I was sitting on the hand rail at Woodlawn Grade School in Portland. I was on the top bar at lunch hour with my feet hooked over the middle steel bar when Robert Buckby came through the door and saw me. He shoved me and I went flying head over teakettle but managed to grab the top bar to hang on. My left cheekbone hit the concrete edge of the staircase, smack dab. Robert just kept going. He left me hanging there all woozy and bloody.
I crawled to my wobbly feet. Somebody else saw me and my swollen face and got me to the principal's office. Mister Hughson put me in a big chair. Then they took me to the nurse's office and got my big brother Russell out of class to walk me home. I was a little loopy and Russell wanted to know what happened. He was ticked off because he had first dibs on whacking me at home. I can still feel the permanent dent in my left cheekbone. I let kids feel it for a nickel but it doesn't hurt anymore. I'm alright now. That was 83 years ago. I was ten.
In those days Russell liked to fight. He had some boxing gloves and I was his favorite punching bag. He once knocked one schoolmate's two front teeth out and when he worked for Western electric. He had several skirmishes behind the building.
When WW2 came he joined the Navy and was in Pearl Harbor but the Japanese bombers never laid a glove on him. He did join a bunch of fellow sailors who loved to box and they fought guys from other ships. Russell found himself in a championship light-heavy match with a familiar name... Buckby. Russell remembered the name from Woodlawn and pounded the paste out him and won the crown.
My big brother Russell pounded the paste out of Robert Buckby
Russ gave me his trunks from that match. I kept them in my dresser even though my wife wanted to throw them out. I have them some place. They had the words Mid-Pacific Eliminations Champion on the shiny white seat.
Maybe they could have said "Woodlawn bully gets his due."
