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Some
People
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I've known a lot of different people in my life and some of them thought they were real tough guys. Most of them weren't tough at all, and some were just bullies. But I knew a few legitimate tough guys back in the seventies.
Johnny may have been the toughest.
He was clean cut and a decent looking guy, but he had been in and out of prison several times and seemed to be on the edge of going back at any time. Like some people, he had a pretty consistent fight or flight persona and I don't think flight was called upon many times.
He was well built, but not huge, and he possessed a hair trigger temper. He would fight a 5'7" 150 pounder or a 6'4" 250 pounder. He would fight a 70 year old or a 21 year old. He was a powder keg when drinking. But if he liked you, he was an OK guy.
He liked me.
Johnny and I were both in attendance at a party on the banks of the Ohio River and he gave me a ride to where my car was parked, closer in town. As we were cruising down Brownsboro Road, something happened and I don't know what it was, but a car began riding his bumper and passed us by honking the horn and giving us the finger. So Johnny took off after them and got right up behind them and began blinking his lights and honking his horn. So the car pulls up and two guys get out.
Johnny stops and we get out. I could immediately see that these two guys were in trouble and I tried to talk him out of going after them. He ignored my pleas and clinched his fists. The die had been cast.
I jumped on his back in a last ditch effort to hold him back, but he shrugged me off easily and kept charging. I went sprawling and looked up in time to see him smash the first guy's face with one punch and he went down like a wet dishrag. Out cold in the middle of Brownsboro Road.
The second guy threw up his hands and said, "I don't want any part of this."
Johnny told him, "Grab his feet and help me put him in the car."
So the guy grabbed his friend's ankles and they stuffed him in the front seat. Then he ran around to the driver's side and they took off down the road.
We had both been drinking beer all evening and I don't know why I was so angry about the altercation, but I was giving him Hell for it. He took me to my car and we parted without him saying a word.
I thought about that and was thankful he liked me or he might have killed me.
I didn't see him for several months after that. I was having dinner with a young lady named Maggie one evening in Masterson's, a popular Louisville restaurant at that time, when who should suddenly sit down at our table, but my friend Johnny.
He had been drinking and was a bit surly and a little loud. He chastised an old man sitting at a nearby table for staring at him and he kept making subtle remarks toward Maggie. We were nearly finished and as we prepared to leave, they asked Johnny to leave, too. So he left without causing too much of a disturbance and I began to wonder how I would get rid of him now. I was surprised when we said goodbye in the parking lot and he left without further adieu.
A couple of months later, I was having a brew in the Pub Steakhouse when I heard this guy talking about an incident which sounded quite familiar. I approached him and made an inquiry or two and found out he was talking about the scuffle with Johnny.
I had scanned the newspapers to make sure there were no related murders and assumed we had gotten away clean in that category. The guy's buddy didn't look too good the last time I saw him, so I asked about his welfare.
"Oh, he's alright now," his buddy amiably related. "He started it so he deserved what he got."
I
just left it there. I never found out what it was all about. I also
haven't seen Johnny since. Maybe he doesn't like me anymore.