Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this column are those of Bishop Michael Goings and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Dillon Herald. This column should have appeared in Thursday’s paper so Rev. Goings column will be appearing twice this week.
Today, I want to take you back to the early sixties and to a much simpler time when there was no COVID-19.
A time when we had to endure an ongoing battle against Jim Crow and racism that was being waged by organizations like the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and quite a few others in their attempt to dismantle segregation.
While all of this was going on and many battles were being won through legislation, litigation, and public protest, our little southern, rural community was located off the beaten path and so far out of the limelight that we never got much media attention. This was true except when something very unprecedented and drastic happened.
Otherwise, things for us in our little, quaint, and quietly progressing county remained very normal, routine, and monotonous, except in the little parcel of earth where I was reared called Newtown.
For certain the name Newtown was an oxymoron and did not describe the depressed, dilapidated, and backward state of our community.
If Dillon County was quietly progressing in those days (according to our former official motto), Newtown was loudly regressing. Nevertheless, in spite of the issues and struggles of those times, there were some very amusing and adventurous times and characters that I interacted with in my upbringing that left an imprint on my life that I will never forget. Such a character was a cousin of mine who was appropriately nicknamed Jungle Baby. Talk about a character! He was a one-of-a-kind fellow who only shows up once in a lifetime.
He was a combination of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin on steroids.
With all of the many things, both good and bad, that defined the character and drama of Jungle Baby, it would be impossible to include all of them in my column today.
To his credit, he was arguably one of the most outstanding and versatile athletes who ever attended Gordon High School and was a three-sport letterman who was instrumental in helping the Trojans to win two state championships selectively in basketball (1966) and football (1967). Due to the very limited space that I have, I will only give you a synopsis of three of the episodes of Jungle Baby’s adventures and antics.
The Boy Who Lived
To Regret Going Down On Jungle Baby
In the fifties through the early sixties, the game of shooting marbles was a fascination and pastime for many of the boys in our community.
With its dirt roads, Newtown was ideal for playing marbles. All you had to do was either draw a big circle in a yard, where there was little or no grass, or in the road.
On our street, we had very few cars or traffic that would interrupt a marble game.
I was never a good marble player like some of the boys who would gather on our street to compete in a game of marbles.
Older boys like James Mitchell, Willie Earl Ladson, Hardee McCrae, and of course, Jungle Baby had proven and positioned themselves to be at the top of the pecking order when it came to the competitive game of playing marbles.
There was this fellow named Willie Lee Lawrence, who was an ordinary marble player, who had gained a reputation of going down on you when he was losing.
He got by with this unfair and dirty practice of reaching down to pick up his marbles out of the pot (circle) when he was losing for a long time.
Time and chance situated him in a game where Jungle Baby was in and cleaning up.
True to his routine, Willie Lee Lawrence made an abrupt effort to pick up his marbles out of the pot and was prevented from doing so by Jungle Baby’s big right fist in his mouth.
He hit him so hard that he knocked out one of his front teeth.
Willie Lee learned a good lesson that day about going down on people when he was losing.
It took Jungle Baby’s big fist and the loss of a front tooth that marked him for years as a victim of Jungle Baby’s fury and wrath to remind him of the importance of fair play.
Choke It Out
Cleveland!
I deliberately put the heading of this episode of the adventures and antics of Jungle Baby with “Choke It Out Cleveland” because it captures and expresses an incident of his life that produced a very well-known expression around school and in Newtown in the time when it happened.
Jungle Baby’s real name was Cleveland. He was the same age and in the same class at Gordon High (1967) as my brother, Marvin.
There was another fellow who was a grade or two ahead of Jungle Baby in school, whose name was Preston (who is deceased).
He was a pretty good athlete who played both football and baseball. Preston had earned the respect of Coach P. J. Glenn because he was a daring athlete with tenacity. This had earned him starting positions on the football and baseball teams.
Like Jungle Baby, Preston was also a prankster and daring guy who would not take down to hardly anyone. So, it was just a matter of time when time and chance would bring these two alpha males on a collision course for the title of who was the baddest and toughest.
I do not know what instigated this battle of the Titans, but something did and the fight of the decade was on. For a while, Preston stood his ground against Jungle Baby, who was bigger and stronger than he.
Then the laws of strength and size prevailed. Jungle Baby managed to put him to the ground and lay on top of him with his big hands around his throat where he started to choke him. He asked Preston gasping for breath, “Do you give up, man?”
In response to Jungle Baby’s question, he stubbornly said in a faint voice, “Choke it out, Cleveland. Choke it out!” At those words, Jungle Baby realized that he would have had to kill him and said, “Man, you are crazy” and turned lose his neck and got up off him. Consequently, the term “choke it out” became a popular saying and the two combatants became good friends.
The Last Dirty and Dastardly Act
The school year of 1967 was coming to an end and the senior class was preparing for class night and graduation.
There was some disputing between some of the seniors and one of the class faculty advisers. She had incurred the anger and displeasure of this group of prominent and popular seniors of whom Jungle Baby was a part of being one of the class most outstanding athletes as well as the avenger and arm of their retribution.
One morning before class advisor (who had enraged this group of leading seniors), entered her class, she was met by the students, who should have been seated in their desks, standing outside of her door.
When she inquired what they were doing standing outside the class, someone told her the problem.
With her hand over her mouth and nose, she went inside the classroom.
To her utter disgust, there was a big pile of poop on top of her desk that caused her to quickly exit the room.
Though there was much speculation and inquiry about who had done this filthy act (that never produced the culprit), all who truly knew him, knew well who had done it.
This was his masterpiece. His final dastardly deed as the champion of the absurd and obscene.
This big pile of mess had the Jungle Baby written all over it.
