On fist fights and battles…
Good morning, Netizens...
Jeanie of Spokane wrote something yesterday at http://www.jeaniespokane.blogspot.com/ that brought back some ancient memories when she mentioned young men getting into fistfights.
Oh, do I remember my days of being in fist fights! Driving long-haul trucks and hanging out in various truck stops over the years, there was something about that lifestyle that encouraged combat. You were always frustrated, trying to make a living in tough times, pushing your truck down the road with everything you had with limited sleep and sometimes ugly junk food, although any good truck driver knew where good food at reasonable prices could be had.
All it took, however, was coming in off the road with a bad attitude when someone said something off-color to you, struck you the wrong way, and the battle royal was on. Given the number of years that has passed, I only vaguely recall a donnybrook that took place at the Truckadero (probably misspelled) outside Denver in the 70's. I do recall I had just finished a run from Louisiana and was sleeping like a righteous man when someone began banging like a bullock on my sleeper, and there were people yelling outside. I climbed out of my truck, no mean feat, given my lack of sleep, and got a punch in the face for asking what in the Hell was going on. It took more cops to straighten out the mess than we have in Spokane, and fortunately I managed to crawl back in my sleeper before they arrived, bloody nose and all, but I got a few good licks in of my own.
However, the genuine real-meal-deal of fist fights in my opinion took place slightly over a decade ago in the lowly Town of Springdale, involving two taverns full of contentious drunken patrons, perhaps numbering into the hundreds duking it out in the streets. It required both the Stevens County Sheriff's Department and the State Patrol to close off the State Highway until order could be restored well after three in the morning. Amazing enough, the record of the time reflects no one was arrested. Hell, nobody could remember who started the fight; they were too drunk to remember. Now that was a fight!
Dave