ELBOWS

Each year in San Antonio the city hosts a week of fiesta. The soiree includes nightly parades on the downtown riverwalk while brightly lit parade floats drift thru downtown on the San Antonio River and march thru the city streets.

Think lots of color, lots of lights, and enough cerveza (beer) to overflow an ocean. Now add the Hispanic culture of celebration at designated times, thousands of attendees, and you have one heck of a week long party.

About 1971, I was assigned "crowd control" duty on a downtown street during a parade event (I think it was "Battle of the Flowers night?). The event planners had placed thousands of folding metal chairs along the parade route in front of rows of metal bleachers on the sidewalks. The beer salesmen had stocked thousands of bottles of cerveza on ice in their carts to keep the crowd lubricated and fuel the excited anticipation?

During the peak of the parade, some home boys standing in the metal bleachers started throwing ice on people in the chairs. Not to be outdone, the "gentlemen" in the chairs started throwing beer bottles at the bleaches. Sensing an Olympic style competition in the works, said bleacher bums reciprocated with beer bottles of their own, followed by the street crowd launching the metal folding chairs at the bleachers, thru store windows, and at passing cars.

Now comes the "do right" boy (Wright City Trooper) and his cohorts to clean up the mess. I was partnered with Roger McCraw. Roger was 6'4" tall, weighed 260 pounds and went from broad shoulders to a small waist with nuthin' but muscle in between (I probably looked like Mickey Mouse beside him?) We were wearing standard issue riot control gear (goofy looking blue plastic helmets with a face shield) and carried three foot wooden "batons" (whittled down baseball bats).

We soon settled into a mindless free-for-all essentially fighting for our lives in the middle of maybe 40 drunks against me and Roger. We were holding our own until I got the bright idea to grab one in a "full Nelson" (standing behind the dude, I put my arms under his arms and locked my fingers behind his neck with my elbows exposed forward).

I spun the struggling arrestee around toward my partner just in time to see Roger winding up with that wooden "bat" in his best Babe Ruth imitation in order to apply some persuasion medicine to the combatant I was holding.

Here's where our finely tuned plan went a bit astray. Roger planted that oak implement squarely on the "funny bone" of each of my elbows without touching my wrestling "victim". Now imagine bright stars in my eyes, excruciating pain, paralysis and an overwhelming feeling of, "Now what the hell do I do." Its weird but the most clear picture I have of that night was the look on Roger's face when he realized he had near bout de-armed me.

We survived the night and a lot of other "stuff" thru the years, but from that day forward I learned to remember that an "Achilles" heel don't hold a candle to a wounded "funny" bone in an honest to goodness scrap.