The Fastest $10 made during the Great Depression

My family owned Inverness, an old farm in Virginia on the national and state historic registries. With a creamery and a dairy, they needed to clean up with a lot of boiling water. When my granddad owned it in the 1930’s, there was a black gentleman who worked for him, who mainly cut firewood for the boiler. Willis Watson was his name, and he would keep the fire going. He liked the axe, not the crosscut saw, and would swing it almost all day. Willis was renowned locally as a really quiet man, but you didn’t mess with him.

Back then there were small traveling circuses touring the country, going to a different town every week. In one of the shows there was a professional boxer in the ring. He was a huge Italian guy who would taunt the crowd to get somebody to fight him, and the spectators would have to pay to watch. Whoever won was awarded a $10 jackpot. That might not seem like much money with today’s inflation rate, but back in the thirties your top men made ten cents an hour for farm labor. Willis accepted the dare, and when he took his shirt off to get in the ring, the crowd gasped. He looked like a Greek statue, with his muscles rippling. The other guy was way bigger than Willis, but he didn’t last the first round. Willis was fast as lightning and hard as a rock from all that axe swinging. The boxer was out cold as a cucumber. Willis (with no smack talk) just walked over, got his $10, and went back to Inverness and started cutting firewood again.

About four years later that same little circus was in town but didn’t remember where they were, since they traveled so much. Granddad was there that day and got his friend to go get Willis. The same boxer was in the ring taunting the crowd, saying, “Well, get your wife or your girlfriend to fight me if none of you will do it!”. As Willis came around the corner of the circus tent taking his shirt off, the boxer shouted, “MOTHER OF GOD, I AM NOT FIGHTING THAT BLANKETY-BLANK!”. He jumped out of the ring, ran to his trailer, and locked the door. He didn’t remember what town he was in, but he remembered Willis. The barker went over to try to coax him out, but the boxer wouldn’t even open the door. So the barker went back to the ring and said, “the fight is canceled; it’s a forfeiture”. Willis went to get his $10 and was told that there was no prize money since the match had been forfeited. Willis looked the man in the eye and slowly started taking his shirt off again.

Granddad said that was the fastest $10 anybody ever made during the Great Depression. Willis won that fight, too.