My first Bout of Street Fighting

My father, as I mentioned before, had always loved birds and I remember he had even installed a pigeon coop somewhere. However, during this time his mania about hunting included large wild birds, the beautiful tropical Pheasant that abounded in Panama, even when he brought them home riddled with brass shotgun pellets.

But, it seemed to me as though he got tired of hunting and one day he brought home a box full of yellow baby chicks and placed then under the bed with a light bulb, and the red medicine in their water. It soon became our jobs as kids to look after the chicks.

As time passed it became my sole responsibility to lock up the chickens at Mr. Harris’ place across the way not far from where we lived on Mariano Arosemena Street, near the Olympic Stadium in Curundú. One evening after I had finished my chore of locking up the chicken coop with the padlock and was feeling satisfied that I had completed my obligations well, I remembered that I had heard the voices of some baseball players coming from the other side of the stadium wall. I decided to spend some time sitting there watching them practice after I had finished up.

I took a leisurely walk around to the Olympic stadium grandstand and sat in a section surrounded by other people who had the same intention. As I settled in and started enjoying the spectacle of professional baseball players practising around the athletic field, some Spanish kids my age came running by me playing hide and seek. One of them, still giggling, broke away from the others and sat by me trying to hide from another kid. I would find out real soon who he was running from as this Westindian kid came rushing up to us both and attempted to grab me.

Since I didn’t know any of those kids and I was dressed in my clean white shirt I refused to join them holding my ground. The Spanish kid took off still snickering in the heat of play, but the Westindian kid would not give up on me. He rushed me again and again while I tried to shake him off me. “Look,” I said annoyed as heck, “I don’t want to play; you goin dirty me shirt man!” He gave me a look that said, ‘I don’t care’ and when he went to hold me in a bear hug I almost puked when I saw that this kid was filled from head to toe with horrible running sores and scabs.

Adding to my problem would have been the inevitable confrontation with my young tyrannical Aunt Gweny who had warned me sharply about dirtying my clothes and making her mother wash all the time.

Now, encouraged by the rest of his neighborhood cronies he lunged at me again and I went wild with outrage throwing punches to the face of my young aggressor hoping to discourage him from pestering me. “Figurina, agárralo Figurina!” the other kids yelled encouraging him as the adults looked on in a typical scenario that I would become very familiar with in knowing Panamanians and their love for watching a good street fight.

I assessed the situation and would rather have faced Figurina than my Aunt Gweny who had the ear of my father who would not stop to listen to any part of my story in the matter and proceed to beat me senseless. If I was going to experience any part of what I was expecting at home, then Figurina, I thought, could not hit me harder than my father. So, when he rushed me again I met him with the same barrage of blows to his face and head which only made his oozing sores run bloody. Surprised at my reaction the boy seemed stunned or maybe just confused.

Figurina, the big tough streetwise Westindian kid stopped dead in his tracks and walked off the stands, seemingly embarrassed, and resumed chasing his neighborhood friends. The crowd sitting there that day, however, had not had enough and, encouraging a fight, started to chant, “Come on back, Figurina, that pelao can’t beat you!”

Emboldened the kid thought that he had to fight this puny kid who had stopped him right in front of all his friends. I walked down out of the shade onto the track hoping to get out of that stadium area, but there he was again. Figurina continued to follow me.

I nevertheless kept walking away at a leisurely stride trying to get away from that filthy kid as a bigger audience had started to assemble including all the baseball players who were about to get a view of one of my best performances although at the time I had never really seen a street fight or had participated in one. It was a new experience for me since in our neighborhood I had never seen smaller kids fighting.

In the meantime Figurina challenged me again right before all the people in the crowd. But, I was not concerned with the crowd; all the while I was concerned with my aunt and my father. “You better get away from me!” I said almost coming to tears as I could see my gigantic father pummelling me with some object he had in his hand at the time. Figurina took a step towards me and, without a word, tried to touch my shirt and I drew away repulsed at the sight of that kid with all those running sores, scabs and scars and his attempt to embrace me in a fight.

I knew that it was useless to try to talk him out of this confrontation so I made ready for a fight and a dirty shirt. A hard right to the jaw made him desist again since, presumably, he thought that I would retreat as puny as I was compared to him. As I panned the crowd I realized they were all into the fight and it was then that I remembered how that boy Rey had hit that other teenage boy in the street fight that he reluctantly became a part of.

Noting I had stunned the bigger kid before me, Figurina came groping for me. I quickly hit him again as hard as I could and surprisingly he fell to the ground. The crowd roared cheering me on this time as the hurt kid got up and hesitated to charge again. I had diffused my dirty opponent. The ball players who seemed to know Figurina as a local pest came over and congratulated me immediately.

However, I would have an enemy for life in that streetwise Figurina and some of his friends who lived somewhere not far from where I was living with my aunts and grandmother. That would be the start of my career of transporting the valuable “Susú” errands for my grandmother all over the city of Panama between 1944 and 1953 when I left them for good as a seventeen year old streetwise teenager.

This story will continue.