Childhood
Blassie's parents, Jacob and Anna (née Sind), immigrated to the United States from Germany prior to the start of World War I, settling in St. Louis. Fred was an only child, which he claimed was because he weighed 15 pounds when he was born and his mother didn't want to go through childbirth again. His father was abusive and an alcoholic, and Fred often had to take refuge with his grandparents whenever Jacob would beat his mother. His parents continually separated, then reunited. At the age of 13, after his father hit his mother again, Fred threatened to attack his father with a baseball bat, but didn't do it and stayed with his aunt for six months until his mother asked him to return home. Throughout his life, Fred didn't touch alcohol after seeing what kind of person it turned his father into.
As a teenager, Blassie went to McKinley High School; after graduating he got a job at a meatpacking plant, which his family hoped he would turn into a lucrative meat cutting job with the local trade union. However, he started boxing at Seward Community Center and won the heavyweight championship. He was more interested in wrestling, though, and would sneak into the matches whenever he could. He would often go to matches at Harry Cook's Gym to watch the hookers of the day lock up. As they began to recognize him, the wrestlers would teach him a hold here and there. His first wrestling match was actually a shoot fight which he accepted in order to impress a girl he brought to the show. Later, he began to get regular work wrestling at local carnivals. His cousin John Frank Holaus would often referee his matches.
Read more about this topic: Freddie Blassie
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Indeed, my mother’s beautiful face still shone with youthfulness that night when she so softly held my hands and sought to stop my tears; but, precisely, it seemed to me that this should not have happened, her anger would have saddened me less than this new sweetness that my childhood had never known; it seemed to me that, with a hidden and impious hand, I had just traced the first wrinkle and made appear the first grey hair in her soul.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)