I was hoping from the headline that you were talking about the hockey arena there in Detroit. Someone really shouldburn that thing down. ;-)

Joe Louis was a fine boxer and a great man. It's just too bad the Brown Bomber wasn't personally around to smash in the teeth of the bastard who defaced his statue.

I think his great German opponent, Max Schmelling, would have agreed with this sentiment. Few people know that after World War II, Max made a lot of money. And among the things he did with it was to help pay old Joe's living expenses. Max, of course, fought for Germany in the war, which was right and proper, because Germany was his homeland. But he sure as hell was no Nazi.

All told, those were two guys with a lot of class.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Even though the Joe Louis Fist is the Ugliest Landmark Ever, that's a bit much.

I was wondering how they had enough time to get all that done, but I guess even though that's a high traffic area during the day, it's pretty dead at night.

Arnold:

Believe it or not, Max Schmeling is still among the living. He's 98.

A slightly relevant story: In a town I won't mention, there is a bronze statue of a local hero who coached a very successful sports team.

The statue is in a market place, and the gentleman is sitting on a bench, as I recall. During the playoffs one year, when his team (he no longer coached of course) played my favor team, I was going to go to this city and cover glue a hat and sweatshirt to the statue from my favorite team. It was a long drive, however, and I abandoned the idea in favor of rooting on TV.

Years later, I happened to work with a guy who ghost wrote a book by the aforementioned local hero. I happened to mention my plan during casual conversation. Well, the ghost rider proceeds to call the coach up that afternoon and tell him my plan!

The coach's response: "He'd better not get caught in that town." Ha. But his team hasn't won since. Still, one day ...

Bill, that's the best news I heard all day. Max Schmeling is one of my heroes. He fought the best fights he could against Joe Louis. Bested him the first time around, got whipped in style the second time around. But fighter he was. And I'm glad he survived WWII, in which he served as a "fallschirmjager" (German paratrooper), as I understand it.

Ninety-eight years of age! That's something.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

The sculpture of Joe Louis's fist isn't the most glorious but it does honor a "great" fighter and an "honored" american. For a greater esthetic appeal, I recommend its relocation on the grounds of the Detroit Art Museum, out front on the lawn, and inside the art museum a section
paying tribute to "America's Joe". From an art perspective, I would also change the pyramid pedestal. The sculpture needs to be much higher off the ground. If the art museum is not feasible, I'd suggest someplace close to the water, but most definitely on some grassy area where kids can come and play and oldtimers can tell their grandchildren about the really greatest of all time.

I think an enormous supermagnet should be used to float the Joe Louis Fist twenty or thirty feet above the ground.

I remember living in Pittsburgh Pa. in late 30's. early 40's Joe Louis was one of my heros. The "Brown Bomber" he was called. Our neighborhood had every nationality and race you could think of, as kids we never gave it any thought, we accepted the fact that a lot of us were different than each other. When Kate Smith sang "God Bless America" on the radio we all sang with her and together we loved our country and our heros.

We were poor people living together who didn't know we were poor, maybe our parents knew but they didn't tell us...so we were happy and we all played together. We also shared music, radio music at that time was mostly big band, but when we went to each others (I was going to say, "each others houses" but in the slums of Pittsburgh no one had houses.) homes we heard their music on record players, I learned so much from those days, we would find each others favorite songs (every thing was a song to us, even if no one sang...to kids the world is a lot simpler).

The point of all this is that in those days and those times we all seemed to have more in common with one another and our differences were hardly noticed.

Ooh, I like Jerry's idea.

It is intresating that "the fist" is the first thing you see coming out of the tunnel from Canada. It sort of sez: "Go back you worthless Habs!"