Word: pits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wheel chair and bellow: "Want to see my horns? I've got them. I fight chickens, you know. I'm proud of it-keeps me alive." Last week, he was wheeled into a pagoda-shaped, whitewashed building outside Orlando, Fla. and sat, grim and lordly (in a pit-side box built specially for him and his wheel chair). John Kehoe's hand trembled as one of his game cocks, a fierce looking grey muff, was brought into the pit, weighed and made ready for battle...
...Orlando's 29th annual cockfighting tournament-though no word of it appeared in Florida newspapers last week. Florida is the only state in the union where cockfighting is legal (but the heavy betting that goes on at the pit is not, hence the secrecy...
...referee addressed the crowd: "Gentlemen, please clear the pit." The men began to drift off the dirt-floored circle; the chanting bets still continued. "I'll bet a hundred" or "A hundred to eighty." The usual bet was $100. The big ones-$1,000 and up-were made more quietly, by a whisper, a nod, a flick of a finger. On the wall was a sign saying "No Profanity Allowed." There was none. In the audience, one woman fed a baby from a bottle...
Staccato Flaps. When his handler released him, John Kehoe's grey tore across the pit, neck-feathers up. His onrushing enemy was a powerful red rooster equipped, like the grey, with needle-sharp, steel gaffs that man had added to his natural weapons. (U.S. cockfighters consider themselves more humane than Latin Americans, who use razor-edge "slashers.") The cocks hit each other almost two feet off the ground, in a staccato flap of wings. Every few minutes, handlers separated the cocks, sponged blood from their heads. Above the excited hubbub rose a woman's flat drawl: "Come...
Good Faith. Near Newcastle, New South Wales, 150 coal miners walked off the job when a pit pony developed halitosis, reconsidered when the management offered to mix fragrant musk in its feed...