Allen Thrower

Austin, Texas
Spring of 1949 (written 9-1-1998)

I was in the eighth grade at Allan Junior High School.

Allan Jr. High was a rough school. Half Latin American and half Anglos. Fifteen hundred students in grades 7-8-9. During my two years there I saw a lot of fisticuffs as well as many knife fights. In two years I saw 30 boys cut up with knives, some of them very seriously wounded, but no deaths. As I said, it was a rough school. (There was a knifing death at Austin High.) There were often rumors of “the big rumble,” which never came off. Once I stayed home from school, expecting “the big rumble” that day.

My two years there I experienced knives pulled on me three times, but it never resulted in a fight. In fact, one fellow was mouth-agape after I asked him why he wanted to cut me and he had answered (without reason?), “…to see if my knife is sharp.” I had then asked him, “Well, why don’t you whittle on a piece of wood then?” I knew he had almost killed a boy once with a knife. As result of our encounter, he became one of my best friends and protected me from bullies at lunch-time from then on.

We had 103 boys in my P.E. class. I was not a fighter. I was among the taller boys in the class. We had a surprisingly large number of boys six feet tall or better, including me. I was thirteen years old and was 6’1″ and weighed 110 pounds. (On my 12th birthday I was 5′ 11 3/4 inches tall and weighed 107 pounds, like a big stick of spaghetti!)

Well, it seems we played all sports in P.E. We played football in the fall, softball in season, soccer in season, track in the spring, and last of all–BOXING!

We were paired up by–no, not weight, but by height. That pitted me against one of the toughest boys in school: 169 pounds.

I saw him fight one night at the Austin Collesium in the Golden Gloves Tournament. He fought another boy in our class, also very tough. I told a friend who had gone with me, “I know these boys. It’s just a matter of who get the first hit in, and he’ll be the winner. That’s how it worked out. One hit in the first round: knees buckled, and a big fall. It was a knock-out!

That winner was my opponent! I was really scared. We were the last to fight. I saw fifty boxing matches in the days building up to our matchup in P.E. Actually, I was preparing myself for death. I thought to myself, “If he hits me, he’ll kill me.” So, when our time came, I went out swinging like a windmill with fifty blades. I hit him so fast and so often that he never got a lick in, and I won the fight. Afterwards, he told me, “I’ve never seen anybody fight like that in my whole life! ” Little did he know it was nothing but the abject fear of extinction that motivated me.