I met the Mac Daddy in 1998, on the night crew of a Baltimore City supermarket. He stood 5' 11" and weighed about 340 lbs. There were a few things to admire about the Mac Daddy. First, he was a minor league linebacker, who was repeatedly ejected and eventually fined into retirement for excessive force when playing teams composed of off duty police officers. He admitted to being a dirty fighter who preferred the sucker punch. Lastly, he was a big black man who openly admitted to being under endowed! I comforted him with the factoid of Shaka Zulu's impotence, and he felt better.
The Mac Daddy talked like a pro wrestler, in the third person, and was generally known on the crew as Big Boy, so named by the 260 pound Silverback, whose real name was Israel Flood, an old school dude from the south who he fought to a draw in the lunch room. The Mac Daddy grew up in a tough area of Washington DC, and liked to intimidate "Baldamore bruthas" with his ominous street-cred. After Silverback retired, The Mac Daddy was the undisputed king of our domain—and I, his diabolical counselor—until Big Shiv came to work as our security guard.
Big Shiv was from Turner Station, a Black suburb of East Baltimore that dates to the pre-Civil War era. He stood 6' 5", weighed in around 450 lbs, and was a self-declared predatory homosexual. At 5' 8" 153, I found it quite troubling, to be standing at the urinal in the mens room when Big Shiv entered, as he was in the habit of whispering seductive threats into the ear of any man caught in this compromising position.
It was not long before The Mac Daddy and Big Shiv decided to fight for territorial dominance. As the resident expert on all things violent, I was approached to sanction their fight. Neither man wanted to be arrested or fired for slugging it out, so I was dragooned into service as the underground fight facilitator. Since we were working in a heavily policed up-scale White enclave, I strongly suggested they not fight outside. They also could not fight under the Orwellian gaze of the ubiquitous cameras manned by the Loss Prevention Department.
Fortunately for the recently un-punched man-cards of both of these notorious, but aging, thugs, I found a solution. Our milk cooler was 20' by 24' and had no camera within. I constructed a 16' square cage of parked pallets of crated gallon milk, which permitted each fighter his own private entrance from either side of the walk-in, which had two separate entrances.
The men would meet for battle in the middle of the ring and began fighting, according to no set of rules, on my call. I was only there to say "Go" and to witness the inevitable bad ending. As I hid behind a support beam like some early mammal observing T-Rex battling Triceratops, Big Shiv landed a jab-straight combination to the formidable brow ridge of The Mac Daddy. Big Shiv winced in pain as his hands and wrists buckled on contact with the thick bony shield that was the forehead of The Mac Daddy.
The Mac Daddy was no technician, but he had good instincts. He left his head open and proceeded to punch the soft hands of Big Shiv with his own mutated paws, or as he referred to them "chump-hammas". Within two minutes Big Shiv tapped to fist punches, and retired with a bruised knuckle, sprained thumb, and sprained wrist.
Later that morning, Big Shiv asked me to walk up to the park with him so I could train him for the re-match. As we entered the park a yipping, five pound, white poodle broke from a bun-haired old woman and came prancing toward us. This thing was so small it could have lived inside of one of Big Shiv's size-17 boots, and rented space to local rodents. I was soon astonished to find Big Shiv literally climbing up my body; standing on my feet and getting as much as his body above my shoulders as he could. I thought I would snap in half at any moment. The old lady looked up in bewilderment, over my head, on top of which Big Shiv's arms were folded, as he pleaded down to her, "Is it a good dog!?! Is it a good dog!?!"
Needless to say I decided not to train Big Shiv, but I did make a habit out of interviewing The Mac Daddy at every opportunity.
"Is it a good dog?" Hilarious! A not quite true stereotype, but speaking from the perspective of a long time German Shepherd owner (who used to live in a big city) I can say that when you encounter this phenomenon it never ceases to amaze. Pre pubescent white kids approach and want to "pet the doggie" (some) Blacks of any age or sex pull a disappearing act that would leave Houdinni speechless.
The relevant fact here being that a decent sized dog can be a safety and security asset.
Some years ago as I was about to have a violent encounter in my front yard with four young patrons of the section 8 crack house next door. My wife ended the encounter by letting our dog out the front door. Max the 130 lb Akita mix went ran up to greet the new people. The muffled remarks they made from inside their car were barely heard!
K-