My Fight with Caveman

Just this week I had been thinking of updating a story I had previously written about when my family moved from the west side of Cleveland to the east side. When I wrote it JC was TJ to protect the guilty. I submitted "We're Moving to the East Side?" to the editor of the Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine. They had previously published "My First Flight". The new editor however had rejected this one, saying it appeared "contrived". Thinking about him this week for some reason, it was my intention to trim the original story and just post the part about my fight with "Caveman." In this morning's Plain Dealer is "Caveman's", Addison Anderson's, obituary.

In 1954, midway through the 7th grade, our family moved to the Buckeye Road area of Cleveland. I went from a mostly Irish-Catholic grade school to one that was primarily Hungarian. Why we moved is another story.

As far as I was concerned, the east side was the other side of the world. I was uncomfortable with the thought of moving again after only four years. I had plenty of good friends, was a Boy Scout, the catcher on the CYO baseball team and a guard on the basketball team. The new school had no sports teams at all. I would miss it all: school, friends, neighborhood and sports.

The house we were renting was smaller than our west side home and it sat in the rear of a front house. While the family was busy settling in, my education was restarted at St. Margaret of Hungary grade school.

Wanting to make my best and baddest impression on my first day at school, I carefully scanned the available supply of the clean clothes that were unpacked. The choices were pretty limited. Being the third of nine children of a Cleveland cop never allowed a budget for new and fashionable clothes. Hand-me-downs were the order in our family. I selected my favorite and best pair of trousers to wear, the pair that fit me best. Black with a gray stripe down the side, the cuffs were 'pegged', considerably smaller than the legs. A non-descript shirt completed my ensemble and, with growing feelings of uneasiness and dread, I headed off to begin the new day.

The 7th grade teacher, Sister Mary Broken Knuckles, was beyond the golden years. Halfway through the morning the school bell clanged loudly. A Fire Drill? Air raid? What, we get a recess? Now here was something different from St. Vincent De Paul - recess. Probably for the teachers' mental health rather than anything we students might gain. A fifteen-minute break to be spent outside in the playground. Great. The line out to recess was surprisingly orderly. Once out in the playground I was approached by a classmate.

"Hi, my name is Addison Anderson. When did you move here?"

Trouble began right away for what I heard was, "Hi, my name is Anderson Anderson." A little confused at meeting someone with the same first and last names, I repeated my question. "What's your first name?"

"Anderson," I again heard repeated.

"And what's your LAST name?"

"Anderson."

Still confused, I repeated the first question. "What did you say your FIRST name is?"

"ANDERSON, MY NAME IS ANDERSON ANDERSON" he exploded. "You a wise guy or something? You wanna fight me?"

I wasn't a wimp but I didn't want to fight anybody. The last fight I was pushed into was at St. V's. That one was with Gary Dixon, the class bull’s hitter who deserved to get knocked around a bit. That one was a draw. I was average in height and thin, but wiry. Now, faced with a fight on my first day at school, I hadn't any idea how to extricate myself from the challenge. I was also the new kid on the block. To back out of a fight would mean that I was 'chicken', a label that any red-blooded school kid feared being applied to him. Following my base instincts I scowled, "Name the time and place."


"In the lavatory, right after school," Anderson quickly responded, still angry with me for what he perceived as my attempt to make him look like foolish. Anderson had another name too - Caveman. Not a bad moniker for someone about to engage in a fight. Kind of intimidates the opposition right away. The word about the fight got around. The lavatory after school was crowded with guys trying to get ringside seats to witness the fracas.

Caveman and I immediately began the time-honored tradition of warrior dialogue as we slowly circled each other. "Come-on, wiseass, make a move."

“Besides being ugly I notice you don't use deodorant."

That was enough to begin the first and only round. We pounced on each other, trading headlocks, hammerlocks and half nelsons, finally rolling on the floor clutched in hand-to-hand combat. Caveman was the home team, cheered on all his partisan supporters. The fight probably lasted only about five minutes with no bloodshed. We tired quickly and, to my recollection, the fight was deemed a standoff, nobody losing, and winning each other's respect. Caveman might have had a different recollection of who won!

During the 7th and 8th grade Addison had the greatest birthday parties at home. His mother cleared out his bedroom and allowed us to have pillow fights in the dark, with refreshments served afterwords. It was great fun until the year we broke a bedroom window and his Mom freaked a bit about it.

In later years while I was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, someone wrote me with his address in El Paso. He invited me to his "humble abode" but I was never able to scrape together the necessary $$ to get there. We lost touch after that. I'd heard he went to Viet Nam and,like so many returned veterans, suffered some issues afterwards. He apparently lived in plain sight here in the Cleveland area but we could never locate him for class reunions and breakfast get-togethers. I was saddened to learn he was right under our noses the whole the time.

I will see you on the other side Anderson Anderson.