Get a cramp in your foot you bum

 

Get a cramp in your foot you bum





     A trip to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for this one in the dark days of Rams futility. However, the gist of the saying comes from one Louis Gold, aka Lou Silver who was one of my father's pals from his days in New York. When BC visited the Big Apple in the 1930's he  found like-minded young gents who lived by their wits and found re-selling tickets to be a way to squeeze some dough out of a failing economy. There in NYC he met Hickey, Monte, Duke, Lou and many more who were living Damon Runyan characters that  enlightened the kid from LA in the ways of hustling sporting event tickets. Lou was not one of the guys who lived by his wits since he was rather intellectually challenged and had once been illiterate before he learned to read by picking out words in the Sports pages. Yet, Lou was a powerful and fearless guy who would be called "muscle" in mob movies. There are stories about his hard right hand and use by the street wise characters BC hung around with. He found it difficult to spell his surname Gold so the fellas just made it "Silver." Most of these gentlemen in New York were Jews and so was Lou despite his lack of a proper education. BC never forgot this band of Hebrew brothers and when he set up his ticket brokerage some of the old gang came West to harvest from the rubes of California. Lou fit right in and worked mostly for Shikey Bort, another broker on Santa Barbara avenue. True to his good heart BC invited some of these non-cotillion schooled street men to our home for holidays and once let Cooney live a few months in our rumpus room. On this occasion Lou had joined Greg, John, BC and me for a Ram game at the Coliseum where the 1962 Los Angeles gridiron club was losing regularly. Yet, on this day they were playing the not very good Detroit Lions and they were still within striking distance in the fourth quarter, The bad news was that the Lions had a solid field goal kicker named Wayne Walker and he was lining up an easy 31-yard field goal to continue the Zeke Bratkowski lead Rams futility. We all knew what was coming but Lou bellowed with what little hope was left in our hearts "Get a cramp in your foot, you bum!" Greg and I loved his hopeful cry and repeated it hundreds of times over the  years. Walkers kick sailed straight through the uprights by the way. The horned heroes finished 1-12 and we had to wait for the coming of George Allen in 1966 to recover our dignity.



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