Louis or Ali?

Fantasy Fights

By kiki

I wrote this on a Facebook boxing group I belong to. The members are constantly setting up fantasy fights between fighters from different eras, which I think is wrong.

Comparing fighters from the '40's-'50's to later-era fighters is not fair because in later years, fighters, and people, in general, grew so much bigger. So when we are talking about fantasy fights, I like to go with the "very thing been equal" concept. I know you will tell me, "but that's not reality," and I'll tell you, "of course, it's not reality; it is, after all, about fantasy fights" There is no reality when you're fantasizing!!!

But that being said, I think the better question when comparing fighters from different eras is to ask, "who was the better fighter, who had the greatest repertoire of punches, who had the biggest artillery, who had the biggest heart, who could take a punch better"…In the case of Louis and Ali there is no question who had a better repertoire and heavier artillery, Louis did… Louis could fight on the inside and outside, Ali could not, Louis had a great left hook and right hand, Ali did have a great right hand. Still, not much of a left hook, Louis could work the body, Ali could not, Louis could knock an opponent out with a jab, Ali could not; Ali's jab was a flicking jab at best, sometimes thrown with an open glove. Chin? Both of them got dropped by some not-so-great fighters…Heart? Both had the heart of a Lion!!!... Therefore, I submit that Louis was the better fighter of the two.

Flirting and Brawling

By kiki

One late night back around 1960, Connie was dozing off as we drove down Whittier Blvd in East Los Angeles. Right before I had to turn north on Ford Ave to make our way home, a car with two young guys and their girls pulled alongside our car. Riding in the back seat of the car was one young dude and his girl. Like Connie, he, too, was dozing off. As we drove side by side, the girl looked at me and smiled; I looked back at her and smiled back; as we were smiling back and forth, the dude woke up and seen his girl flirting with me, but instead of getting pissed at her he rolled the window down and started cursing me out, I cursed him back. He yelled at me to pull over; I yelled back at him to tell the driver to pull over on the next side street, they did, and so did I. As we got out of the car, they went to the trunk and pulled some tire irons out, “oh shit” I thought. But luck was with me because coming down the side street was a car that I recognized as a friend’s car, my friend with 3 other guys pulled over and asked me what was going on, as they were getting out of the car, I told them I needed some help. They said okay…I then told my friend to just keep an eye on the driver “don’t let him butt in,” I said. “He won’t,” my friend and his buddies replied. At that, I grabbed the cursing dude by the shirt and slammed him against a building, and went to work on him. I hit him downstairs and upstairs. First, with body shots to both sides, and when he tried to cover his sides, I went upstairs with left hooks and right crosses, and in between with some jabs and uppercuts. I didn’t give him a chance to throw one punch at me; after what seemed like forever, my friend grabbed me and told me that that was enough and that the cops were on their way. The dude went down on his knees as my friend pulled me away. As I walked away to my car, I saw his friends picking him off the ground. With the adrenaline still pumping, I got in my car and drove home. Connie, who never got out of the car, didn’t talk to me till the next day when she asked me, “are you all right?” other than bruised hands, I told her I was okay.

Here, Have a Toke

By kiki

On the road

Back in the early 1980’s my brother Mando (a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, he is now retired), his then-wife Terry and Connie, and I was on a week-long motorcycle trip with some friends, Al and Irene Garcia and Pres and Cecilia Sanchez. We left home early on a Saturday morning and rode north through the Mojave desert on Highway 395. After stopping for breakfast and lunch along the way, we arrived at Tom’s Place, a must-stop when you are in that part of the state. After a drink or two, we made our way down the road to our first overnight stop, McGee Creek Campgrounds. After securing a campsite and putting up our tents, we walked across the road to the McGee Creek Lodge for dinner and drinks. After dinner and some drinks at the lodge's bar, we bought some beers to take back to our campsite. Back at the campground, we lit a campfire to sit around and tell lies as we drank beer; the more we drank, the bigger the lies got, but we soon ran out of lies to tell, so Mando decided to play some music on his motorcycle cassette player, Soon, like most drunks do, we started dancing. Soon dirt was flying low around our heels as we dance to some slow music; the dirt really started flying knee-high as we boogied to some fast tunes. After dancing and running out of beer, we walked to, some might have crawled, our respective tents. About 20 minutes after we hit the tents, some lights were being shined at our tents, it was the cops, some camper we think called the cops to report some crazy drunk Mexicans doing the Mexican dirt dance. That’s was okay, we had lots of fun that first night of our trip. The following morning I made some coffee on the campfire. After having coffee and putting the coffee pot and cups away, we doused the fire out and hit the road on our way to Susanville in Lassen County. After a few stops here and there, we arrived in Susanville in the early afternoon. After walking around the small town, we decided to head west on State Route 36. After riding the mountain road for a bit, we arrived in Chester, Plumas County, home of beautiful Almanor Lake. 

Irene Garcia and Connie

We secured a campsite on the lake next to an occupied site. Tents and camping equipment were set up in our neighbor’s campsite, but there was nobody around. We spent some of the afternoon fishing and strolling around, and having dinner in the small hamlet of Chester. As the afternoon was coming to an end, we lit up a campfire. And as we were sitting around the campfire drinking beer (you’ve to drink beer when you are on a week-long motorcycle trip), two young guys drove up to the site next to us. We notice that they cooked their dinner on a Coleman Stove. After eating, they sat around a campfire talking and smoking, so, just to be neighborly, we made our way over to their campsite. They welcome us to a beer and a smoke. We accepted their beers, but we wondered what they were smoking because they kept passing their smoke back and forth, but, of course, we knew they were smoking weed! Guy #1 passed his smoke to guy #2, who, after toking, asked Al if he wanted a toke; Al answered him, “no, that’s okay” “how about you?” guy #2 then asked Mando, Mando too refused the toke. “Do you guys have your own mota? Guy #1 asked Mando, “no, but I have this,” Mando replied as he flashed his badge. At that guy # 2 who was still holding the joint, told his buddy, “here this is yours” Guy #1, stretching both arms out, said to guy #2 “it’s yours now” We started laughing as Mando told them to toke up, that he didn’t care because we were on vacation…We were drunk when we got back to our campsite, and we found that the ladies were already in the tents. Al tried to crawl into his tent, but Irene told him he was sleeping outside, he did, on the campground table…The next day with a slight hangover, we hit the beautiful Feather River Canyon road to Old Sacramento, where we spend a couple of nights. We spend three more nights on the road before we arrived back home.

The beautiful Feather River Canyon

Paicines/Hollister, CA.

By kiki

Paicines/Hollister, CA: (San Benito County) 

Paicines: a tiny hamlet 13 miles south of Hollister, CA. was where many Mexican-American migrant farmworkers from through the southwest and their families would head to during the1940's and 1950s to harvest the crops that were in abundance in that rich agricultural land that sits in the upper central part of California. 

In the days before Cesar Chavez, the whole family, from the youngest to the oldest, would hit the fields in the early dawn to pick whatever fruit was in season.  My family and I first went to Hollister in 1947 to pick plums. Then in the 1950s, we went to Paicines to do the same.

Hollister, CA.

Hollister: I remember Hollister as a one-stoplight town and a very segregated place back in the late '40s and early '50s. Back in those years, Hollister was run by old Italian families, and the Mexican people knew that they had to know their place. The Hollister of the '40s and '50s was an open town; much illegal stuff would go on in the bars (e.g., teens able to buy beer and drink openly, gambling in dark backrooms). I remember the local teens were in awe of us Los Angeles teens. The local Chicana girls would melt right in front of us when we would tell them we were from East Los Angeles, and even if some of us were not from ELA, it was best to say to them, with an ELA swagger, of course, that we were from the Eastside if we wanted to score...Even though Hollister was segregated back then, my buddies and I had lots of fun in that backwater town.

Paicines General Store

Paicines: A tiny hamlet? That's debatable because even though you'll find Paicines on the map (State Route 25), there is no such town or village. Instead, all you'll find in Paicines is a general store with a post office. Behind the general store was where the Paicines Ranch Campesinos houses were located.

Some of the Paicines girls

Looking back to those years I spent working the piscas' in Paicines (1952-54), I have to say that those years were some of the most memorable years of my life. But to some, I would think it was like the tail end of hell's half-acre….Life-long memories were made among the young and old people. Memories are now coming alive again, thanks in part to today's high-tech social media. Thanks to Facebook and other social media sites, we have reconnected with some of the people we made friends with back in those years of yore….I recently reconnected on Facebook with a girl I met in Paicines in 1954 (she is now an adult lady who shall remain anonymous) and took to the Hollister Drive-In in my 1940 Chevy. Leaving the drive-in, we were pulled over by a local cop who proceeded to write me up for loud pipes on my Chevy. Cost my parents $20.00 to make the local judge happy. Another memory that will always stick in my mind happened in 1952. Some of us Chicano teens went to the local Friday night high school dance (San Benito High School, the town had one high school). To say the least, we were not welcome by the young "Eye-Talian" teens, a fight broke out between them and us, and we were quickly thrown out on our asses, but hey! Us short Mexicans gave them big football players a good fight…The next day that fight, (in a town that didn't have much excitement) was the talk of the town, and in such a small town, that fight could lead the topics of conversation for months if not for years to come. In Paicines, all the adult men were asking us teens about the big fight. "Not much of a fight it was," we would tell them "we got our asses kicked."

I didn't go back to Paicines to work again (I married in late' 54), but my family did. I don't remember if it was in '56 or '57 when Connie and I drove up to visit the family for the weekend. My sisters, Mary Ellen and Cecilia's boyfriends, Danny and Georgie, made the drive north with us. We got there in time to help the family pick plums on Saturday. Connie, Danny, and Georgie had never seen anything like that before. Connie loved it! After bathing in the common showers, we all dressed up to the nines that Saturday night to hit the town, the girls in long dresses, the guys in suits and ties. We had one problem, though, Hollister didn't have many places to go, all dressed up. So we wound up going to a dance hall where all the tomato cannery workers showed up in their work clothes after getting off the night shift. Talk about stinking up the joint!!  Plus, dressed as we were, we stood out like sore thumbs among the cannery workers. As the band started playing some rock and roll, we hit the dance floor with all the latest dance steps, some of which the cannery workers had never seen before, soon we had the dance floor to ourselves…I called Hollister a backwater town, and it was; the town was about five years behind times….In later years, we visited Hollister and Paicines just to reminisce and to rekindle old memories. The plum orchards and the Campesinos houses are all now gone; in their place now stands hundreds of acres of vineyard.

A young teenage Campesino standing in the Paicines camp

In-N-Out Burgers

By kiki

I decided to have an early lunch today, so I went to In-N-Out for one of their super burgers. As I was standing around waiting for my order, my cell rang; Connie calling me from work.

“Where are you at?” she asked me.

“Getting a burger and fries at In-N-Out,” I answered.

“Oh, you dog, you couldn’t wait till tonight, so we both could have an In-N-Out burger, could you?”

“Hey babe, I can have another burger tonight.”

“You dog,” she said as she hung up on me.

I chuckled as I put my cell in my pocket. The burger was, as the kids say nowadays, “the Bomb.”