Punched by the Spaghetti Eater

For some strange reason Kadizzle thought about the best punch anyone every landed on him.  Quickly it came to him that it was certainly the Spaghetti Eater that did the best job.

As a high school football player Kadizzle played football in the Ohio Valley.  Keep in mind the Ohio Valley was lined with steel mill towns and some rough football.  A football game in the Ohio Valley was a loosely controlled fight.

Triadelphia High School's team got on the school bus and made the trip to Weirton West Virginia.  Weirton was a steel mill town that often kept kids in high school an extra year if they were needed on the football team.

Kadizzle played offensive guard.  To Kadizzle's dismay the player opposite him was Mattao Magnone,  a huge Italian fat guy that was impossible to move.  In order to deal with Matty as he was called Kadizzle had to constantly fake a block and then swing his feet around an kick Mattao's legs out from under him.  Mattao mostly got by on his size, not his brains, so this tactic worked most of the game.

Like an idiot Kadizzle taunted Matao most of the game. Matao had a habit of grabbing Kadizzles shirt and holding him.  Kadizzle would say thing to Matao like " As big as you are you should be able to play fair you big Spaghetti eater".   As the game progressed Kadizzle hurled every insult he could think of at the big Italian.

Finally late in the last quarter the ball was snapped, and Matao planted a blow on the side of Kadizzles helmet with his forearm.  It was a perfect what we called in those days "forearm shiver".  The trick is to hit your opponent with the flat of your forearm planted with all your body weight against the side of the helmet.  The staggering blow of Matao's forearm worked its magic and rattled Kadizzles brain.  Kadizzle managed to stagger around in a daze until his senses finally came back to him.  After Kadizzle regained his senses he went back to the line and gave Matao a message.  Kadizzle said to Matty  " This shows how stupid you are,  if you had any sense you would have hit me like that in the first part of the game".

The is a side story to all this.  Sometime during the game we noticed the stands were emptying.  Looking back toward where our school bus was parked it appeared to be on fire, and the crowd was going to watch the fire.  Our team thought, "Oh my god they set our bus on fire".  Of course we felt they were taking football pretty serious.  As it turned out it was home coming for Weirton and someone had set one of the home coming floats on fire.  Anything could happen at a football game in the Ohio Valley.