Wrestling at Larry Bell and Comics

An old high school classmate and I have been emailing. I won’t say “an old high school friend” because back then we were not exactly friends. We ran with different crowds.

He ran with the goody-two-shoes crowd and they were mostly running from us.

That was a joke. We lived in a détente teenage society. Back then we more or less ignored different bunches…and in turn they ignored us. We were polite.

But lately, I feel Brad and I have kindled a friendship.

With rumbles of the Bell Reunion on my blog reminded Brad of his days at Larry Bell Park. Actually poor Brad lived on the other side of the tracks. True. The side he lived in did not have the luxury of hours old fresh eggs, or the pleasure of picking out your own live chicken and wringing its neck, or the joyful act of using a Sears Roebuck catalog in the outhouse. And on the Brad’s side of the tracks they had boring Thanksgiving dinners – but on our side Thanksgiving day, if cold enough was a designated hog killing day and that was always fun watching the blood spurt and the guts spill out of the stomach.

Brad, had to cross the tracks to his Wednesday night job as an usher at the Larry Bell Auditorium for the wrestling matches events.

I had several good reads of him describing the wrestling bouts and challengers and the show of bloated egos.

I used to go to the wrestling matches too. My daddy sometime would go and hangout talking local politics while I got into the crowd and made fool of myself. I broke my arm one time there falling off the bleachers.

All this wrestling talk remind me of a MAD magazine article that came out written by Harvey Kurtzman and illustrated by fellow Georgian Jack Davis.

It was the first issue of MAD as in magazine form. Up until that point MAD was a comic book. The publishing date is July 1955, the month I turned 14, which was during my Wrestling bout craze.

Take it away Jack!