Ray Alexander

I was raised the poorest that can be raised but you can’t give up, you got to keep going. I didn’t I was poor, we didn’t have no running water. There’s nothing in our house when I was senior highschool and I wouldn’t quit. That’s how you gotta be in life, you got to not quit. The best information I ever got, my daddy told me. He said, I wan’t you to watch T.V. tonight son, barbara walters is gonna interview the richest man in the world, Jay Paul getty from England. He said, you might learn something. So I listened and she was popping questions to him and he was answering. Finally, he got enough of her, he said, Babara, I don’t know anything, but I’d make a phone call and tell you all you wanna know. That let me know the richest man in the world don’t know everything either, but he know who did though, that’s all you got to know in life. Nobody knows everything. I was about 12 or something like that and Harold Brown was outting the woods  and I was watching the woods fight, then someone said, that’s Harold Brown one of best cockfighters there are, so I said, I got to introduce myself to him and I did, and he said well do you wanna go to a fight? I’ll take you to the fights with me. And so I starded, and he was one of the laziest people on earth but he was smart. I listened to everything he taught me, I listened and he taught me how to train the roosters, how to hold the roosters, how to do everything. Everything he done was perfect. But he wouldn’t have no mercy on you. You better do it right, or he’ll snatch your head in two. Every breed I’d ever seen was an accident and the ones, roosters I ever bred in my life too was an accident. The butchers is one, Edgar was a terrific rooster man and he would cross it here and back. Curtis had it walk in his barn and his cow had stepped on it’s foot. It had bumble foot, so he gave the rooster to Curtis. Curtis bred him and whooped everybody with him, that made bumble foots and that was a famous breed back then. And every famous breed I got to see them chickens were crossed up. None of them had no pure nothing. And the clarets were an accidental mating. I had this claret rooster when Mr. Griffin died, and he would keep sparring good, and I said, I’m gonna fight him and ‘til I fight him in Lousiana, we bet a lot of money ‘cause he knew the claret was good too. That claret whooped him easy so when I came back home, I had told my wife that the roundheads goes to sett’n to put him out in some pens out there and to the sale so I was thinking where I can breed this rooster to. I got to breed it to somebody, to some chickens and so I kept watching them clarets. They were all in them pen with them roundheads. My wife had put them in a pen. So I said, well they’re cleaan and it’s late in the year. I’ll just put in the pen everyday and move it and that was the best chicken I ever raised. And another thing, people say you got to have high altitudes for chickens well that’s wrong. Wow, why? Mr. Griffin was right in the ocean, he lived in mobile, alabama. Ocean … and also Mr. Kelso, he lived right around the ocean too. That’s what I’m talking about. And also the guy who had the japs, he lived down the ocean too. So there ain’t nothing wrong or good about that height, ‘cause I tell you, the three best chicken people I know of all lived the ocean. So you gotta go by results. Never quit trying and always listen to sound advice and never quit learning. If you quit learning, you’re all through with. Somebody says something that makes sense, I listen, I don’t think that and most of them chick fighter know everything and them’s are the ones that don’t know nothing. You got to learn everyday of your life and you got to improve. Things improve and you got to say up with that. That’s all I can tell anybody.