reason for that Pops told me is that if he dies in his sleep, he is already dressed for his funeral," Jimmy replied

One morning not long after the party, Pops dressed in his suit and tie didn't wake up…R.I.P. Pops

Update: 4-5-2013

When Jimmy called me from Denmark earlier in the week, we started reminiscing about bygone times; I mentioned Pops, Jimmy told me something he had not told me before. Jimmy said that Pops would go into Jimmy's bedroom at 3:00 AM and tell Jimmy, "Jimmy, I think I'll have a cup of coffee" he would then go back to bed while Jimmy would get up to make him some coffee. When coffee was made, Jimmy would take it to Pops in his bedroom. Jimmy would hand the coffee to Pops, and as Jimmy would turn around to walk out, Pops would ask him, "where's my peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"

Somebody called my short story "poignant," and yes, in some way, it is poignant, but it is also a warm and funny story. Men like Pops have a tendency to leave you with excellent memories.

One Round or Ten Rounds, What’s the Difference?

By KiKi

In the early 1980s, Jimmy Montoya had a fighter fighting the main event as an "opponent" at the Olympic Auditorium in The City of Angels. The fighter, now long forgotten, fought for a guaranteed purse of $2,500.00 for the ten-round fight.

The bell sounded for the first round; a few feeling-out blows were thrown in the first minute and a half. Around the second-minute mark, Jimmy's fighter took a decent punch to the chin, but it was no knockdown punch; nevertheless, Jimmy's fighter hit the canvas.

As soon as his fighter hit the canvas, Jimmy started yelling at him to get up, but all Jimmy got from the fighter was a wink and a nod. Finally, when the referee reached ten, the fighter jumped up to his feet.

Once they were down in the catacombs, as the Olympic Auditorium dressing rooms were known, Jimmy asked his fighter, "Why the hell didn't you get up?" The fighter replied to Jimmy's question, whom he called Pappy, "how much am I getting paid for the fight, Pappy?" "You know you're getting twenty-five hundred dollars," Jimmy answered him. "Right, twenty-five hundred if I go one round or ten rounds, right? So what's the difference other than taking less of a beating if I go one or ten rounds? None! The fighter answered his own rhetorical question: "You have a point, son; let's go to the box office and cash your check so I can get my one-third."

Shoe Shine, Sir? Ten Cents

By kiki

A few years ago, Connie said that she and Linda (our daughter) were going shopping-shopping at the local mall; I said okay, but to be careful, that there were too many crazy people out there looking to steal her purse, or worse yet, looking to steal her "steal me?

Why would anybody want to steal me?" she asked me "for ransom, and I ain't paying no damn ransom, so be careful!" I replied. She called me a sick puppy and asked me what I would do while she was gone. I didn't have plans of doing anything, but after she left, I started getting bored. Then a bright light went off at the top of my head. Shine your shoes, dude; they sure need shining, so I brought out the seven pairs I used the most, got my shine box (a cardboard box), and started shining shoes.

As I was shining a pair of Florsheim, I remembered my days as a shoeshine boy when we lived in Simons. In the late 1940s, on summer weekends, I would walk with my shine box to the local pool hall to look for customers' "shoe shine, sir, ten cents" sometimes, I had to bring the price down to seven cents as the competition was fierce. But business was good on those weekends as the older guys dressed to the nines needed an excellent spit shine on their shoes to go with their sharkskin thread.

Ten shines at ten cents a shines. I would earn more than the twenty-eight cents it cost me (14 cents for a round trip bus ticket and 14 cents theater ticket) to go to East Los Angeles to watch western movies at the Royale Theater…. Life was much simpler back then!!

31Joe Adame and 30 others

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New Year’s Eve….2014

                                                     By KiKi

I had being telling Connie that this New Year’s Eve; she and I were going to stay up and greet the New Year with some bubbling drinks and a cigar for me, something we hadn't done in years, she said she was game. My plan was to watch all the New Year Eve’s festivities on the tube and as the clock struck 12 I was going to blow smoke at the old year as it became history and toast the new year as it came into being. Well, it didn't actually worked out that way because I fall asleep around 8:00 PM. About four hours before the big moment my eyelids started going south, so I told Connie “good nite babe” She looked at me and said “I knew it, I knew it! All that big talk about bubbling drinks and cigars. You talk real chignon (badass) and then you fall asleep on me, not even a New Year kiss!. What happen to the man I married?" I replied to her that she didn't marry a man, told her that she married a boy and that that boy was now an old dude, and with that I was out; dead to the world around me….Happy New Year, friends…