Speaker 1: It's thirteen years later, nineteen eighty eight. I can't pretend
Speaker 1: to be Muhammad Ali Junior anymore. I'm no longer full
Speaker 1: of beans. Those beans have long ago been knocked out
Speaker 1: of me. I'm managing a video store in Louisville, Ali's hometown,
Speaker 1: five hundred long miles away from my home, family and friends.
Speaker 1: I work sixty seventy hour week, sometimes even more in
Speaker 1: this little bitty brown box, which in effect is my
Speaker 1: own personal coffin with a cash register and hundreds upon
Speaker 1: hundreds of third rate Hollywood dreams. But I understand that
Speaker 1: there's something larger inside me, something timeless. What the hell
Speaker 1: is it? It's a week before Easter. Sundays are the
Speaker 1: only day I get away from my little brown coffin.
Speaker 1: Every Sunday, if there are no emergencies at the store,
Speaker 1: I walk down to the river with Lynn, Johanna and Isaac.
Speaker 1: The kids in Lynn playing on the shore, finding fresh water, clams,
Speaker 1: picking up pieces of driftwood, throwing and chasing a blue ball, laughing.
Speaker 1: But I can't engage. I'm standing there with them, but
Speaker 1: I can't see them, I can't hear them, certainly, can't
Speaker 1: touch them. Where I really am it squeezed into my
Speaker 1: little brown store, my tight brown coffin. I may be
Speaker 1: wearing jeans and a T shirt right here, right now,
Speaker 1: but I'm not really in those clothes. I'm strapped up
Speaker 1: in my button up white shirt, my thin, little tight
Speaker 1: ass necktie, my stiff, scratchy, cheap ass brown trousers, tight
Speaker 1: lace up brown shoes, the very things I wear every
Speaker 1: single day, days a week, seventy or more hours in
Speaker 1: the little brown, brown, brown store.
Speaker 2: My dad was. He was Peter Pan. He never really
Speaker 2: grew up.
Speaker 3: He was very mature when it came down to social issues.
Speaker 3: He was very in tune. He felt a responsibility to
Speaker 3: be able to share his connection to millions of people
Speaker 3: who were in need.
Speaker 1: That's for Shida Ali Walsh.
Speaker 3: But he was a little boy at heart. He still
Speaker 3: was very playful and he didn't lose that even in
Speaker 3: his final years, and he's still grandiose. He's the same
Speaker 3: person as he was before Parkinson's just people don't really
Speaker 3: see that side of him, and I'm glad you were
Speaker 3: able to capture that in your story. My dad loved people.
Speaker 3: My dad loved being Muhammed Ali. He loved the way
Speaker 3: he made people feel.
Speaker 1: I'm Davis Miller, author of the cult classic The Dow
Speaker 1: of Muhammad Ali. But before I became a professional writer,
Speaker 1: I was a frustrated, uptight manager of a video store.
Speaker 1: That's right, Tarantino, I did it long before you did.
Speaker 1: And did I mention the store was brown? Anyway? It
Speaker 1: was nothing more than a strange twist of fate that
Speaker 1: set me on an irreversible path. The grief stricken inner
Speaker 1: child in me had to learn how to hang loose,
Speaker 1: and with that our journey continues Episode two, The Cosmic Child.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty eight, and I'm not thinking about Ali anymore.
Speaker 1: He'd been my childhood hero. What I'm thinking about instead
Speaker 1: is I'm a manager of a video store in Louisville Content.
Speaker 1: I've got two young kids, I'm married, have a mortgage,
Speaker 1: car payment, and I'm called to the home office in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: I think I'm getting a promotion. My wife, Lynna, and
Speaker 1: I are struggling to get by. We've taken a way
Speaker 1: too many bills. I'm looking forward to a big raise here. Instead,
Speaker 1: the president of the company tells me that they're closing
Speaker 1: all the Kentucky stores. I won't have a job anymore,
Speaker 1: and they can't afford to send me back to North Carolina,
Speaker 1: so we're stuck. I'm going to get thirty days of severance.
Speaker 1: Then I don't know where money's going to come from.
Speaker 1: We have maybe a couple thousand dollars in savings and
Speaker 1: that's all. So I'm hugely depressed. Driving back into Louisville,
Speaker 1: I coincidentally drive past the house that I know to
Speaker 1: be Ali's mom's house. There's this block long white Winnebago
Speaker 1: parked in front with license plates that read the Greatest.
Speaker 1: Having more than a small clue who that is, I
Speaker 1: got to stop and thank this guy for what he's
Speaker 1: meant to my life and what he's meant to millions
Speaker 1: of other people. It's March thirty first, nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Good Friday, two days away from Resurrection Day Easter Sunday,
Speaker 1: and Mohammed Ali saves my life for the second time.
Speaker 1: I work up my courage and I park behind the winnebago.
Speaker 1: I go up to the door, getting ready to knock
Speaker 1: on it. I have my fist raised. Ali opens the
Speaker 1: door before I knock. He's so huge, I've forgotten how
Speaker 1: huge he is. He has to lean under the frame
Speaker 1: of the doorway to see me. He's standing there, looking
Speaker 1: like a big, lighted, beautiful house high up on a
Speaker 1: hill somewhere. He motions me in with two fingers of
Speaker 1: his right hand, and I immediately recognize he's deeply Parkinsonian.
Speaker 1: He's not speaking much anymore. Ali moves mechanically to the
Speaker 1: rear of his Winnebago. It's my great grandfather's walk. You
Speaker 1: like magic, man. I'm not much of a believer these days.
Speaker 1: I say, wash my feet, he says, standing maybe eight
Speaker 1: feet away, his back to me, in his arms perpendicular
Speaker 1: to his sides. Then he seems to levitate maybe three
Speaker 1: inches off of the floor. He turns to me and
Speaker 1: in his thick, slow voice, says, oh, man, I'm bad.
Speaker 1: I laugh and ask him to do it again. Man
Speaker 1: is a good one. We leave the Winnebago. Suddenly there's
Speaker 1: a chirping insects in my ear. I jump back, swathed
Speaker 1: the air turned around. It had been Ali's hand. How'd
Speaker 1: you do that? I want to know. He raises both
Speaker 1: fists and motions me out into the yard. I put
Speaker 1: up my hands and he tosses a slow jab at me.
Speaker 1: I block and encounter with my owns. Surely he doesn't
Speaker 1: remember my time sparring with him in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know who they hell I am. He's throwing
Speaker 1: shots at me. I'm throwing shots at him a half
Speaker 1: inch away from each other. Kids riding past on bicycles
Speaker 1: stop dead in the road. There's people with their car
Speaker 1: windows rolled down yelling hey, cham Py Champ. And he's
Speaker 1: one fourth as fast as he was in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: but his eyes are shining like black electric marbles and
Speaker 1: he's wide awake. After about five minutes of moving around,
Speaker 1: he stops and leans over close to my ear and says,
Speaker 1: come on in the house. His mom's in there, Missus
Speaker 1: Odessa Clay, Mama Bird, and his brother rockmand Ah. He
Speaker 1: asked me to join him on the couch and invites
Speaker 1: me to stay for dinner. Good gosh, I need to
Speaker 1: call home and let my wife know. I say, I
Speaker 1: called in and tell her where I am and what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I'm sure she's excited for me, but we
Speaker 1: have a lot of history. Just pick up a gallon
Speaker 1: of milk. On the way home, she says. Rockman comes
Speaker 1: from the kitchen bringing two big bowls at chili, sweating coal,
Speaker 1: glasses of root beer, and huge thick pieces of white
Speaker 1: bread while Ali and I watch Oprah on TV. After
Speaker 1: I eat, I feel like I need to use the bathroom,
Speaker 1: so I get up and excuse myself. In Muhammed Ali's
Speaker 1: Mother's house, my childhood idol. I'm in the bathroom. I
Speaker 1: do whatever it is I do in there, and I
Speaker 1: get ready to leave. Suddenly the door won't open. I'm
Speaker 1: yanking on it, and I yank on it harder and harder.
Speaker 1: It won't budge. I can feel my face flushing red.
Speaker 1: I'm getting more embarrassed by the moment. And then there's
Speaker 1: this laughter from the other room. I hear Missus Clay laughing.
Speaker 1: I hear Rockmund laughing. I hear Ali's snickering. And suddenly
Speaker 1: the door opens. Was holding the knob keeping me in there.
Speaker 1: He drags me out into the main room, tosses me
Speaker 1: gently down onto the floor, gets on top of me,
Speaker 1: and starts tickling me. I'm laughing. I'm laughing like a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm laughing uncontrollably. And I recognize that despite his Parkinson's,
Speaker 1: Ali hasn't lost his highest gift, the ability to move
Speaker 1: people past thoughts and words to a world of feeling
Speaker 1: and play. I'm not thinking about my problems. His family,
Speaker 1: they're not thinking about their problems, and Ali, as best
Speaker 1: as I can tell, isn't thinking about his Parkinson's. We're
Speaker 1: all children again playing Mohammed Ali was a cosmic child.
Speaker 1: You couldn't hang out with this guy for ten minutes
Speaker 1: without seeing the kid come out. He had to mess
Speaker 1: with you, he had to mess with the world. I
Speaker 1: was not naturally a playful person. My time spent with
Speaker 1: Mohammed made me far more playful than i'd otherwise be.
Speaker 1: What do you got to say about this? Craig Mortally?
Speaker 4: We were in a hotel somewhere and I said, Mohammed,
Speaker 4: have you gained weight? You look a little bigger. And
Speaker 4: he looked at me and oh, did you call me
Speaker 4: N word? And I said, yes, yes I did. And
Speaker 4: he started laughing. He slap his thigh and oh, he
Speaker 4: throw his head back and almost like a silent laugh.
Speaker 4: But he was cracked up because I knew where he
Speaker 4: was going with it. And I beat him to the punch.
Speaker 4: A lot of times. We were together for the first
Speaker 4: time in a long time. Maybe we'd take a picture together,
Speaker 4: and I invariably would make a fist and put it
Speaker 4: to his face, and he would bite his lower lip
Speaker 4: and take that angry pose with me, or put his
Speaker 4: fist up to me and we were just playing.
Speaker 1: He did all of these things with gestures and with
Speaker 1: his fingers and his face. He would rub both his
Speaker 1: index finger and his thumb together and make this cricket sound.
Speaker 1: Craig's doing it. My hands won't work today.
Speaker 4: Here it is.
Speaker 1: He would sneak up behind people and do that in
Speaker 1: their ears when they didn't see him. He'd do it
Speaker 1: with complete strangers in a crowd, or he'd do it
Speaker 1: with friends over and over again, and people would jump
Speaker 1: and swat.
Speaker 4: It's a little cricket noise. So that was my initiation
Speaker 4: within the first forty five minutes of meeting my hero.
Speaker 4: He's messing with me.
Speaker 1: So many of the things he did were a way
Speaker 1: of saying, wake up, Wake up. He wanted to wake
Speaker 1: you up with the things he did. At least that's
Speaker 1: the effect it had on me. And there's something downright
Speaker 1: mystical about that. Well.
Speaker 4: The other nonverbal thing he liked to do, there was
Speaker 4: two of them, and involve his fingers and one he
Speaker 4: would sneak up behind you and put the rabbit ears
Speaker 4: behind you, or like or the devil horns. Yeah, he'd
Speaker 4: do that behind your when you were taking a picture.
Speaker 4: The other thing was if he thought you were being goofy,
Speaker 4: you know, he used to say, are you crazy? Man?
Speaker 2: You crazy?
Speaker 4: But if he just felt like being nonverbal, he would
Speaker 4: point his finger and pointed to his ears and make
Speaker 4: the circle motion like you're a nuts man. He did
Speaker 4: that a lot as a nonverbal sort of communication or cue.
Speaker 1: Yeah it. Particularly as the years went on he did
Speaker 1: that one more and more too.
Speaker 2: I love your show a Mario style, but if.
Speaker 4: Your pay is so cheap, I won't be back for
Speaker 4: a while. Well, I felt honored because he said the
Speaker 4: same thing to Dick Cavett, everybody, Johnny Carson, Howard Cosell,
Speaker 4: David Frost, whoever.
Speaker 1: No matter how many times he said that stuff, you'd
Speaker 1: laugh and you weren't forcing a laugh.
Speaker 4: Many times he used humor to diffuse a serious situation. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: Sometimes somebody was taken by Muhammad's health, felt sad, or
Speaker 4: if somebody was uncomfortable, he would break that situation with humor.
Speaker 4: What did Lincoln say after a four day drunk.
Speaker 1: He'd always say who It was just terrible jokes like that,
Speaker 1: but when he did it, it was funny.
Speaker 4: I was at the Super Bowl one time. I bring
Speaker 4: my friend to the room to meet Mohammed, and Mohammad
Speaker 4: was watching one of those crazy afternoon talk shows.
Speaker 1: You are not.
Speaker 4: Mohammed could see that my friend was kind of choked
Speaker 4: up and sat and he reached out and he shook
Speaker 4: his hand and he pulled him in close, and he
Speaker 4: whispered something in his ear vulgar about the female anatomy,
Speaker 4: and my friend just cracked up. And then I said, Muhammed,
Speaker 4: you're you're crazy man. We walked out and we went
Speaker 4: to the elevator. The doors open, and I look over
Speaker 4: my shoulder and my friend is now in tears. I
Speaker 4: said to him, don't you feel sorry for him? He
Speaker 4: made you laugh, didn't he He goes, he did make me laugh,
Speaker 4: and I said, well, then don't feel sorry for him,
Speaker 4: because he's all there. And my friend got over it
Speaker 4: right away, but for a moment, he was thinking back
Speaker 4: to the guy he knew in the seventies.
Speaker 1: He's still there.
Speaker 4: He just can't get it out the way he used
Speaker 4: to Mohammad detected this guy's bumman al, so he told
Speaker 4: him something outrageous to break the tension and made him laugh.
Speaker 4: He used humor to diffuse a heavy situation.
Speaker 1: Magic man did Muhammad love magic. He was pretty dark.
Speaker 1: Good as prestidigitator too. It was a really cool one
Speaker 1: he did with me, and I always saw him do this.
Speaker 1: One time he put this handkerchief down and said, there's
Speaker 1: a ghost in the house. There's a ghost right here,
Speaker 1: and he would make the handkerchief float, would raise up
Speaker 1: and in the middle. I don't know how he did
Speaker 1: that one. Of course, the one he did with everybody
Speaker 1: was the levitation thing. My son Isaac for years thought
Speaker 1: that he really had levitated too, and he couldn't be
Speaker 1: the only kid who did you know. He loved old
Speaker 1: horror films, particularly those from the thirties and forties. Mohammed
Speaker 1: also got a kick out of CHRISTOPHERD. Lee, Campy Dracula,
Speaker 1: movies from the nineteen sixties and seventies, Black and Whites,
Speaker 1: The Mummy, Frankenstein, wolf Man, all of that stuff. I
Speaker 1: remember when he was chasing Isaac around the house saying people,
Speaker 1: he is just like a big kid and of course,
Speaker 1: one of his favorite gags too, is when he get
Speaker 1: in a crowd and he sees some kid or some
Speaker 1: older guy who was maybe a little shorter than him
Speaker 1: but close to heavyweight, who was almost always an African
Speaker 1: American guy, and he points to him and say, Joe Frazier,
Speaker 1: did he toss punches of that guy? And it just
Speaker 1: pulls everybody into his circle.
Speaker 4: It's inescapable that you're in the presence of someone who
Speaker 4: does transcend race, religion, culture, nationality. You're meeting someone extraordinary.
Speaker 1: He was never more than a half step away from
Speaker 1: a joke.
Speaker 4: He never lost his sense of fun and sense of humor.
Speaker 4: And I think for young men, especially athletes today, stop
Speaker 4: taking yourself too seriously. Man, have fun, enjoy it. Don't
Speaker 4: think you're bigger than the situation itself. Mohammed's situation was
Speaker 4: really heavy, and he was as big as they come,
Speaker 4: but he always remained a man of the people and
Speaker 4: wanted to share goodwill and fun with everybody he encountered.
Speaker 1: No matter how ridiculous his antic was or what ever
Speaker 1: came out of his mouth, there was almost always a
Speaker 1: profundity to it. There was a wisdom in it, and
Speaker 1: I think there's a wisdom in just that simple sense
Speaker 1: of play that keeps you from getting old, that keeps
Speaker 1: you from getting bored. It allows you to have a
Speaker 1: good time with your life. The things that other people
Speaker 1: would have not dealt so well with as he did,
Speaker 1: the things that you've mentioned, Kraig, that's a major part
Speaker 1: of his transcendence. He didn't let the shit get him down.
Speaker 1: He just was gonna have fun no matter what. That beautiful, playful,
Speaker 1: eternal child.
Speaker 4: Rashida Ali Walsh is the second oldest child, along with
Speaker 4: her twin sister Jamila, of Mohammad Ali. She's an author,
Speaker 4: a spokesperson, a Parkinson's disease advocate, and she joins us, now.
Speaker 2: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Davis met your dad in Louisville and spend some time
Speaker 4: at your grandmother's house. Your dad welcomed him in to
Speaker 4: dinner at Mama Bird's house.
Speaker 1: I'm a bird.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uncle Rockband is there with Mohammed and Davis excuses himself
Speaker 4: to go to the bathroom, and then your father locks
Speaker 4: him in the bathroom and leaves him in there, and
Speaker 4: they're laughing outside, and then finally he let him out
Speaker 4: and he tackles Davis on the floor begins tickling him.
Speaker 4: Talk about that playful nature in your dad that he
Speaker 4: reverted back to something a little boy would do.
Speaker 2: We'd be in an elevator.
Speaker 3: And strangers right in front of us, and my dad
Speaker 3: was take his finger and kind of go up to
Speaker 3: a stranger's ear and kind of make this crackling sound
Speaker 3: that sounds like a bug or a.
Speaker 2: Fly cricket, and the person would turn around.
Speaker 3: And thought that that it was a book. Then he
Speaker 3: would reveal who the bug was at the end of
Speaker 3: our elevator ride. He's always loved joking around, making people laugh.
Speaker 2: He was a little kid. He didn't lose that even
Speaker 2: in his final years. He would play.
Speaker 3: Around with the cars on either side of us, and
Speaker 3: some people would be like, what a weirdo and then
Speaker 3: keep driving.
Speaker 2: But there's some people double take and go.
Speaker 3: By day, you know, cars would almost drive off the
Speaker 3: road because they're like, I can't believe Mohammed only just
Speaker 3: next to me.
Speaker 2: My dad would just go through the phone book and
Speaker 2: just call people. He would say, this is Muhammed only.
Speaker 3: My dad's wife had to change his number once a
Speaker 3: month because people would call back, and then it would
Speaker 3: just be too many.
Speaker 2: People call him. He did it all the time.
Speaker 3: My kids were little and he had a farm, and
Speaker 3: the time that we would spend together was so magnificent
Speaker 3: because my kids got a chance to see their grandpa
Speaker 3: at a time where even though I saw my dad
Speaker 3: at that age, I didn't really remember. By the time
Speaker 3: I was five six, my parents divorced, so those young
Speaker 3: years I didn't really recollect because my dad wasn't in
Speaker 3: the same state as me, we didn't live together, So
Speaker 3: I was going to give my kids the memories that
Speaker 3: I didn't have. We would watch videos together, movies, Western movies,
Speaker 3: we would watch Elvis movies, we would watch him.
Speaker 2: His favorite subject, and it would.
Speaker 3: Just be so much fun connecting with my dad and
Speaker 3: my kids getting to know their grandpa. He had on
Speaker 3: the property a gym that he used back in the
Speaker 3: seventies and my kids go in the boxing ring with
Speaker 3: him and just play around, and then we had a
Speaker 3: heavy bag he would play with his grandkids and us,
Speaker 3: and we just had the most magical time together.
Speaker 2: There was just really a magical time for us.
Speaker 3: It was so big, it was eighty eight acres. He
Speaker 3: would go out there and just walk and sometimes we'd
Speaker 3: all go out there and walk with him. You could
Speaker 3: walk for miles and still be on the property. Nothing
Speaker 3: was better than that. If you spent time with him,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to speak. I know my dad's eyes
Speaker 3: and the way he speaks with his eyes. I just
Speaker 3: understood nonverbally what he was saying with his eyes, and
Speaker 3: he would laugh and his eyes would light up. That
Speaker 3: was the way that we were non verbally able to
Speaker 3: communicate with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to talk.
Speaker 3: He just looked and he used his facial expressions. He
Speaker 3: used his hands, he used his eyes.
Speaker 2: He's still grandiose.
Speaker 3: He's the same person as he was before Parkinson's, just
Speaker 3: people don't really see that side of him. My dad
Speaker 3: loved being Muhammed alive, the way he made people feel.
Speaker 2: One time, we were.
Speaker 3: Just hanging out with my dad at the house and
Speaker 3: he's like, let's go out on the town, and I said,
Speaker 3: let's go. When celebrities go out places, they have twenty
Speaker 3: security people.
Speaker 2: My dad was nothing like that. He wanted people to
Speaker 2: be able to connect with him. I've been with him
Speaker 2: on many.
Speaker 3: Trips where security was automatically provided and he said, no,
Speaker 3: you can stay back. He wanted to connect. He wanted
Speaker 3: to make people feel special.
Speaker 2: People from all over the globe would come visit him.
Speaker 3: And he got my boys into magic, and so Nico
Speaker 3: bought this Chrissangel Magic kit and he started practicing. Nico
Speaker 3: showed Daddy floating card trick my Dad.
Speaker 2: He loved it so much. Nico had to do it
Speaker 2: four times. He was like, do it again, do it again.
Speaker 2: He was so excited.
Speaker 3: A lot of documentaries on my father, people who do
Speaker 3: those documentaries don't include his kids gets a disservice because
Speaker 3: my dad had nine children and he loved us so much.
Speaker 3: He traveled all over the world. He did everything he could.
Speaker 3: He sacrificed a lot of time away from us to
Speaker 3: be a huge influence and to help people of the world.
Speaker 3: But at the same time he did all of that
Speaker 3: for us. My dad was a very loving and caring
Speaker 3: human being, but he was also the loving and caring father.
Speaker 1: Next time on the dow Mohammed and I stepped deep
Speaker 1: into the mystic and my life is forever transformed. Also,
Speaker 1: we sit down with Reverend al Sharpton, who shares his
Speaker 1: own personal stories with the child.
Speaker 5: Not a l said to me and even what you
Speaker 5: do is not how good you can though, it is
Speaker 5: how good you could take it. If you tell you Sharpton,
Speaker 5: you get out there fighting his system, it will throw punches.
Speaker 5: If you can't take it, don't get out there. And
Speaker 5: it was stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That he lived by the dow of Mohammad. Ali is
Speaker 1: produced by Imagine Audio for iHeart Podcast and hosted by
Speaker 1: Me Davis Miller. My co host is Craig Mortally, Karl Welker,
Speaker 1: Mark Bouch, Nathan Kloke, Derek Jennings and Little Oe. Me
Speaker 1: Davis Miller are executive producers. Produced by Craig Mortali, sound
Speaker 1: design and mixing by Juan Borda, music by Djsparr and
Speaker 1: introducing a very good pal of mine Isaac Miller. Additional
Speaker 1: music is provided by Opera Louisiana's twenty twenty three production
Speaker 1: of Approaching Ali and also Luminescence track Nuage. Visit luminescent
Speaker 1: music dot com to check out more from the band.