The cock fight
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Southern Lines
Lloyd “Cape” Caperton
Long before anyone in the South had ever heard of football or stock car racing as a source of entertainment, there were other types of sporting events that many enjoyed.
One of these was horse racing and raising and riding on and/or betting and wagering on a favored horse. For many poorer southerners, however, owning and raising a race horse was something that they could not afford. This being said, owning and raising a fighting rooster or chicken was something that even most of the economically challenged could afford to participate in.
Most fighting chickens were game roosters, although there were, on occasion, some contests with fighting hens, also. Often, steel spurs were placed over the natural ones to make the contest more lethal and quick. Sometimes big money was, and often is still, bet on a favored fighting chicken.
Cock fighting is now illegal in most states, and I believe that doing it is now considered some sort of federal offense. Of course, that did not stop cock fighting and probably made it even appeal more to some. Aside from watching chickens fight each other in my yard, I have to admit that I have never been to a cock fight. I have, however, been associated with people who frequented organized cock fights.
Years ago, a woman who rented one of my houses paid me her rent from the proceeds she made from running a concession stand at a cock fighting ring. A few years later, I dated a woman, one of the few that I ever dated that was younger than me; someone set me up with her. She raised fighting roosters. She said that it was so “sweet” as to how those brave roosters were willing to fight and kill each other over their pretty little hens. She said that she expected no less out of her men! She was supposed to take me to a cock fight, but everywhere we went – she always wanted to go somewhere: nightclubs, etc. – as to where one, or several, of her exes was at. After getting me into several fights, we broke up, and she never took me to a cock fight.
The best cockfighting story was told to me nearly 40 years ago by a customer who frequented my store, a very old man named Bill, who was about 90 at the time. Bill was the son of a Confederate veteran who said that he had served in WWI. Bill was a short wiry man who had a tattoo of a pretty Mexican woman wearing a sombrero on his arm, although the tattoo, like his arm, was pretty wrinkled.
I asked about the tattoo. He said that the tattoo was his first girlfriend. Around the turn of the century, for his sixteenth birthday gift, his father had taken him to a brothel in Mexico to lose his virginity. Bill said that in the downstairs of the brothel, there was a tattoo artist, who for a fee, would give someone a tattoo of the likeness of the woman that had just been with him. Bill said that his father paid for him such a tattoo also as a souvenir for the then young man.
Bill was a trader of hunting dogs, guns, chickens, and most anything else; he raised and sold pet raccoons and carried one around with him that he had trained to dance. He purchased many guns from me over the years. Bill had some sort of nerve condition that caused him to jerk, twitch and shake all of the time. When he would handle a gun in my store, other customers would often get nervous and leave. He said that he had had this condition all of his life, but I figured that it had gotten worse as he had aged.
Somehow, during one of our many conversations, the subject of cockfighting arose. Bill told me that he had gotten into the sport for a while. Bill was then married to a younger woman; she was only about 80 or 85, and he would always leave her in the vehicle when he would come inside my store. That day it was about 95 degrees outside. He told me that he had raised a prized fighting cock from an egg someone had given him. He told me that his rooster had whipped every other rooster in the regional contest in Alabama and had won a bunch of money; then it was time to enter him into the national cock fighting contest, which was in the hills of northern Georgia.
He and his rooster hitched a ride with some friends to the event, which was in a very wooded, secluded area. About a half mile away from the event, which was on a dirt road, people were parking their vehicles. They parked as close as they could and walked the rest of the way in. He said that the place was like a big fairground. There were concession stands set up everywhere and all sorts of games set up for children who had accompanied their parents. There were also several stage areas set up and several different bands were playing country and bluegrass music. He said that there were hundreds of people there and that there were cock fighting rings set up all over the place as to where the local and state top cock fighters would take on each other and compete for the national championship.
The event had its own security force. Towards the backside of this property was the main headquarters, an old dog trot / plantation / farmhouse, which was on a hill, with the back of the house on the edge of a steep cliff or bluff, with a creek at the bottom. It was still in the morning, and it would be awhile before Bill’s rooster would be fighting, so he decided to look around inside the headquarters house, which he said only participants in the event could enter.
Before Bill could finish his story, his wife, Jewel, came inside.
“Bill, it’s hot out there!” she yelled.
“You go back out there and get in the car; I am talking to this man. I’ll be out there directly,” Bill replied.
He finished his story. He said that in the downstairs of the house, in one room, they had slot machines and gambling machines, and people were lined up to use them. In another room people were playing poker. In another room they had a big roulette wheel set up, and people were betting on it. In another room, they had a bar set up to where you could get any drink you wanted, and on the bar, as free condiments, they had a big punch bowl full of stuff that young people like to smoke: marijauna. People were rolling themselves up joints as big as cigars.
In another room, women were standing and sitting around in their night clothes and underwear. If you were a man and had some extra money, you could take one of these upstairs for a while. Bill looked at me and said, “There were people there from all over the world, Mexico, Hawaii, everywhere.”
“They had anything in this world in that place that you could ever want!”
Before Bill had made a complete tour of the facility, he heard a bunch of screaming, yelling and cussing… “Raid! Raid! It’s a damn raid, everybody outta’ here!” People were knocking each other down while trying to get out the front door of the house. Outside the house, dozens of law enforcement authorities – possibly state, federal, or both – were trying to apprehend those trying to flee. There was a lot of cussing and fighting going on; some event goers were on the ground in handcuffs, and many who struggled were being shocked with cattle prods, which was sometimes used by law enforcement before tasers and stun guns came into use.
Many others, who were fast enough, were making it to the nearby woods and freedom. Bill was afraid that he might not be fast enough to make it past the law and into the woods, so he ran towards the back of the house and jumped out of a bathroom window, which overlooked a bluff. He tumbled down the hill and hit his head on something and was knocked unconscious.
Later he woke up, many hours later, and the sun was about to go down. He made his way back up the hill to the house, which had yellow “do not enter” tape all around it. The place was deserted, the people he had ridden there with were gone, and his champion fighting rooster was gone, also. Bill made his way back to the main road and hitched rides back to Sylacauga. Bill never knew whether his rooster would have become a national champion or not; he never saw it again. A pretty sad story!
“Well…Jewel is waiting for me outside in the car,” he said, as he finished his story, “guess I need to get on out there.”
“That must have happened to you back when you were young?” I asked.
“Oh yeah!” Bill replied, “I was still really young back then…I was only 72!”
Until next time, Dixie forever!