How my dad and I learned to love Muhammad Ali

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We made a little triangle there in our living room — me on the couch, my daddy in his green recliner, Muhammad Ali on the TV.

We didn’t watch a lot of TV together. Daddy didn’t care for ball games. He’d go outside and fix the lawn mower or clean out his tackle box. I didn’t care for Billy Graham crusades or “Hee Haw” reruns. I’d go to my room and turn up my Molly Hatchet records.

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He was 48 when I was born. By the time I was a teenager he was in his 60s. We loved each other, desperately, but for some reason it was hard as hell to say it.

He and my mama had grown up as sharecroppers in south Georgia, picking cotton from the time they could walk. They clawed their way out of the fields and into factory jobs and eventually made enough for a little cinderblock house with a garden in back and a used bass boat. They had one son, who would never have to work a tenth as hard as they did.

It took me far too long to understand that and longer to appreciate it.

We bonded over two or three things. We loved to fish. We loved Mama’s biscuits. And we loved to watch Ali fight.

This did not mean we wanted to see Ali win.

We both rooted against him, for different reasons. Daddy hated braggarts, and he couldn’t stand it when Ali ran …

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