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

Oral Histories of Some Former Lankville Pugilists

August 5, 2013 Leave a comment Go to comments

By Sonny Shorts (1924-1930, 33W 5L, 26KO)
boxer
File Photo

I am 108 years old so you will have to forgive me if my memory is not very good.  I have been in this Charity House for a very long time.  I grew up here.  Not in the Charity House I mean, I grew up in a house down the street.  My father and mother ran a barrels store.  It’s all farmland around here.

The Charity House is haunted.  Did you know that?  There is a vast monstrosity that lurks here.  I told the front desk about it and they moved me to another room.  They put a man named Heinz in the old room and he was killed.  When I continued to complain, they tore the walls out.  There was nothing there but ancient newspaper, balled up to create insulation.  But you could see something else as well.  It was not immediately visible but it was there.

I owned a house for a long time.  Had a lovely garage with the smoothest concrete floor imaginable.  I lived all alone; a confirmed bachelor.  For many years, there was an empty, untilled field behind the hedges in my yard.  I was pleased by this.  And then, one year, they planted corn.  The husks blew into my backyard, creating a scenario of deep confusion and resulting in melancholia.  I know it seems strange now to speak those words aloud but that was the feeling that came over me then.  It remained that way for a number of years.

I sold the house and moved to a smaller house.  It had a small side porch that looked out over the fields.  I would put out a TV tray with a little radio and some lemonade and a plate of meat.  If I tilted the radio in such a way and pulled the antenna all the way out, I could receive distant signals from over the mountain.  Every once in awhile, I could pick up a Lingus Nets match out of Lankville.

The new house did not have a garage.  It just had a pebbly little driveway that suddenly fell off into a deep chasm.  I purchased a package of these large funny balls for youngsters and tied them to some string so that I could tell where I had to stop the car before it fell off into the precipice.  But it rained once and the car slid forward anyway.  That elicited a second, deeper period of angry befuddlement, crying and inner pandemonium.

It was then that I became a recluse.  I placed heavy cardboard over all the windows and created a complex booby trap system about the house.  I called an insurance salesman.  “Come over right away,” I told him.  “I want to buy TONS of insurance.”  I heard him pull up in the pebbly driveway.  He knocked on the front door and I waited in the darkness behind a couch.  After some time, the knob turned slowly.  He stepped into the room and called my name.  He was beheaded instantly.

I went away to prison.  It was a special ward for the elderly.  The ward was also haunted.  The same abomination was there as it had always been.  I was assigned the job of…

An intern suddenly entered the room and informed Shorts that it was time for a snack.  The interview ended without Shorts discussing boxing.

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