BILL CADY Word Count: 149,227 - At My Friend's Place

Bill Cady, The Early Years … by Bill Cady 320
I didn‟t have a pool cue, but a hustler never brings his own stick, so I was fine
with that. I did have some gloves in the trunk, eight ounce, ten ounce, and twelve ounce,
so I figured I was okay if I decided to fight for a while, although I had no idea where or
how that might happen.
The rest of that day, and all the following day, I drove around in my ‟63 Chevy,
just taking pictures. West Virginia really is a beautiful state, and they also have some
incredibly beautiful, very enticing women. I slept in my car the first night, and found a
fleabag hotel the next.
The day after, I was in a rundown bar in some little town, still in West Virginia. I
stayed in that state my entire first sojourn into the world of backroom boxing. Somehow,
during a conversation I had with the bartender and another drunk at the bar, the topic was
soon shifted to boxing. Unashamedly, I told „em I was pretty damned good with my
hands. Even stretched the point and said I was undefeated, which excluded Lincoln
Ashford and a Polish guy named George Piclik, a student at O‟Rafferty, then later at
Sexton. He was six-five, two-forty, and had a reach on me I couldn‟t get past. We
fought in the driveway outside Joe Jolly‟s house, three rounds, and I‟d say he was the
winner.
The conversation at the bar seemed to stay on boxing until, after a while, the other
drunk told me to follow him. We went down the street to a building I thought might be
an auto repair facility gone bad. He started asking me a lot of questions about how good
I was, what were my best talents, and so on. Finally, in what I‟m sure he thought was a
surprise test, he took a rat from a cage and tossed it at me.
The rat was squeaking in terror as it sailed at me, so I solved two problems at
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