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Miami, Florida to Lewiston, Maine, with Muhammad Ali
Forty years ago, May 25th, Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny Liston for the second time, in of all places, Lewiston, Maine, to cement his self-proclaimed status as "The Greatest".
Today's Boston Globe featured a piece written by Bud Collins, one of my favorite journalists. Throughout his exceptional, long, and illustrious career, Bud has been primarily a sports writer, finally becomming the pre-emminent sports writer on tennis in the English language. But Bud is a writer's writer and is also widely known as a travel writer and a memorist: his celebrity eclipses some of the stars of whom he has written.
In the Globe piece, Busload of memories from Ali-Liston II, By Bud Collins, Globe Correspondent, May 29, 2005, Collins recounts the trip he took from Miami, where Ali lived in a cinder block house, to Chicopee, Ma. for fight training, and on to the unlikely town of Lewiston, Maine for the big, championship fight. Ali, always an eccentric, even at 23, wouldn't fly and insisted he drive the bus to Maine, but not on the highways, only along the back roads, stopping in all the little towns along the way to sign autoraphs for his fans. Of course his whole crew proved to be as eccentric as Ali. It was some trip, and it is a good read, full of the history of the times, from one hell of a virtuosic raconteur.
The Liston - Ali fight in Lewiston produced one of the most famous boxing photos of all time. Ali standing over and taunting, a knocked out flat, Liston, to get up and fight.
Get up and fight you Big Ugly Bear!
Posted at May 29, 2005 06:45 PM
The Traveling Art Show and the Ali posts show another way of using the blog. If you have something to share, like the train graffiti photos, or you see an interesting article somewhere, it doesn't have to be totally relevant to the Mt. Hope community, but can be relevant to people in general.
Posts like this will be moved after a while to another blog on this site called, Items of Interest, which we will be creating soon.
It's ok to have fun with this Blog.
Posted by: John at May 29, 2005 07:45 PM