210804 Sentinel, Wrestling, Ray Jones, My Theme Song

mobile theme

Wrestling

Yesterday Joyce and I were on the phone with my Western Guru. As happens on those calls, he and I remember different stories we experienced in our working days together. Somehow wrestling came up and I was telling him my grandfather used to take me to the Chase hotel in Saint Louis for wrestling night. There was a place in the basement where they held wrestling matches and boxing matches. I was just 8 or 9 years old and when the “bad guy” wrestlers came down the aisles they would have their arms up, lean in and growl fiercely to scare kids and old ladies. There were lots of elderly white-haired ladies there. Not for the bad guys, but waiting for Gorgeous George (the good guy) to come up the aisles. When George came in the old ladies would swoon over him. There was at that time a TV show called “Wrestling at the Chase” that was shown in Saint Louis. Now here’s something I just learned as I related the story to the Western Guru, His grandparents in San Diego watched the same program and they loved it! Then Joyce chimed in and said that when she and her parents were at her grandmother’s house on Sundays Joyce and her parents were politely escorted to the door because her white-haired grandma had to watch Gorgeous George wrestling. That story leads me right into the next one just below.

Ray Jones

Ray Jones was an old character that was our neighbor in Camdenton. Ray had bought and owned 100 acres of land on both sides and behind our little 4 acre place. Ray was retired and his working career was quite interesting. The 2 things I remember are he welded and made floating docks for people who owned lakefront property nearby.. Ray was also a professional wrestler on the Midwest circuit, centralized around Sedalia. The Sedalia crowd was not as gentile as Saint Louis. One night Ray was in the ring and the plan for the match was going on per usual so Ray woud get thrown over to one side of the ring and his leg would slide out under the rope and toward the fans sitting there. It happened there was an audience member that had a big cigar and twice he burned Ray’s leg with it. Ray and the other wrestler were in center ring and Ray told the guy, “When we’re close enough, I’ll tap you twice on the shoulder and you toss me over close to that guy.” The plan was executed perfectly, but this time Ray held back his leg until the man leaned in to try and burn Ray’s leg and then Ray fully extended to put his foot right into that man’s face. The man complained to the managers of the event, but he found no sympathy at all. Ray was not a poor old man, but for some reason he lived in an old ramshackle home with no furnace and only a cold water tap in his kitchen. He still used a battered old outside outhouse and this was in 1975. I asked him about that and his reply was, “It is mighty cold when that winter wind whistles through the cracks, but that keeps me from spending too much time out there.” Ray had a lot of good stories to tell and I could easily believe all of them. He kept me supplied with wood for the fireplace in my shop and more than once he used his tractor to pull our vehicles up to the road so we could get out in the bad weather.

My Theme Song

The song is by Billy Currington and the title is “Pretty Good at Drinking Beer.”