Jim Jewell

Published in The Lebanon Democrat, Thursday, May 17, 2012.

SAN DIEGO – Earlier this week, I read about the proposed boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.

Unlike in years past, I read it with disinterest. Boxing is no longer intriguing to me like it used to be. Growing up in Lebanon, Gillette’s “Friday Night Fights” were a ritual. My father and I would settle into our seats in the den with the television glaring at us in black and white. We rooted for boxers who had become familiar to us over the years. Nearly always, my father rooted against my favorite. I now have the suspicion he did that just to tease me.

An exception was Floyd Patterson. As I recall, we both admired his skills and jointly rooted for him to win.

I don’t recall many of the fights but Gillette’s parrot still sticks in my brain. Complete in his colorful plumage reduced to black and white, he would march around the ring holding aloft a placard denoting the number of the next round.

I continued as a boxing fan, a requirement for an aspiring sports writer at The Nashville Banner, and later, necessary to do my job as sports editor of The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York. At the latter, boxing was up close and personal. Amateur and professional boxing was a major attraction in the state of New York in the Golden Era of Sports. Jack Case, the sports editor I succeeded at The Times, had been a major reporter of the sport since the 1930s.

Jack was best known for creating the nickname for a famous boxer. And the name lives on. In 1939, this light heavyweight was the talk of the boxing world. He celebrated his 18^th birthday by soundly defeating Larry Zavelich of Ottawa at a Watertown venue. Spotting the young pugilist when entering the dressing room after the fight, Jack declared, “Ray, you are as sweet as sugar.” From then on, the fighter was known as Sugar Ray Robinson.

My disillusionment reached its final stage right after Jack retired. As sports editor, I was required to comment on the championship fights. Joe Frazier was the reigning heavyweight and had quickly defeated Terry Daniels in January. In May, Frazier destroyed Ron Stander in a brutal, gory mess. My commentary in The Times declared the Gillette parrot was squawking against such an abomination. I judged the best punch was in a Mennen after-shave commercial when Frazier knocked himself out in front of the bathroom mirror.

My return to the Navy separated me from regular access to boxing and my interest waned. But the roots of that disillusionment came while I was at The Nashville Banner.

In 1964, Sonny Liston and then named Cassius Clay (later Muhammed Ali) began their famous heavyweight duels. After Liston quit because of a shoulder injury in the sixth round of their first fight, the WBA ordered a second championship match be held. That fight was in Lewiston, Maine and broadcast on closed-circuit television. In Nashville, the broadcast was at the Ryman Auditorium.

Mike Fleming, The Banner’s boxing reporter asked me to accompany him and help obtain post-fight comments. Mike and I took our seats in the middle of the auditorium. Porter Waggoner and his buddies filed into the row in front of us just before the broadcast began.

The show started with Robert Goulet forgetting the words in the middle of the national anthem. The fight itself ended with the now famous “phantom punch” when Liston fell like a tree less than a minute into the fight. Fred Russell, The Banner’s famous sports editor didn’t even get to the fight after getting caught in traffic. Even the knockout count was done incorrectly. Because of the remote location, less than 2500 attended. It was one of the worst debacles in the ring.

To top it off, I interviewed one of Porter Waggoner’s buddies exiting the Ryman.

“What did you think of the fight,” I asked.

“I paid $25, and I didn’t even see it,” he responded.

“What,” I intelligently blurted.

“We smuggled in a six pack of beer,” he explained, “and I was in charge. I bent over to get the cans out of the plastic, and before I could get them open, the fight was over.”

I should have stopped following boxing right then.

Published in The Lebanon Democrat, Thursday, May 10, 2012. The new managing editor, Clay Morgan, has given the Thursday op-ed page local focus. He and i will both have columns that day, while my Thursday “Minding Your Own Business” leadership column will run in the business section on Thursday as well. Clay is an excellent replacement for Amelia Hipps who was responsible for me writing the two columns for my old hometown newspaper. i am indebted to her and looking forward to working with Clay who has some great ideas for continued improvement at the paper

EN ROUTE SAN DIEGO – When you read this I will be headed back to my other home in the Southwest corner.

It was a heady visit to Lebanon: lots going on and, for a change, I actually got most of the things done I intended. I saw more of the home folks than usual. I wanted to stay longer, two or even three weeks, but for the last several days, the void created by Maureen and I being a continent apart was giving me the itch to get back to the Southwest corner.

The visit did not improve my spelling. Judy Lewis Gray, when previewing Monday’s column, pointed out I misspelled Gayle Marks Byrne’s first name. I owe an apology to the dynamic Ms Byrne.

During my stay, I rediscovered a tradition, which has vanished.

Last Thursday afternoon, I went to the First United Methodist Church on West Main on an errand. I asked Pam Vandever in administration to speak to David Hesson, the assistant minister I have always known as Bucky. Pam invited me to tour the new chapel under construction while I waited. As is often the case in Lebanon places, I diverted and ended up wandering around familiar haunts. A flautist and pianist were practicing Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” and the tune floated beautifully through the church.

I returned to wait and noticed a plaque outside the office with brass nameplates. Nostalgia gushed. The plaque was dedicated to the deceased members of the discontinued “Men’s Choir.” The title brass plate was followed by one noting Burton Wilson, the church’s choir director, founded the group in 1946. The smaller plates below listed the church members who belonged to the choir and the year they had passed away.

I don’t know if any other churches in Lebanon or any other place on earth had such a endeavor. I hope they did, or at least something similar. The choir and its venue bought me some of my most enjoyable times in Lebanon.

Every Sunday night, the men’s choir met for supper before the evening service. Several members and their wives were in charge of the evening meals on a rotating basis. The Methodist Youth Fellowship for junior high (now “middle school”) and high school students met down the hall or on the other side of the partition in Fellowship Hall. When supper was completed, the men retreated to the choir room and practiced their featured song for the evening.

At seven, the youth and other church members gathered in the sanctuary, and the men filed into the choir loft behind the preacher.

Then the fun began.

The sermon was always short to allow the maximum number of songs to be sung, and the songs chosen for the congregation to sing were not those high faluting hymns of the morning service. They were gospel songs. “Old Rugged Cross,” “Church in the Wildwood,” “Garden of Gethsemane,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and many others were sung with abandon, and the rafters in that old sanctuary on East Main shook from the energy. The men had their featured music and, it too was nearly always a gospel song, usually with one of the members as a featured vocalist.

Looking closer, I found names I remembered: Alvin Hall, Hershel Bradshaw, Vic Emmert,  Freeman Coles, and too many others to list here. Each name recognition brought back good memories. But then, I noticed the names stopped in 2006. Several deceased members were not listed. I immediately noted George Harding was not included.

I called to Pam and pointing to the plaque, asked if there was anything I could do to bring the names up to date. She asked me just what was the “Men’s Chorus.” I explained. Pam had not begun her association until after the choir and those Sunday night gospel extravaganzas had ceased.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I would have liked that; I love gospel music and the old hymns.”

I am sure there were many justifiable reasons for the choir and those Sunday night services to be discontinued. I won’t pass judgment on that. But from 30,000 feet somewhere over the dry, brown, seemingly unending vista of West Texas, I will remember those Sunday nights, and hum a hymn to myself.

i am woefully behind in my posts because i spent a wondrous, bittersweet week in Lebanon, Tennessee, my home regardless of the many other places i have lived, how long i have been away, or how much it has changed when i do return. i am back in my other home of San Diego and back to the task at hand. More of my wondrous wandering later. This column was published in the Lebanon Democrat, Monday, May 3, 2012. Beetle, aka Jim Harding, disagreed about him providing my jungle utilities, but that’s my story and i’m sticking to it. I erred in citing him as part of the 101st Airborne. He was assigned to the 173rd Airborne, and it was their in-country headquarters where these events took place.

SAN DIEGO – I was laying out a column in my mind when interrupted with a request.

Bill Goodner had read my previous column about meeting Jim Harding in Vietnam and queried, “This is like the old “cliff hangers” that they used to show at the Capitol on Saturday mornings…Do we have to wait until next Saturday?”

So I feel duty bound to continue “The Adventures of Beetle and Me.”

We left off the last Saturday serial at the Capitol with Jim Harding inviting me to see his little slice of Vietnam. I cleared it with my commanding officer to spend a night away from the ship before we docked in Qui Nhon. “Beetle,” the family nickname for Jim, was waiting with my green utilities. I changed and we boarded and headed in country.

We soon arrived at the 101^st Airborne Division’s main base. Jim shared a hootch, a shack of unfinished wood, with three other junior officers. He and his buddies had taken advantage of the low cost and no taxes for stereo equipment. The quarters bulged with amplifiers, turntables, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and gigantic speakers. The setup would have made Creedence Clearwater Revival envious. I did not scoff because my stateroom back on the Geiger had similar equipment.

After our greetings, we went to dinner at the officer’s mess. The steak was range fed and tasted faintly of wild onions, but except for Kobe beef in Japan, nearly all of the steaks in the Western Pacific countries were range fed and carried that taste. Afterwards, I understood why the fare on my transport ship was sought by those stationed in-country.

I drank a beer with my steak. U.S. beer in the Far East had added preservatives, namely formaldehyde. I never quite got used to drinking that stuff. When we were in Sasebo, we could get Coors, which was the only U.S. beer without preservatives.

Back in the hootch, my hosts pulled up a cooler with more beer and one passed around a bottle of Jack Daniels. Another had just bought the “Woodstock” phonograph album. He turned on all of the gear – the wall looked like the cockpit of a 747 – and placed the first record on the turntable.

I remember thinking the scene was surreal. Woodstock had been held not quite a year before (August 15-18, 1969) in the Catskills with 500,000 attendees. It was the event of the hippies in spades, and none of us with our military haircuts now listening to that album would have fit in at the concert.

The concert was filmed and made into a movie. The album was the soundtrack of that movie. Over thirty acts graced the stage. Swami Satchidananda, an Indian spiritual guru, gave the opening invocation. I wondered what he would have thought of us listening to his supplication in the Vietnam night.

I did not know and Jim had neglected to tell me the base was also the processing center for all of the Screaming Eagles, where soldiers arrived and had a week of indoctrination for their year in Vietnam, including arms training. Perhaps none of my hosts knew fresh troops had just arrived and were headed to the range for night live fire training.

As Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were revving up their hippie salute, “Almost Cut My Hair,” every weapon known in country seemed to go off at once. The din was deafening as the incoming soldiers fired at will.

After my hosts peeled me off the ceiling, they explained the ruckus. Before that, I believed the entire Viet Cong and North Vietnamese invaders had launched an all-out attack on the base. Before I was thus informed, I was fervently wishing I had remained in my comfortable stateroom that night.

The next day, Jim and his driver took me on a scenic tour of the area. Vietnam is a strikingly beautiful place when there is an absence of firefights. We visited a 3,000 year old temple and drove to the top of hills to view the green and lush countryside laced with rice paddies and other crops.

Beetle drove me back to the ship that evening and we left the next morning for Nha Trang. I will always remember my night in country, thanks to Jim Harding and the 101^st Airborne.