The first time we went to a fight we entered our own roosters. This particular fight was off of a dirt road; it was Number 12 Holler’ (Hollow). It was in the middle of nowhere, there was two or three houses and a great big giant barn. This one was in a barn and right in the middle was a great big dirt ring. They had fighters over here, and fighters over there. And the fighters would have their roosters and all the stuff they were given the roosters. And everybody who was on their team was right there. And you would go from cock to cock, and everybody paid an entrance fee, and that’s why there were trophies. Everybody knew everybody so it wasn’t like they were selling tickets to it. You had to personally be invited. And there was such a big community of them there was a lot of money involved. The law just look the other way. And I believe the law was getting paid off to look away because they never broke up any of these fights. And I think the law was like “long as you don’t make it a public event…”. You know what I mean? As in like people calling to say that there is rooster fights going on over here. There’s all kinds of illegal activity happening there. Moonshine, gambling,… I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but there was things like that going on the whole time the fights were going. With the rooster fighting there came people trying to sell other things. People trying to sell knives and shirts and things. It was like a trading thing where there was people there trying to sell things, and sell food. Everybody’s there with the chicken fighters. And they had been chicken fighters from generation to generation to generation. That’s why there was so much money in it. You pay your fee to the owner of the land who let you do it. And they’d have a guy standing out there like Bob’s other uncle, Willie Fox, and he would be guiding cars in and telling them where to park. There was a huge parking lot full of cars. This barn is jam-packed.
White Gravel was the biggest fight in a barn ever that I saw. Great big barn and all these people. I think it was originally a horse barn actually. And that’s what it was for horses, but the owner started fighting chickens. It was in the middle of nowhere so there was no law, no authority, and no one knew how to get there unless you knew where you was going. It was that kind of place. So I think this guy actually rented out his barn and then acted like he didn’t know what was going on. Because the police had come to some of these before and raided them and people got arrested. But I don’t think they did unless they wasn’t get in a cut of that, or ells there was someone big-time complaining. Or something like that. There had to be a red flag for the police to get involved.
And there would be all kinds of sorts of people, all walks of life would be in there. I mean off-duty policeman to mayors to bus drivers to the common person retired, all kind of walks of life. Kids and all, you know it was just something that was done and it wasn’t frowned upon. Everybody got involved. When there is money everybody was interested, they grew up doing it, so it wasn’t bad to them. It was a way of life. That many people. And moonshine, there would be a certain click here and a certain click there. A certain click smoked weed. It wasn’t all illegal activities but they could do what they wanted. And there would be people pedaling and trying to sell leather goods and all kinds of different things. There was vendors of food. The place was just stuffed with people. And people would be walking around and around, and there was a little thing of bleachers filled with people looking down over the bets and the fight. And then there was even a raffle ticket, and you can buy a ticket and win stuff. We won this great big pretty rooster clock one time. So everybody was trying to make a little bit of money off of it. Somewhere they had an angle of money they were gonna try and get. It was kind of like a bean dinner – without the beans but there was plenty of chickens!
But there was be like at pot of beans being sold there that you can buy beans. A bowl of beans – people were selling things there. Everyone was trying to make a little money off of it. You get a bunch of money like that going and there’s people there – and it’s all tax-free. Because it was all illegal. Bus drivers, retired policeman, there’s all kinds of people’s walks of life, city workers, it was crazy.