Bill Pastore, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Jason Hardy, September 20th, 2006: part of the Saving the legacy project

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your record book. And I said 'I want to be a raider." And they all looked at me. I was 5'4" and weighed 128 pounds and th y all looked at me like, "Are you nuts?" But I'd been fighting AAU and Golden Gloves for at least four years, five years. I'd only been beat once. That's where these scars on my face are from. JAS: Boxing? BILL: Yeah. And this thumb's gone. We didn't have to wear teeth or our hands weren't wrapped and so fighting, then, I was doing pick-up fighting mostly. You make ten, fifteen dollars. But hell, that was in the Depression, that was good money. J AS: That's not bad. BILL: No, that's real good! And then when I'd graduated from boot camp and was at Green's Farm, or at the raider camp being trained, we'd go up to the Colosseum in Los Angeles on weekends when you had liberty. We'd go to the Colosseum and you'd just go into the dressing room and a promoter would come in and say, "I need a welter weight." And if nobody raised their hand, you'd: "I'm a welder weight." "Okay." Or he'd come in and say, "I need a middle weight." "I'm a middle weight." They didn't really care what you were. We were only warm up fights, we were only four rounds. Three minutes a round and a minute rest in between rounds. And you 6