Robert Howard, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, April 25, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 447

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R ROB: D Y ah but don t check th p lling 1 u h . h I d 1 n I young. I fought in AAU and Golden Gloves and stu lik th t but n t successful at it. Then anyhow I fought up there in Des ret m. h h d m h up there that were professionals and so I learned quite a bit up th re. o wh n I g t in th service, especially taking basic training, and we had a CO-have you ever seen that movie From Here to Eternity? Anybody that could box could get out ofKP and guard duty-same kind of a CO. So anybody who wanted to try out for boxing, you d get out of squadron duties. So I started getting my brains beat out and I don't know which is worse (laughs). When you was in the service, even though I'm an amateur the guy in the ring, he may have a hundred fights under his belt. That happened to me a few times. I fought a sailor from Pensacola I'll never forget, he says, "Hell, can't you stand up for one more round?" (laughs) Those were the days. JEA: And about the Harleys, did you talk about the pieces, putting that Harley together? I think you told me you pieced together a bike from pieces that you found out there in the islands. ROB: Oh, yeah. See, I grew up in a neighborhood where the next-door neighbor had motorcycles. He was a former-back in the old days they used to have "ride the wall" they used to call it. They'd ride their motorcycles on something like a football stadium only they'd get going and they'd get up on this wall, round and round, and it was quite popular back in the '20s. So my neighbor, he used to ride walls so he had a jillion motorcycles around there so he only lived a block away from me so, naturally, I'm hanging around there all the time. He had an old Harley one time and he asked me if I wanted to ride it and I got on the thing and I could barely, it was so high I could barely 34