Yup, It's Real (and legal) --- Women's Bare Knuckle Fighting

[Briar Lee]

I blame Clint Eastwood for making bare knuckle fighting popular in "Every Which Way But Loose."

True Story

When I was a small child there was a cultural divide between fox hunters and coon hunters.

This was old time fox hunting, where the hunters could take their families out on high clearings (balds) at night and loose the hounds, who when they struck a fox would make heavenly music as they pursued the fox in huge circles, who was never killed. When the fox tired of the game he’d den up.

As far as I know this kind of fox hunting is extinct. In the sixties the foxes were driven away by coyotes (or so it was claimed) and city residents bought up farms to retire on and committed the unpardonable sin of posting their land.

If I’d not been there, I’d never believe how my father could walk with no light through the pitch black timber. I’d carry my kerosene lantern, and follow the sound of his footsteps until far off through the woods a hound would strike a fox, then the pack would join. We’d head back towards the campfire on the bald to enjoy the race.

The Voice of Bugle Ann - Wikipedia

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Fox hunting did not die all at once. As it declined my father decided to breed quail dogs, instead of fox hounds.

My father one day, took me with him over on the Sac River where the Stockton Dam has now flooded, to look for a quail dog. When we arrived at the shack, there was junk in the yard, and a fat woman came out and told Daddy her “old man” was down on the river with his friends at a coon on a log contest.

When we found it I’d never seen such depravity. There were men drinking whiskey straight from the bottle in broad daylight. To my shock I saw women drinking beer right out of the bottle. There were all these beautiful hounds, that one man would let loose to swim out to fight a coon on a log, and the most horrible and bloody battle would ensue. The men on the bank gambled on whether the dog would drown the coon, or would give up trying.

My father found the man who owned the quail dog, and after discussion my father said he was looking for a lemon spotted hound and the man’s dog was liver spotted, so we got in the truck to drive home.

I asked Daddy why he wanted a lemon spotted bird dog and he said those are disqualified from field trial contests. They had to be good dogs and stay close, or else.

I was upset and he asked why, and I said I felt so sorry for those poor dogs, that coon might have killed them, and they got all cut up.

I said I see why city trash call those men river rats now!

My father said don’t let Mama catch you calling people names, she’ll blame me.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

@Briar Lee Great story! You should write an autobiography.

 

[Briar Lee]

Another true story

Preserved to this day at Lindley Prairie Cemetery near Bear Creek where an ancient wooden Christian Church is still as spotless, clean, and immaculate as the photos I have of it, taken in the late 1800s.

A distant cousin of mine named Robert Bruce Ray (descended from the Pictish people, no doubt) would each Decoration Sunday afternoon assemble the great grandsons of Lincoln’s Dark Horse cavalry and he’d lead us to gravestones marked

8th MSM

Or

12th Mo Vol Cav

At each grave he’d recite heroic deeds done chasing Quantrill or Forrest’s cavalry or fighting Indians, Bushwhackers or Jayhawkers. He’d tell of daring rescues and exacting vengeance on common cutthroats and plunderers who used the war as an excuse for evil.

Lest we forget what ending slavery cost.

Then we’d recite the ancient Latin motto

non ministrari sed ministrare

And behind Robert Bruce came along his lovely wife Geraldine with the young girls, to tell each one how loyal, pure, charitable and kind their lovely brides were,,,,

Who hunted foxes riding sidesaddle, so they might wear pretty dresses.


The Confederate memorials and organizations got all the ink but the victors kept the flame of memory alive as well.

It’s bad enough men fight bare knuckles.

I can’t picture little girls growing up to do such things.

 

[mso489]

Women used to be stereotyped as a civilizing influence on their men. I guess I'm an old fogey and disapprove of their battering each other bloody for "sport." Looks like a win for the dark side.

 

[brian64]

I blame Clint Eastwood for making bare knuckle fighting popular in "Every Which Way But Loose."

That's a typical ridiculous aspect of movies. Countless fist fighting scenes in so many films over the years...sometimes brutal fights...and very rarely is it ever depicted realistically.

Usually there will be at best a trickle of blood or something when it's over, and a short time later there will be no trace it ever happened. In reality there would be massive swelling, cuts, contusions for days or maybe even weeks from some of these fights.

At least in the case of that Eastwood movie it was a comedy. But often these things are depicted in serious movies and we're supposed to believe someone can get absolutely pummeled in the face over and over with bare fists and walk away practically unscathed. Sometimes characters even get shot and are like new the next day. I greatly appreciate the occasional films that depict injuries realistically.

 

[Sam Gamgee]

That's a typical ridiculous aspect of movies. Countless fist fighting scenes in so many films over the years...sometimes brutal fights...and very rarely is it ever depicted realistically.

Usually there will be at best a trickle of blood or something when it's over, and a short time later there will be no trace it ever happened. In reality there would be massive swelling, cuts, contusions for days or maybe even weeks from some of these fights.

At least in the case of that Eastwood movie it was a comedy. But often these things are depicted in serious movies and we're supposed to believe someone can get absolutely pummeled in the face over and over with bare fists and walk away practically unscathed. Sometimes characters even get shot and are like new the next day. I greatly appreciate the occasional films that depict injuries realistically.

A great example are those Jason Bourne movies (I don’t watch many films but I enjoy some of those). The depicted beatings taken and given would likely kill a man in real life. In the film he sort of limps away, but in reality he’d be hauled off via ambulance.

 

[pappymac]

Women used to be stereotyped as a civilizing influence on their men. I guess I'm an old fogey and disapprove of their battering each other bloody for "sport." Looks like a win for the dark side.

You never met two of my four sisters.
Linda, who was four years older than me, made the mistake of falling in love and marrying a man from Mississippi. If there was a man who fit the stereotype of a "Mississippi Man" and who fit @Briar Lee story, it was Butch. After they had been married for five years, he started gambling and hanging out with people where having a pistol in your belt was a good idea - this was in the late 1960s. One night when he went out and lost his paycheck, Linda was waiting behind the door for him. She took his pistol and then pistol whipped him. Don't know if he ever gambled after that but he sure the hell didn't carry his pistol where she could reach it, or lose all his money. Butch died around 1999.

My youngest sister just had a mean streak you didn't want to cross. When she was 8 months pregnant with her first child, her and her husband bought a house. It was supposedly inspected according to the real estate agent. First time a storm came through they found out the roofed leaked in several rooms so she went to the agent and told him he needed to fix the room. The agent made the mistake of telling her, they signed the papers and the house was theirs and her problem.
According to the local police report, she grabbed him by the shirt collar, pulled him across the desk and proceeded to beat him. She is only about 5'3" tall. When the police arrived (called by the secretary), the officers were two men she had graduated with. They took the report and told the agent if he knew what was good for him, he would get the roof fixed. He decided to not press charges and repaired the roof.

I think of these two stories anytime I hear about women having a civilizing influence on men or being the "kinder, gentler sex."

 

[Briar Lee]

The relative that caused us to make Lindley Prairie cemetery our first stop after church let out was my father’s mother Lula, whose father Little Bob and grandfather Big Bob and her sisters Orba and Jesse were all buried. Lula died in 1960 and Ruby died in 1986.

As Robert Bruce and Geraldine Ray would tell me that those four sisters were too pretty for their own good, with Jesse being the prettiest.

My grandmother Lula refused to marry my grandfather for 16 years, from 1900 to 1916. She wanted to keep her options open it was said.

Orba fell in love with my uncle Elmer, and when he married another she drowned herself in a well, in 1909.

Jesse married the richest boy in Cedar County, but died in 1912 of typhoid fever.
A half century later he’d hug my Aunt Ruby at Ray family reunions and cry out

Oh my God Bood, wuddent Jesse as purty as an Angel?

(Right in front of his wife)

But the youngest, Ruby, acquired the nickname Bood from my father trying to pronounce her name and Bood left a trail of dead gangster husbands in Pendergast era Kansas City and wore large diamonds and fur coats and rode in long Packards on her visits home.

When my father was about five or six he said he stole one of Ruby’s husband’s cigarettes and his father and Ruby’s husband (nicknamed Slick) caught him smoking it, and he got a whipping over it.

My father ran to tell his Mama, and Lula and Ruby decided the men to were to blame for his fall, that a child was too young to steal, and they locked the men out of the house. Lula had a boy rig her buggy (ladies never drove cars) and Bood and her drove to town so Bood could catch a train home.

Slick had a long drive home by himself in his Packard.

After a few days sleeping in the granary Lula allowed my grandfather back in her home.

My mother would hear those stories and never failed to point out that pretty girls have options plain girls do not.