About 30 years ago I reviewed a colorful book, The History of Cockfighting by a George Scott. I remember the author’s name because he is not the actor George, who reportedly has the personality of a gamecock and, I thought, would have had a natural inclination toward the subject. The book was enlightening, helping—as it did—put my non-experience with this “blood sport” into its historical context, which I had vaguely known but never really understood. Had I the space, I could begin in Classic Greece and trace cockfighting down to modern times, but fortunately the editor is not that forgiving in terms of length!

Growing up in Polk County, using Investigator Mike Monteith words, I heard “lots of rumors about cockfighting,” but I never had the chance to be a spectator at a pit fight.

Mind you, I had feather-flying entanglements of my own with so-called domestic roosters. Defending oneself against vicious yard fowl was a part of growing, as Larry McMurtry recounts in his current Books: A Memoir. Most of my older readers, I have no doubt, could tell rooster-attack stories far more devastating than any of mine. I will, nevertheless, pour out some venomous words on my most hellish adversary: it was a giant red rooster that dominated my Grandfather Kimbrough’s chicken yard in the late 1930s. A coward at heart, it never bothered the grown-ups but maintained a steady guard against the approach of any grandchild, especially me.

Stay out of the chicken yard, you say! Good advice—except for the fact that the privy was at the far end of the chicken run! Inevitably I came home with impacted and compacted bowels after each visit there.

The time came when my “Big Ears” heard the “rumor” that there was Saturday cockfighting in a natural arena near the Ocoee River. I immediately began to speculate on the possibility of seeing that demon red rooster being savaged, crippled, and then killed by an heroic white rooster that stood on the corpse and crowed loudly its victory. That did not come to pass, however, and that Old Red Rooster probably lived to ripe old age, perhaps eventually going the way of its counterpart in the song, “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain.”

Cockfighting has what could only be described as a significant history. It was arguably the national sport of the early United State, the South remaining its stronghold into this century. It was legal in Louisiana, my son-in-law’s home, until two years ago. Richard Scott, in his News article, pointed out that states still differ on the criminal level of cockfighting, Tennessee citing it as a misdemeanor while most rank it as a felony.

And by the way, do you remember the stir that that crusty old curmudgeon actor, Wilford Brimley, who frequented your TV on behalf of Quakers Oats (“It’s the right thing to do!”) and now lectures diabetics about Liberty Medical, caused when he fought tooth-and-nail for legalized cockfighting in New Mexico just a few years back?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am no Wilford Brimley, though I do answer to curmudgeon. The closest I’ve been to a cockfight is the “Little Jerry” staged (and Humane Society controlled) version on TV’s “The Jerry Seinfeld Show,” but cockfighting is a part of our cultural past, in which humans have capitalized in a negative way on the natural instincts of dumb animals for less than humane purposes.

Compare it, if you will, with another popular frontier game which certainly has no saving grace, for it relates to no natural animal instincts: “gander pulling.” This “blood sport” required a goose, its neck and head heavily greased, hanging by its feet, usually from a rope stretched across a road. Horsemen would gallop by, grabbing for the head, the winner successfully separating the head from the body.

Anyone wishing metaphorically to separate my head and body can do so at benharrismcclary@comcast.net.