MY LIFE IN 1953
EC's Full of Glee in '53
Well, howdy doo, all you buckaroos and little darlin's, too.
The 7th-grade year is winding down at Annapolis Avenue Junior High in Sheffield, Alabama... just a few more weeks and EC will wrap up another glorious school year... 7 down and just 5 mo to go... my Mama told me that we would be moving to Mobile fairly soon after school is out... so EC will be returning to Mobile where I went to the first grade, part of the second grade and part of the third grade... and I will be entering the 8th grade in September.
Television was in its infancy in 1953... only the big cities had TV stations... Florence and Sheffield did not get a local station until 1957... that was WOWL-TV... in the early 50's if you had a TV in Florence and Sheffield, you had to watch Birmingham stations with an outside antenna... I didn't know anybody that had a TV in Florence and Sheffield when I lived there... I only knew one person that had a TV and that was in New Orleans in 1952... that was my next door neighbors on Downman Road, the Maiers... Mr. Maier was a mean, old grouch... but his wife was a lovely lady that let me read her newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, each morning... and of course, EC only read the sports pages... Mrs. Maier would also let me watch Tulane University basketball games on her TV... and wrestling on Saturday night... can't believe it, but it is true, EC really hates to admit it, but I did watch wrestling shows every week on WDSU-TV from Municipal Auditorium and really enjoyed it... I would pull for the good guy to win and whip the heck out of the villains... on occasion, the famous Gorgeous George, the wrestler, would come to town... he had beautiful blond hair, wore lavender-colored trunks and robes and sprayed expensive perfume when he entered the ring... wow, what a show!... Gorgeous George was known for his outrageous and exaggerated self-promotion.
(Thanks to Wikipedia)
All three of them, Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali and James Brown, the Rhythm and Blues superstar, acknowledged that their own approach to flamboyant self-promotion was influenced by Gorgeous George. A 19-year-old Ali met a 46-year-old Gorgeous George at a Las Vegas radio station. During Gorgeous George's radio interview, the wrestler's promo caught the attention of the future heavyweight champion. If Gorgeous George lost to Classy Freddie Blassie, Gorgeous George exclaimed, "I'll crawl across the ring and cut my hair off! But that's not gonna happen because I'm the greatest wrestler in the world!" Ali, who later echoed that very promo when taunting opponent Sonny Liston, recalled, "I saw 15,000 people comin' to see this man get beat. And his talking did it. I said, 'This is a gooood idea!'" In the locker room afterward, the seasoned wrestler gave the future legend some invaluable advice: "A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So keep on bragging, keep on sassing and always be outrageous."
