Baby Boomers: The Strangest Generation

How Boys Fought In The Seventies

• John Ward

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You know, I'm not sure if young boys of this current teenage generation have fist fights. I don't know, maybe they have karate class or they take a boxing, or it's gotta be some kind of organized thing where the parents drop them off or something like that. I don't know, but I don't hear about a lot of kids fighting. Unless it's like a big mob scene fight in a mall or something like that. But in the 70s, baby boomers fought. We fought each other a lot. All the time. But there was a really ritualistic predictable pattern to how it went down. Boys fighting was really common. It was almost like a sport. It was almost like uh pick-up basketball or uh street football game or it was just something that you did a lot. And it wasn't all that dangerous. There weren't weapons. Everybody had a knife, but nobody ever used it. There wasn't guns. I knew in my life three guys with guns. I knew four guys that got shot. They all got shot by the cops. So it was just fists, really. But there was a way we went about it. A certain pageantry. A uh like fights usually didn't just break out. There was a lot of tension, there was a lot of posturing, there was a lot of animosity, things happened for weeks, tension built. Sooner or later, these guys are gonna have to go. But it was rare that somebody just started throwing. Although I had a few incidents where I just did that. I fought a lot when I was a kid. I wasn't really a tough guy or anything like that. I got my ass kicked a lot, and I deserved it. But um the worst scenario I remember in the 70s, as far as kids fighting on the streets. We lived in a neighborhood. We call it a parish. We lived in a parish. And there was a bowling alley, and behind the bowling alley was a parking lot, and then a wooded area with a path, and you could go down there and you could drink beer, and there's a little creek, and kids would go down there and drink beer and smoke pot and stuff, and it was you know our our neighborhood. And it wasn't as though nobody could come there or anything like that, but it would be unusual for other people, other kids, to wind up in this desolate, out-of-the-way spot. So one evening we're down there, we're in high school, we got five, six guys. We weren't that tough, we weren't a crew, you know, we really weren't that tough. And we had this one friend, and he was French. He didn't really talk French or anything like that. We just knew he was French and we didn't understand it. I didn't even know there was a derogatory name for French people, but there is, and it's called Frog, so we call him Frog. And for some reason, this guy took to carrying a small hatchet clipped to his belt and a little leather case. You could see the handle, the seal under the yakes, uh hatchet would be covered by a leather thing that would unbutton. And he wore it all the time. And he wasn't tough, he was shy, and this thing was gonna get him into trouble. And he was a friend of ours, and we always say, man, lose the lose the axe. You know, it's it's a magnet for fucking bullies and shit. So we're down in this creek, Bed. We got Frog, I got five, six other guys with me. And these dudes come in from a neighborhood uh maybe a mile away, but same parish. So we knew them. And we knew that they were really tough. They were uh drug dealers, and they were MO was that they would sell you the drugs, and then three blacks away, the other half of their crew would rob you of the drugs you just sold, and then they'd laugh their asses off. And they were gloobies. I don't know if you remember gloobies, people that uh inhaled uh airplane glue. Couple were them, uh two of them committed suicide. Uh there was uh uh a psycho guy that was actually named after a famous cartoon character, but I don't want to say his name because I don't know if I have any kind of uh liability. But if you remember the comic Peanuts, his name was the same name as the main guy in Peanuts. And he was a tough motherfucker, let me tell you. He was little too, he wasn't it. But he wasn't a problem. There was this other dude. I'm gonna call him uh Jimmy Ryan. And I knew him because my dad and his dad were friends, so when I was a little boy, he would come to my house and I'd come to him how his house. And my dad and his dad would have beers and you know, we'd play. And I eventually wound up uh going to uh high school with him for a year and making friends, but he was you know a tough guy from a tough neighborhood. This dude stood about five, six and probably weighed 270. He was stout, he was shoulders, chest, big head, big belly, big legs, a steamroller. And he was a bully. So we're at the creek, we're drinking, they show up. Little tension in the air, everybody's a little bit, you know, what are you guys doing here? It's kinda out of your way. I don't understand, but we know you. But you got these uh psychos. And our psychos were older than us, so they were already gone in jail, Vietnam, wherever. So what do they call him Jimmy Ryan? Yeah, Jimmy Ryan sees this hatchet on Frog. Frog's a little guy, not tough. And he hunts right in. He's like, what the what that's hatchet? Well, what's that for? And Frog's just a little protection, and you never know, blah blah blah. And this big dude is like, so you're telling me that if I come on you, you're gonna swing that hatchet at me. And we're all now silent, tensions building. Because we know Jimmy Ryan is coming at him, and we know Frog, and that hatchet is not gonna swing. It's gonna be more humiliation than anything. That's what I'm thinking. So Ryan starts with the uh, give me the hatchet. Give me the hatchet. What are you talking about? Give me the freaking hatchet. And Frog says, no, give me the hatchet. And Ryan steps up on him, outweighs him by 70 pounds, gets in his face, and he says, Give me a fucking hatchet now. Now you gotta put yourself in Frog's shoes. He really doesn't want to pull the hatchet out and swing on this guy. Cause he could kill him. And this is just a little beef on the side of a creek behind a bowling alley. We don't really need a death here. And Ryan knows us. So he keeps it up. Now he starts pushing Frog around. Pushing him back. Now Frog's in the creek. His his feet are up the ankles in water. And Ryan's pushing him. Give me the fucking hatchet. Give me the fucking hatchet. Give it to me now. And Frog said, no. He said, uh you better take it out then because I'm about to fucking bust your head. Then he just pushed Frog down into the water. He's sitting, you know, it was five, six inches deep. He's sitting in the water with his hatchet. And nobody's laughing. Everybody can see the tension. What could happen? You know, we don't know Frog that good. He's kind of a you know a pussy, but sometimes pussies go friggin' crazy. So Frog gets up. Ryan grabs him by the neck with his right hand. Frog's got the hatchet on his right side. Ryan's got a left hand free. Frog grabs his shirt on his shoulder and is getting forced back. He's gonna get bulldozed over and down now. He's got the hatchet out. It's out. And we're all yelling. Everybody's yelling. Jimmy, leave him alone. What is it? What are you trying to prove? Knock the shit off. You know, leave this fucking guy alone. You know he's a timid guy and you know. He pushes him down again into the water. I'm like Jimmy, knock it off. Because I knew the kid. He was he betrayed me that night. I hated him for that. I'm like, knock the shit off. Leave him alone. In the meantime, I'm talking. I don't notice. This friggin' frog stands up. And we're all trying to tell Ryan, hey man, back off. Leave him alone. He's a good kid. He didn't do nothing to you. And Frog, he was smart, man. He swiveled the hatchet around so that the blade side wasn't gonna hit him. And he friggin' clocked him with the flat end of the axe of the hatchet. And Ryan went down in a pool of blood. And we were like, motherfucker, that was fucking great. Now you're gonna be able to walk the streets again, you know. And Ryan's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna fucking catch you with that hatch one day without that edge, I'm gonna fucking catch you. And uh Frog's like, yeah, I got the hatch right now. What are you gonna and I'm like, motherfucker, Frog? You're tough, that was cool. I'll tell you what, Frog never showed his face again on any street. You couldn't get him to come out of the house. He was terrified. You know, there's no police or charges or anything like that. But it was a tense moment where things could have gone awry and somebody could have got really hurt. That really wasn't the uh way that fights happen with baby when we're boys in the 70s. For the most part, fights really didn't end in injury. You had a thing where you could say uncle, pat your hand on the ground and say uncle, uncle. It was more wrestling. There'd be a few punches from, but it was mostly like wrestling and get them down on Uncle, and everybody'd be laughing and happy at the end. And most of the time I fought, I fought my friends. You know, we just had fun like a sport. And um but I did have a big mouth, and I did have to fight some big guys because I would make fun of them because I thought they were stupid because they were big. And uh I got my ass kicked a couple times. I was good at getting people down. I'd put my leg behind them and just shove them and get them down. But uh the one uh kid, uh Kennedy, he uh big, big kid, big Irish kid, lived in the the uh projects, government homes, whatever, and I used to c I used to bust his balls, man. And one time he got off that he he uh we're on the bus going home from school, and his stop comes up and he doesn't get off because I was busting his balls, and I'm like, oh fuck. My stop comes up, he gets off. And when I come down the stairs, he's waiting for me. And I get him down. Guys probably got five inches on me and 30 pounds. I get him down. I get around his my knees around his uh shoulders, and I get a clean shot right hand to his head. I throw. I hit a good right hand. I throw. Fucking guy moved his head right into the street, my fist broke, my knuckles broke, my wrist bones, I hit pretty hard. And the guy proceeded to kick my ass for about 10 minutes because I couldn't fight back. My friends were jumping on his back and shit trying to get him off. Finally, some old lady pulled up in a car and uh broke it up, otherwise I was gonna get killed. But there was a lot of different ways that fights happened. So in school, there was always a bully or two. And I never knew a bully that didn't get his fucking ass kicked by a little guy. I swear to God, I'm not making it up. Every one of them I ever knew did. And then, yeah, there were the Italians. You had to deal with them. They ran in gangs. And then there was these weird uh lone wolf Irish dudes. Like their father was in prison, they lived with their grandmother. The day they turn 16, they're dropping out, and they're big. They ain't got no friends, they dress shitty, they got no clean clothes, and they don't fuck with anybody. They're just scary. You know they would kill you if you gave them a reason to, but nobody felt once in a while the Italian guys would go after one of them just to bring them down, and it just did not work. And then a lot of the uh little kids that were getting bullied would go after these guys, these man childs, and they would say, Look at uh, you know, so and so's picking on me. And he would the little kid wouldn't arrange a fight. And the bully would have to show up at a certain time place and fight this maniacal psycho-silent huge man child who never really beat anybody up, but everything about him just said, I will kill you. And those fights never happened, because the bully would never show. But everybody fought everybody. Nobody really got hurt. Bullies got taken down. A lot of times little psycho guys just fuck shit up and hurt people. Very, very little use of weapons unless a little guy got in trouble. He would grab anything to defend himself and but they were innocuous. They weren't really all that dangerous. In the 50s, there was a lot of like gangs, street gangs, that owned corners in big cities and shit like that. Remember the outsiders. You know, think of New York, uh, each neighborhood had a different thing. It wasn't quite like that for us. It wasn't like a gang of us was gonna go down and fight the Polish across the tracks. But ten years before that might have happened. So there wasn't a lot of that organized violence. But there was this weird thing that would happen. And that was two kids on the block out of beef. It's going on. Somebody said something, somebody pushed somebody, something this, something, that. And it's building up and so a fight would be scheduled. They would schedule a fight at this time, at this place, and oftentimes in these kinds of arrangements, the fathers would come. The father of each of the fighters, and just fathers from everywhere. They want to see a fight. And they were there to make sure nobody got hurt. The fathers crack a beer, the two kids, you know, it'd be like a pit. Everybody stand around, and the two kids who were gonna fight, they're gonna fight. And everybody's like, okay, let's see how it goes. And they would fight, nobody would get hurt normally. And the dads had no problem. I had one of those, the kid freaking bit me. And um had to get a tetanus shot. And that was a little love, aggravating for my dad. But uh it was just part of life. Now, I don't know. These boys now, they they seem like they're they don't fight. And I'm not saying that's bad or good. I people shouldn't fight. But it teaches you shit, you know? People talk about bullies. I don't know anything about uh cyberbullying, but I think that bullies, when I grew up, they were needed, they served a function. They taught younger, weaker kids to either cower, run, hide, or fight. And when you get out in the real world, you're either gonna fight or run. So you might as well learn it in high school with a bully. I know there's a lot of people probably think, oh my uh, these kids committed suicide over cyberbullying and shit like that. It wasn't like that with us, you know. The the bullies were going down, man. I remember this one dude, he was huge, and he was uh the biggest asshole. I still remember his name. I'll call him Bill Jones. But his real name was um uh Jack uh MacArthur. No, I'm kidding. I I won't tell you his name. Dude was big, dumb, illiterate, and friggin' aggravating. And there was this little kiss, it was a uh Catholic high school. There's this little guy, he had a big mouth, he was gonna be a priest. He let everybody know he's gonna be a priest. And he was really like little. And I didn't see the fight, but it happened in school, and this little boy kicked that friggin' guy's ass. He had to come in the next day with black eyes and fucking stitches and shit. And he it was just like I never heard another word out of him again. I had this cousin, he was like a distant cousin, you know how like you know, like if your dad knew the guy's father, you were cousins kind of shit. But this dude was too scary for me to even talk to. And he had a reputation that he could fight, but uh nobody knew him. He wouldn't talk. He he was stoic. And we were on a bus one time and somebody did something, and I tell you, I never saw a beatdown like this in my life. This guy's hands were so fast, he really should have been a boxer. I'm like, yeah, that's my cousin. Okay, looks at me like, I don't even know who the fuck you are. You know, afraid to talk to him. But um fights were needed. I know that probably sounds so weird to Jen XYZ. I don't know if they fight, maybe they do in video games or whatever. But we had to fight. And it was alright. It wasn't terrifying, you didn't shake in your boots. Yeah, fought. It was fun. It was fun. You know, unless you're getting your ass kicked. I went to a fancy uh Catholic high school, and uh I came from a a different neighborhood, and there's a lot of rich kids, and uh this kid uh the teacher asked me a question, and I completely got it wrong. I I I'm not sure in geography, I'm like, yeah, that's uh friggin' Australia. He's like, no, it's Antarctica. And this dude laughed, this little rich punk. And I remember sitting there for the rest of the class, and I knew the minute that bell rang and he walked out that door, I was gonna fuck him up. And these, you know, rich kids. I don't know if they were used to that. And the motherfucker kicked my ass. That's the killer. The guy friggin' drew blood. And uh I just kept on going. I haven't been in a fight in well, I'm 65. You know, how many people am I gonna fight? I think the last person I fought was my nephew. He let me win, he's like 6'5, but we were drunk. Anyway, that's how kids fought in the 70s. And keep listening. You know what? You should subscribe because I think if you do that, I might be able to make some money. Or at least just tell me if you like it or you hate it or whatever, because I a lot of people listen, but I don't get feedback. But thanks for everything. Have a great February. Treat your woman well on Valentine's Day and be safe.