Home > Oral Histories of Some Lankville Pugilists, Sports > Oral Histories of Some Former Lankville Pugilists

Oral Histories of Some Former Lankville Pugilists

June 5, 2013 Leave a comment Go to comments

By Herm Mount-Vince  (1941-1949, 26W, 24L, 9KO)
boxer
File photo

Well, when you first came by here, I thought you wanted to compliment me on my lawn.  Look here, I’m 85 years old and I keep a good lawn.  You look at the areas near the sidewalk, you see them?  Normally people got big god damn mud patches there.  I can’t stand the sight of that.  But look at my lawn.  Grass all the way to the sidewalk.  Run your hand through that.  Go on, run your god damn hand through it.  [The interviewer was reticent but Mount-Vince insisted to the point of near-violence].  Alright, that was easy enough, wasn’t it?  What was the big god damn deal?  You feel that– that’s what they call LUSH.  I keep a good lawn.  Best in the neighborhood.

Anyway, I wasn’t what you’d really call a serious boxer.  I had quick hands but they used to say I had concrete legs.  They meant that I couldn’t move my legs, not that they were strong as concrete– just that they were, didn’t move, right?  Do you understand?  Heavy legs.  So, usually a guy would dance around me and I couldn’t keep up.  I’d get tired out and then after awhile I’d just sort of fall down.  I got knocked out quite often.

I remember one time out in the Desert region.  They had a place called the Boulevard Arena and I fought there often.  They put me on a bill with Curtis Extension-Wand [middleweight champion, 1946-1948].  I got to meet him beforehand.  He was alright.  He had a funny habit of putting a toothpick in his mouth.  That’s much as I remember.  I think I got knocked out in that fight.

I used to have all my clippings.  Used to get real angry when my clippings weren’t favorable.  There was one writer who said, and I’ll never forget it, “Mount-Vince is distinctly mediocre; the sort of blinkered individual that comes along upon occasion taking the same route that feces might take along a sewer pipe.”  Yep.  Then later in the article he said that I was a “travesty” and “an aggregation of different feces that causes a system clog thereby requiring service.”   Now, I never done nothing to this guy.

I met him outside a restaurant one time, me and some of the fellows.  We took his coat and shoved it into a newspaper box.  I know it don’t sound like much but that was a big insult back then.

You need to seed your lawn in the fall.  When you get them cold nights.  That’s the best time.

Categories: Oral Histories of Some Lankville Pugilists, Sports Tags: ,
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