Once They Heard the Cheers

by Wilfred Charles Heinz

  "Oh, now I remember your face," she said. "Now I remember you, Bill."

  "You used to call me Beel," I said.

  "That's right," she said, smiling. "Bill."

  We each remarked how well the other looked. She said we would be eating soon, and Peter made a drink for me and one for himself. I met the children, three boys then ten, seven, and five, and the girl then eight, and Peter and I sat down in the living room.

  "On the way here," I said, "we were agreeing how close Rocky was with his money. Shortly before he retired I drove him from here into Boston one afternoon. I forget why we went, but the next day he was going to appear at the opening of a supermarket in Rochester, New York, and we had planned to drive back here again for the night. Around six o'clock he said he wanted to drop in at Somerset Hotel. There were five or six guys there who, he said, were well-to-do business men or contractors or whatever. He said they called themselves 'The Jolly Ps.' "

  Peter was nodding, indicating that he had heard of them.

  "Rocky said that once a month they'd do something together. Maybe it would be just a night in Boston or maybe it would be a weekend hunting or fishing trip, and we dropped in on them in a suite at the Somerset. They had plates of hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and we sat around with them for a while. Then Rocky and I went to dinner at some restaurant where the owner knew him. From there we went to another place where we picked up Frank Fontaine, the comedian, and from there we went to another spot where there was a show. Wherever we went we were on the house. Rocky wasn't springing, and he wouldn't let me."

  "That's the way he was," Peter said, smiling and nodding.

  "About midnight I told him we either had to start back for Brockton or get a room, so we decided to get a room. We went into a hotel—I've forgotten the name—and walked up to the desk and I told the clerk what we wanted. He turned the register around for me and handed me a pen. I was just about to sign us in when your brother said, 'Wait. Don't sign that. I know where we can get a room for free. It won't cost us anything. We can go back to the Somerset, and those guys will be leaving soon and we can sleep there.' I said, 'Look, Rock. I'll pay for it, so let's stay here.' 'No,' he said, and he took the pen out of my hand and handed it back to the desk clerk.

  "When we got back to the suite the guys were still there. The place was full of cigar smoke, the ash trays were full and what was left of the hors d'oeuvres looked like animal leavings."

  Peter was laughing now.

  "So Rocky said to them, 'You fellas won't be using the beds in there, so do you mind if Bill and I sack out?' They said it was all right with them, so we went into the bedroom. Your brother went right to sleep, but I lay there listening to the laughter in the sitting room and finding it hard to believe I was in a situation like this with the heavyweight champion of the world.

  "Finally, about two or three in the morning, I heard our hosts leaving and the door slam. Rocky had left a call for eight o'clock, but when we got up and I walked into the bathroom, there weren't any clean towels. All of them, bath towels and all, had been used and most of them were on the floor. After we washed, we dried our faces and hands with toilet paper."

  Peter was laughing again.

  "Now we go out to the car, figuring we'll get breakfast at the airport. I remember it was a beautiful sunny morning, and we're just about to get into the car when we hear a voice hollering, 'Hey Rock!' We look up at the hotel and your brother says, 'It's Ted! It's Ted Williams! We can get breakfast with him. Let's go up.'

  "Up we go. Ted asked if he could order breakfast for us, and I was so embarrassed that I declined. Rocky had orange juice, a couple of eggs, toast and coffee, and he had no sooner finished that when he asked Ted if he could use his razor. Ted told him to go right ahead, so he shaved with Ted Williams' razor, and I drove him to the airport where he took off to open the supermarket at noon in Rochester, New York."

  "That's the way he was," Peter said. "In a way he was peculiar, because he was different with all kinds of people."

  "I can believe that," I said. "In fact, I know it."

  "He never wanted to offend anybody."

  "How well I know," I said. "One night in Boston, he and Allie and I drove out to the airport to pick up someone. Allie said, 'You don't want this guy, Rock.' Rocky said, 'I know.' So Allie said, 'Then tell him.' Rocky said, 'I don't want to hurt his feelings.' Allie said, 'The hell with his feelings.' And Rocky said, 'You see, I don't mind knocking a guy out in the ring, but I don't like to hurt anyone's feelings.' "

  Peter was nodding again.

  "You know how he was in the ring," I said. "He was a destroyer, and they used to say that you'd have to kill him to get him out of there. After he became champ, and he was in camp or traveling around the country, he used to send post cards to guys he'd knocked out on the way up. They were house painters or carpenters or whatever now, and he'd inquire how they were and wish them well, and some of them corresponded with him."

  "I know that," Peter said.

  Mom called us to dinner. The children had already eaten and we four sat down.

  "So eat now the pasta e piselli," Mom said to me. We had the spaghetti and peas, meat loaf, and tossed salad. We had red wine, and I complimented Linda and Mom.

  "My father was a real good cook," Peter said. He was looking at me and he winked, and then he looked at Mom.

  "Sure, but I teach him," Mom said.

  "Come on," Peter said, winking at me again. "Pa told me he taught you. He said you couldn't boil water."

  "What you say?" Mom said, looking at Peter and then getting it. "You just talk."

  "I know Mom's a great cook," I said, "because I had dinner one night at 168 Dover Street. Pop was good at peeling apples, though. After dinner, at the kitchen table, he peeled an apple and cut it up for us."

  "That's right," Peter said. "I always liked when he did that."

  "Too many memories in that house," Mom said to me, "through Rocky's career and in that park. For four years after Rocky pass away I no good. I give too much trouble my kids. After four years, with my faith, I even had to go to psychiatrist, and then my husband pass away. Fifty-two years together. It took me four years get over my Rocky, and my husband I over in one year, but I love him very much."

  "I know," I said.

  "A lot of people they miss Rocky," she said. "Some people call me regular. Steve Melchiore, the Rock's bodyguard from Philadelphia. He say, 'How are you, Mom?' They all miss Rocky, but I miss my husband, too. People used to say, 'Rocky, he look like his mother.' But I say, 'Look at the hands, like his father. The same frame.'

  "When Rocky became champ, my husband he very shy, and Barbara she shy, too. When Rocky train in the Grossinger, and it be a big fight and I pray he no get hurt, all the people come. He come out and sweat, and he wants to get the shower. He say to the people, 'Why don't you go over there? My father tell you where I born and everything.' My husband see and walk away and I say, 'Somebody got to do the talking.' I did, and my daughter Alice and Peter."

  I was remembering Allie Colombo's story of the press and Mom and Pop.

  "My daughter Alice," Mom was saying, "for twenty-two years she answer all the letter, and in Italian I answer to Italy. I send the picture and make Rocky autograph it. I was going to be school teacher. My father wanted me to be, but I didn't want to go, and my father he was very upset. You talk about this letter answer in Italian, and in Italy I very small and in reading I understand very well, in writing not so good."

  "How old were you when you came to this country?" I said.

  "Maybe you can't write this, Bill," she said, "because he did a wrong thing, my father. My father say I sixteen when I fifteen. He was here, and when he send for me he wrote my mother to say that. On a Saturday me and my sister we land, and on Monday I have job in Millburn, New Jersey. I got a lot of people there from the old country."

  "And what was the job?" I said.

  "Making flannel nightgown," she said. "I used to make the buttonhole and then
I make the puff. You know, the powder puff, and we make by hands. Then we went to New Rochelle, and we stay a little bit."

  "What work did you do there?" I said.

  "What I used to do there?" she said. "Wait a minute. The same thing. The nightgown in the factory. We move to Bridgeport, and we live over there about three years. I work in the bullets factory, and I don't know if you know. Was a big machine like this table. It go around, and it was a nice job."

  "Was it at Remington Arms?" I said.

  "That's right," she said. "Then I work where they make the corsets. Then I work in another factory, and a lot of people used to die. In this factory they used to carry this steel and they put it here and carry over there, and they call it The Butch Shop because so many people die. I had good job with this steel. All men and very few women. I had big surprise, when they give back pay. It was war time. You know?"

  "World War One."

  "Yes, and when I get $200, I don't know. It was so much money and I give to my father. One time I open envelope to take ten cents, and he almost kill me. He send all the money to Italy, and then he send here my mother and one girl and three boys. We were six in family.

  "Then there was electric factory, making all equipment for electricity. We used to make, what they call the mantles. You know?"

  "Gas mantles?" I said, and then demonstrating, for I remember them. "A kind of mesh hood like this that, if you had gas lights, you lighted?"

  "Yes," she said. "Gas, electricity, I don't know. It was combination. With the piece work I make the most, the fastest. The boss, he like me so much he bring the other girl, and I show what to do. Then we have accident in my family. It took my mother two months to come here. The boat almost sink with the many under water, and then my brother was eleven and he used to go on the tricycle."

  "Scooter," Peter said.

  "Yes," she said. "This big truck, it get my poor little brother. My mother couldn't talk English, and I had to go to St. Vincent Hospital in Bridgeport. He live three-four days. His name was Nicky—Peter Nicholas—and I name my Peter for him."

  "I only mention this," Peter's wife, Linda, said, "because it ties in with the name, but I had a brother Richard who was killed in an accident."

  "And now Peter's oldest boy is named Peter Richard," Mom said. "So right after the accident my father, my mother were broken-hearted, and we came away to here because they didn't want to live there no more."

  "And then you went to work here?"

  "Oh, yes, in shoe factory. They put the little ribbon around, especially the pumps, and I used to put it around, and they liked my work very much. We moved here in March, and in July I meet my husband."

  "She never worked after they were married," Peter said.

  "Oh, I work when I marry," she said. "Even when I have you I had night job. I nurse my kids all, and with Peter I go to work and only nurse seven months."

  "You worked when you had the others too?" Peter said.

  "Off and on, so my husband could be home with kids. And then in the war I make bullets in Hingham."

  "Hingham, Massachusetts, in World War Two?" I said.

  "Yes. Was good money there. There was danger. The powder they put in bullets, there was poison in. You used to break on the skin. In all my hair and my skin it broke out. I had to go to skin doctor, and for fifty-two week I got seventy dollar. They pay me good because they think I poisoned.

  "Then Pop was working in shoe shop, and he was getting twenty-one dollar, twenty-five dollar and thirty-five dollars the most. At war time he made fifty, sixty dollars, but everything was cheap."

  "And the work was hard," I said, "I'll always remember something Rocky told me one afternoon at Grossinger's, after he had won the title. We were sitting by the pool, and he said he had just made an appearance at a convention of shoe manufacturers in Boston. He said, 'When they introduced me I had to say something, and I don't know if I said the right thing or not, but I told them I used to go into the factory where my father worked and I saw how hard he had to work, and then I saw the pay he brought home. I said, 'One thing I was sure of was that I was never gonna go into the shoe factories, so I became a fighter, and you men are responsible for me being heavyweight champion of the world.' He asked me if that was all right. I said, All right? That was great!' "

  "Everybody used to tell me when Rocky become champ," Mom said, "that it gonna hurt Peter, but I don't think so."

  "Of course not," I said, looking across the table at Peter. "You have a fine son in Peter."

  "When I was playing in Duluth," Peter said, "I was a good catcher—not a Johnny Bench—but I remember one foul-mouthed guy who said, 'It's Rocky's brother, but he's not an inch of his brother.' If I was John Smith's brother it would never have happened. You don't compete with a Rocky Marciano."

  "When Rocky first started to fight," I said to Peter, "you were quite young. Do you have any early memories of what it was like having a brother who was starting out to be a fighter?"

  "I sure have," he said, "in the kitchen at 168 Dover Street, when Rocky lost a fight to Coley Wallace in the amateurs. It was like a bad, bad dream in that kitchen. Mom was in church. She used to go before every fight he had."

  "I remember," I said to Mom, "that later, on the nights when Rocky fought, a doctor used to pick you up and drive you around until the fight was over."

  "That's right," she said.

  "I had to be seven, eight years old," Peter was saying, "and it was the first time I knew Rocky was a fighter. Somebody said, 'Rocky lost the fight.' It was like the end of the world, and when Mom came in I told her that Rocky lost the fight, and she said, 'He may have lost, but he didn't get hurt.' "

  "Always he shouldn't get hurt," Mom said.

  "Were you in Philadelphia for the Walcott fight?" I asked Peter.

  "I sure was," he said.

  "It was some fight," I said. "Some sportswriters, who had seen them all, said it was the greatest heavyweight championship fight since Dempsey and Firpo, and some time later I said to Rocky, 'When Walcott knocked you down with that left hook in the first round, it was the first time you were ever down. What were you thinking when you found yourself on the deck?' He said, 'I was thinking, 'Boy, this guy can really hit. This is gonna be some fight.' And it was."

  "I was sitting with a priest in the tenth row ringside," Peter said. "Father McKenzie, and how many times he's been in my house. Father kept saying, 'Keep praying, Peter.' I said, 'No, I got to leave. I don't want to see my brother get beat up.' I left one time, and he brought me back."

  Mom was silent. She was just sitting there, looking at her hands folded on the table.

  "You tired, Mom?" Peter said. "Do you want to go home?"

  "No," she said, straightening up. "I want to talk with Bill."

  "Okay," Peter said, smiling. "I just don't want you to get tired."

  "When Rocky ten, eleven year old," she said, "he come home from school. I used to make my own bread. He look, and I said, 'What you look?' He said, 'You work all the time.' I say, 'Why don't you help? Wash the dish.' So he took the cloth and he go like this. He make one slap with it and put it down, and I said,'What you do?' He said, 'You got the daughter. When they come home from school, let them wash the dish.'

  "Then he say, 'What be your wish if I make a lot of money?' I say, 'Rocky, we got nice home, not big but clean.' He say, 'What you like if I make a lot of money? What? You see my arm? I got a lot of strength in my arm. I make a lot of money. What you like to do?' I said, 'I like to travel when my family grow up.' Then he become champ, a big shot, and he send me to Italy."

  "I remember that," I said. "You and Pop went over, and it was a great disappointment. You went to Pop's town and everybody wanted money, so you never went to your town."

  "Rocky, he give me three, four thousand dollar," she said, nodding. "We should stay three month, but we stay twenty-one days. Too much sadness there. Everybody expect, expect."

  "That saddened Rocky, too," I said. "A heavyweight champion is
the one athlete who is known and looked up to all over the world, and in Italy, where his parents came from, they wanted money."

  "Not everybody want," she said. "We got letter—I threw away now—from Japan, everywhere. They write, 'He's unusual boy. We don't write you because he big shot, but because of what he is. Some people they champ, but nothing else, but that's why we write you, the mother and the father.' "

  "And I'm sure," I said, "that letters like that made you and Pop proud."

  "Then everywhere he go," she said, "Rocky he leave things. I get package from Waldorf Astoria. Shoes, shirt. I used to thought it was something for me. I say to him, 'I used to teach you, you not like that.' He said, 'When I young boy you used to teach me to try this, do that. But now I got to be the real Rocky. That's why they call me that.' Some people they honest. They send you, and they say, 'Rocky was in this room.' Some people they take."

  "It's so odd," Linda said, "how Rocky wanted to make it big since he was a small child. Others would dress to it, but not him."