nEW YORK, March 8 – In Madison Square Garden 30 years ago, the rebel suspended from work for claiming "no quarrel with them Viet Cong" returned to settle up with a former meat packer who routinely soaked his face in brine.

A Montreal snowstorm closed school that morning, giving me enough unsupervised time to empty my $45 in life savings for two closed circuit fight tickets at the Forum. I felt so proud as the clerk handed me those tickets, confirming that chubby fourth graders with crappy math grades are real people too. The moment marked my first public act free from adult direction. Launching ScreedMe marked my second.

I trudged home to invite my father to "The Fight of the Century" between Joe Frazier and the other black guy who’s name I couldn’t pronounce but who used to be called Cassius Clay, until it got him arrested … or something like that. I’d never "invited" anyone to anything. This was no ordinary snow-day.

During the fight that night I got to know Muhammad Ali so well that Joe Frazier’s amazing 15th round hook slamming Ali to the canvas hurt me too. Ali lost, Frazier won, I cried, and my mother asked if I’d done my homework.

The next day at school I heard some teachers chortle that, "bigmouth Ali got what he deserved."

I hated those teachers. The side you took in the Ali-Frazier fight became my test for friend or foe. I’d pin hapless friends of my parents who stopped by to pick up sugar or drop something off, asking who they had "wanted to win?" Answering "Frazier" drew a scowl and a diatribe on why they were wrong or even "stupid" in one case. My parents asked me to stop answering the door.

Soon I was taping picture cutouts of Ali and his fights across my bedroom walls and reading all about Elijah Muhammad, or "Is-Lamb" as I pronounced it. My parents told me I should study math. Instead I started running and pushups, lost the chubby thing, and asked my parents if I could go to a summer boxing camp?

After three years of more boxing and not enough math I closed the sports pages before finishing the story. Rushing to my father’s dressing table, scraping together all the loose change I could find, I was soon looking up at the sweaty crowd jammed with me into the 24 heading downtown.

Hopping off the bus outside Le Chateau Champlain, I squinted up at all those glinting half-moons – thirty six floors of glinting half-moons against a blue sky and three clouds. A nearby bank flashed date, time, and temperature: July 15, 1974 - 11:07 AM - 28C

Checking with la concierge, I frowned, as adults did when they had something important to say, and croaked my deepest imitation of post-pubescent authority.

"Qui, bonjour. La chambre de M. Ali. Muhammad Ali. Pouvez-vous s’appeler, s’il vous plait. M. Kippen est ici. Uh, je suis … M. Kippen."

Peering down, la concierge eyed me like a disapproving teacher as she rang. Looking up, I watched her without a blink as she dialed.

"Je m’excuse," she nodded after half a dozen rings, "il n’y a pas de reponse - No answer sir."

Sir!? That croaking must be working. But there was no time for flattery. I had to think fast. If he wasn’t here that meant he was out, and if he was out, that meant he’d be back - right? Yes, he’d have to come back. So I walked over to one of the oversized, overstuffed, green sofas, with little gold tassels hanging along its velvet sides. The overhead hotel sound system played a piano version of "Do The Hustle."

For a few minutes I sat and peered out of the lobby’s two-story high glass windows onto the street, then looked over at a wall clock - 11:20 AM.

Taxis, buses, and tourists came, went, and whatever. I kept watching and waiting. Eventually, I looked back at that clock again- 12:03 PM.

The hotel was busy but I didn’t really notice. I could only really think about all the questions I needed to ask to grow up just like him, do what he did, wear what he wore, win like he won, drive my teachers crazy like he drove my teachers crazy - that would be the best part.

I looked back at the clock - 2:30 PM. Did I miss him? By now that clock was starting to look back at me.

Another taxi pulled up outside those giant windows, but this one was different. Three men sat inside. Three black men, one with a short flattop haircut and a suit - a white shirt and a dark suit. He began to unfold himself from the inside. My breathing stopped - 2:31. As he straightened to stand, so did I. He was tall. I strained every face and eye muscle to focus. Now out of the taxi, he started to walk.

Yup - that was him! He headed toward the revolving hotel doors. I inched toward the entrance, stopped, then scrambled to those revolving doors, quickly planting my feet in front of them, staring up, stretching out my arm - waiting.

He climbed the outside hotel steps, soon revolved through those doors, stopped in front of me and looked down.

"Hello Mr. Ali. My name’s Alexander Kippen and I’ve been waiting here all day to meet you."

Holding a book in one hand, Muhammad Ali lifted his other arm slowly like heavy timber, gently squeezing my hand.

"Hello young man," he murmured and ambled past, followed by two black men in knit caps, bellbottoms, and collarless shirts.

I followed as they strode through the lobby, all filing into the elevator. First one inside, Ali turned, leaned lazily against the back elevator wall, then looked straight at me as I froze at the elevator edge.

… "Well c’mon." He slowly waved his hand inward .

I hopped inside as the doors slid shut with a ring.

The two men in knit-caps talked and Ali read as we rode into the sky. Somewhere along the way he peeked over his book and looked down at me as I looked up at him, then widened his eyes, leant forward and cocked his head for emphasize.

"So you’re an Aliii fan huh?"

I nodded urgently, without blinking - or breathing.

At floor 35, the doors opened with another ring. Everyone slowly filed out and into Ali’s suite around the corner. I entered last. I couldn’t believe it.

The place looked like a giant apartment - big white walls, thick green carpet, dark oak furniture, and a long red sofa. You could see the city skyline through one of those big half-moon windows at the far end of the room. Ali dropped into the red sofa with his book, while the two men in knit caps sat at a nearby table. I took a chair across the room.

Ali read, the two men talked, I stared.

The two men talked of devils and angels, of Allah’s greatness and human sin. I noticed now that Ali was reading the Koran. They had all spent the day praying at a Montreal mosque.

This was my chance. I knew about the Koran, about Is-lamb, Mecca and Malcolm X, of Herbert and Wallace Muhammad, their father Elijah "The Messenger," and his White Devil theory of evolution.

I’d read "Ring," "Boxing Illustrated," and countless other sports magazines following Ali. I’d traveled the world in those magazines, learning about every foreign place where Ali fought. I’d studied religion and political theory in those magazines too, at least Ali’s ideas on religion and political theory.

He was set to fight 26 year-old George Forman for the heavyweight title that Fall in Zaire, a country I pronounced as "Zayr". Still, I knew that Kinshasa was once called Leopoldville before the Congolese booted their Belgian overlords. I knew that President Mobutu Sese Seko’s full name translated into something like "Mobutu the unbeatable warrior, who through his indomitable spirit and will to win, will move from triumph to triumph, leaving fire in his wake." Pretty cool. At school, I’d started attaching titles like that to my name. It drove my Geography teacher crazy.

"Is that Black Muzzlim stuff you guys are talking about?" I cut in.

"Uh … Excuse me young man?"

"You’re talking about Black Muzzlim stuff right? Allah, White Devils?"

Earlier that week at breakfast, my father had watched me warily as I painstakingly explained White Devil evolution.

"I see" he finally said between cereal spoonfuls, "so - are you a White Devil?"

I looked down at my napkin. "I don’t think so. But I’ll check."

Ali looked up. The two men looked at each other.

"I believe the young brother refers to the Nation of Islam," said one of the knit-capped men, stretching out the last word for emphasis.

"Yeah," I sat back with a little smile, "Is-lamb. Black Muzzlims."

The men in knit-caps looked at me re-assuringly.

"Well, the media likes to assign us the term Black Muslims, in what we refer to more accurately as the Nation of Islam," again stretching out the last word.

"Oh."

After further discussion between the men and me, ranging from Ezzard Charles to my plans after graduation a decade away, they stood up and looked over at Ali.

"Well champ, we know you need your rest so we’ll leave you alone."

Then they turned to me. "Young man?"

"That’s OK," I blurted, "I’ll stay."

Before the two men could insist, Ali waved them off casually.

"It’s alright, he’s OK. Just a little fan. I’ll give him a few minutes."

The men nodded agreeably then walked out, leaving Ali and me alone. Ali and me. I couldn’t believe it. That breathing problem came back.

… "So, Alexander – you in school?"

I coughed, I think. "Yup - I win bets with all the kids on your fights. I’m going to bet ‘em all again this Fall when you fight George Forman."

"Geeeeoooorgggge Forman." Ali stretched the name lazily.

"What’re you going to do to him? You’re fighting in Zaire right? Rumble in the Jungle? How you going to …"

Ali waved me off like a stray fly. "Geeeeoooorge Forman don’t matter."

"… He don’t?"

"He don’t matter at all," Ali repeated, inhaled, then gazed out the half-moon window. A little cloud sat nearby.

"Well, what if you …"

"Listen, young man." He held up his hand. "How much time and money, how many great minds, years of study, great schools, how much powerful equipment, steel, glass, concrete did it take just so we could sit up here and talk in the sky?"

I looked outside the half moon window at that cloud.

"All those minds, all that money, all that study, all that time just so we could sit up here and talk in the sky," he added.

I nodded seriously.

"All that - but in just a few seconds …"

I watched closely as Ali twirled his index finger, making a whooshing sound – "...in just a few seconds, Allah could blow it all away."

He sat back quietly into the long sofa clutching his Koran.

"Allah could just blow it all away. That’s why George Forman don’t matter."

Ali shocked most of the world that October, when he knocked George Forman out in a stadium that still stands today, barely, as testament to a time when Mobutu reigned and Disco had yet to reach its peak. But Ali didn’t shock me.

I won hundreds in bets at school, stuffing so many dollars and coins into my pockets the day after Ali won, I was sure I’d never need another paper route. My French teacher kicked me out of class that day, barking, "impossible, absolument, impossible."

Impossible, just like Ali.

Years passed. Ali retired, Foreman made a comeback, Disco peaked, fell, then made a quick comeback of its own. Not so for Mobutu. He died. I grew up.

I thought about my afternoon with Ali when I saw him shakily clutch the Olympic torch in Atlanta. I thought about our little talk when I watched the Ali-Foreman documentary When We Were Kings. I thought about it when Ali finally apologized for all the terrible names he called Joe Frazier. I thought about it when I went to a giant sports promotion in New Jersey this month carrying an old Ali photograph for him to autograph.

I still think of Ali and that day. I wonder if a kid today could ever get that close to a superstar. Could a mini Alexander sit in a hotel room for half an hour with Michael Jordan? I think about that day a lot, about what has become of Ali and Foreman, and of the world a quarter-century since.

George Foreman did matter of course. He mattered a lot. Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson. Guys like these always matter. Me? I still hope to grow up to become the Ali of my dreams. But I already understand what Ali meant.

Yours Truly,

Xandor
Copy Boy In-Chief