"Lightning" Ray Lampkin, Jr.

I stopped watching boxing (and all those awful spin-offs) years ago. The only point of the "sweet science" is to inflict serious physical damage on the opponent. But I saw a TV promo for a coming boxing event and it triggered a memory for me of "Lightning" Ray Lampkin, Jr. who I knew more than 44 years ago. A very likable young man.

After the Portland Storm football team crashed and burned, putting me on the bricks,  I spent a short time writing sports features for the Portland Oregonian's Sunday magazine.  Lampkin was one of my early assignments.  Many people were not aware that Ray was the number two lightweight fighter ranked next to World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Roberto Duran.  Six months before my interview with Lampkin, in 1975, he had gone 14 rounds with the champion before being knocked out.  When he went down his head bounced on the floor of the ring like a basketball.  The effects of that beating were still apparent when we talked in Ray's living room. Something about his eyes was a shadow out of plumb.

Ray took to boxing early as a kid growing up in his Northeast neighborhood and he would see his fists as tickets to fame and fortune.  Talking about the Duran fight he told me the champ was only one of his problems; his corner was completely disorganized.  After a round he would come for a precious couple of minutes rest and his stool wouldn't be there. And then, in the late rounds, his handlers ran out of water.  Corner chaos.

"I'm getting half-killed out there," he told me, "and everything in my corner is all (expletive) up."

But he thought he would recover and be all right and all his support people thought so, too.  Of course, Ray was their meal ticket, so getting him well was important. Lampkin did live to fight again but the wattage in the lightning was never the same.  At the end his record was 32-6-1.

In 2013 at age 65 Ray was bowling with friends when he suddenly keeled over with cardiac arrest. Two brothers in the next lane were quick to spot the problem and they started chest compressions until medical help arrived.  They saved Ray's life and it was his most serious challenge since that long ago night in Panama, climbing into the ring with Roberto Duran.

A Happy Song

In this season of good cheer and giving of gifts to loved ones and friends, it is appropriate for me to give something to all my blog readers to show my appreciation for their interest in my scribbling.

In the days ahead there will be parties where people gather and, possibly, lift a cup of good cheer.  Or two. And what is cup lifting without song where everyone joins in?  So, my gift to you all: A drinking song (any tune works).

Oh, they had to carry Harry to the ferry,

They had to carry Harry from the shore.

They had to carry Harry to the ferry,

For Harry couldn't carry anymore.

This song is special because it can be tailored to lots of people: Mary, Terry, Carey, Larry,Sherry and on and on.  Merry Christmas.

Zapp App

If you believe national polling (why wouldn't you?)) almost as many Americans believe Donald J. Trump is a gifted shepherd of the national flock as those who believe he is a Macy's Christmas parade dirigible untethered from his moorings.  Whichever view you have of our apparently elected president, one fact cannot be denied: he has created a hugely precious life-app available to every American; rich or poor, gender of choice, black, white, other: ALTERNATE REALITY.

All of us have had some occasion where we said something or done something that, reflecting on it later, we thought, "Oh, my. I wish I hadn't said that. Or done that."

Elaine: (that night) "Good God, Harold, what possessed you to tell that awful joke at the dinner table?"
Harold: "Yeah, and spilling my wine in Helen's lap wasn't too cool either."

But now Elaine and Harold are saved by the new life-app: ⧬
Pull it up and stare into the center and repeat, "That didn't happen" for thirty minutes and, voila, --it never happened. The beauty of alternate reality.  Zapp, it's gone.

Or, on the way home, you think of the killer response you could have used on Mr. Life-of-the-party's put-down of you. Pull up the life-app and staring into the center repeat your come-back line for thirty minutes. Zapp, he's crushed.

Charles Darwin, somewhere, is smiling. Another upward step in our evolving climb to perfection.

Schadenfreude In Yesteryear

The German word in the title translates to taking pleasure from the misfortune of others.  At lunch with my life-long Oregon State Beaver friend, Dick Bayless, he recalled a poem I sent him many years ago that memorialized a basketball game his alma mater played that would, if won, lead to a shot at the national championship.  OSU's great Terry Heisman Baker played on that team.  The game was on a Friday night and I had the poem composed and mailed from Eugene to be on Dick's law office desk the following Monday morning.  It's too long to reproduce here but I've copied a few  verses to give you a flavor of my take on their game.  My schadenfreude.  So let's mosey down Memory Lane...

The Beaver fans were cheering when the Provo news came in,

The Benton County Bandits had come up with a win.

They grabbed a jet for Louisville, they knew they couldn't fail,

And joy flowed through that happy crew, from cockpit to the tail.

It's Friday night in Freedom Hall, the Beavers take the floor,

Then on comes Cincinnati and the crowd lets out a roar.

The ball goes up at center, the game is under way.

No Benton County Beaver will 'er forget this day.

Now Baker goes to fore-court, then watches in dismay,

As Cincinnati slickers deftly steal the ball away.

This scene will be repeated each time Terry starts to act,

It's as if the Heisman Trophy was strapped upon his back.

Mel Counts fouls out too early, while Pauley's hitting four,

Poor Terry's got a goose egg and Peter's little more.

Two Beaves are hitting only one, and two have hit but two,

With Jarvis scoring only five, what will those Beavers do?

Things are looking hopeless, the Beaver's plight is grim.

Continuing disasters, balls bouncing off the rim; 

Then inspiration hits the team, the scheme they choose is bold,

In Freedom Hall, before the world, the fabled Beavers fold.

Of all the great disasters, Pearl Harbor and the rest,

Columbus Day, the Alamo, Dunkirk's bloody test;

Of all these terrible set-backs, at one the memory sticks:

Cincinnati eighty, the Beavers...forty-six.

Did I send a copy to Terry Baker?  Do you think I'm nuts?

Atlantic

The Methuselah Report never drafted a mission statement because the Board of Director believed such a document might create goals that would intimidate the writing staff, some of whom still admit  being challenged by the order of letters in the alphabet.  But, although no formal document of purpose was ever drafted, the consensus of the Board believes it is Methuselah's responsibility, whenever possible, to enhance the intellectual powers of our readers.  If we try and fail, so be it. If we try and succeed, God bless us.

Which brings us, this posting, to our sincere wish that each of you out there on the blogosphere will pledge to read from cover to cover the December 2019 issue of the Atlantic Magazine.  (A link to some of it is posted here.)  The newly redesigned cover carries the headline, "How to Stop a Civil War."  Every American would profit from this read.

Abraham Lincoln considered the Atlantic Monthly (its original name when it was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857) to be the most important public journal of that time.  It was created as a literary and cultural magazine using leading writers of the day (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others) to address the important issues.  That tradition has continued to this day, even though it posted its first profit in a decade in 2010.

Don't miss this issue.

The Prize Is Wright

Once in late July of 1982, it is reported that someone in Bangor, Maine, saw Stephen Wright laugh.  Probably just a rumor but what is not a rumor is that wherever Wright pops up there are mobs of people laughing.

My friend John Hanson (as a Dartmouth College undergraduate, John was that institution's inspiration for drafting its Guide to Student Deportment) recently reminded me of the remarkable creativity of Stephen Wright.  As a stand-up comic, his material was delivered in his dour, lethargic voice.  I will share with you, my enraptured readers, some of the wit and wisdom of Stephen Wright.

Never criticize a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes; then you are a mile away and you have his shoes.

It's a small world but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

Everywhere is in walking distance if you have the time.

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

Eagles may soar but weasels don't get sucked into engines of jets.

Boycott shampoo.  Demand the real poo.

99% of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

I was sad having no shoes until I saw a man with no feet; so I said to him, "You got any shoes you're not using?"

Shin: A device for finding something in the dark.

The sooner you fall behind the more time you will have to catch up.



Thank you, Stephen.  Pick any of the above and memorize the line so you can slip it into a future conversation.  Don't mention Stephen Wright.  If John Hanson is in your group, don't try it.

Jesse,You Out There, Boy?

Do you know anyone named Jesse?  Neither do I.  I wonder why parents stopped naming their little boy babies Jesse. It really is a fine name that is easy to spell and easy to remember.  When you hear the name you probably think of either Jesse James or Jesse Owens, both of whom made their claim to fame way, way back in those other centuries.

It is my belief that Jesse James owes his notoriety in large measure to the alliteration of the two names.  After he robbed a bank or a train his name just rolled off the tongues of the lawmen.  "Yes, it was Jesse James who shot the engineer.  Jesse James."  If Jesse had been born to Ethyl and Ignatius Snodgrasse the lawmen would would have just said, "Yeah, it looks like it was Snodgrasse on the train shoot."

A case could be made for calling Jesse Owens the greatest athlete of all time.  In the 1936 Olympics, Jesse set five world records and tied a sixth, all in the space of about 21 minutes.  His long jump record stood for 25 years. One might surmise that the next 9,827 boy babies born after Owens dazzled the Olympic spectators (except you, Adolph) would have had  "Jesse" inscribed on the birth certificates.  Didn't happen.

Then there was Jesse Applegate who made his bones on the Oregon Trail by blazing a southern trail across the Cascade Mountains into the Willamette Valley thereby giving settlers an easier option than the dangerous Barlow Trail or the treacherous Columbia River. A southern Oregon river bears his name and his grave is the only interesting attraction in Yoncalla, Oregon.

So come on people, now, (remember that early '70s song by Jesse Colin Young?) let's all get together and do right by the name, "Jesse."  How about a baby boy, Jesse Jones? Or a Jesse Jerome (instead of Harry Jerome)? Does anyone have "Hesse" as a last name?  That would be cool.  Jesse Hesse.

Oh, wait...Holy sh--! JESSE HELMS. Yikes. OK. Class dismissed.  Enough with the Jesses. Stick with Johns and Jons and Michaels.  No more Jesses.