Was that Joe Louis?

I’m pretty sure that was Joe Louis at the far end of the platform. I don’t look for celebrities or get a thrill from spotting them, but I seem to notice my fair share. I may have a hard time recognizing my neighbors, but celebrities often make it easy.
This past Monday I flew to LA next to a ten year old boy and his mother. She quickly revealed they were on their way to meet with the kid’s agents and managers. I’m sure she used the plural. The kid sings, dances and acts. A very polite kid with lovely dreadlocks and a proud, nice mother. I’m sure he’ll be famous. Someday.
Which made me think back to another celebrity sighting, long ago, in the early eighties, in the Hilton hotel in Brussels—I can place it exactly because that first business trip to Europe included my first ever visit to Germany, which is a whole nother story. The elevator doors were closing when a young woman, accompanied by two other giddy young people, barged in.
She was a vaguely familiar, pretty little thing. What intrigued me most was the young woman’s jacket, an elaborately painted bombardier’s leather jacket.
I have such a jacket. It remains a favorite even though its old and its lining its shredded: I would never consider decorating it with paint. The blond girl looked away from her chatting companions to smile at me, before performing a graceful 180 degrees twirl. Three oversized letters painted on the jacket’s back spelled out P-I-A. She twirled back to face her friends but kept an eye on me.
Pia Zadora was a fleeting minor celebrity whose rich old husband was promoting her film career. The marriage was later lampooned in a “The Bonefire For The Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe.
I was considering a comment along the lines of, your mother made sure you wouldn’t be losing your jacket in summer camp, when the elevator reached my floor and we were spared the razor sharp edge of my wit.
But Joe Louis was no ordinary celebrity. He was Joe Louis. Thinking back on that day, I didn’t wonder what he was doing standing on the New York bound platform in the Trenton train station, but what was I doing there, heading to NY City, by myself, on a weekend afternoon?
Such are the thoughts that scamper across my mind while trapped for six hours in a metal cylinder flying to the West coast. (Seven and a half, if you count the delayed departure)
In the end I deduced it must have been one of the times I went to see and help translate for my cousin Manolo when he came from Venezuela to the Sloan Kettering for diagnosis and treatment. My cousin Manolo, for whom the phrase “the good die young” must have been coined, first came to the States for treatment around 1970.
But there he was, Joe Louis, the man who knocked out Max Schmeling and Hitler’s-Nazi-Aryan-superiority line of bull.
I’m never sure what to do in these cases. Being an iconoclast I tend to do nothing, but this time I nodded. Joe Louis was by himself. The few other people on the platform were at the other end. Mr. Louis smiled back.
I have been next to more “important” people—although I could have easily survived without seeing Fidel or Che in the flesh—but Joe Louis was a bit of a thrill. I remember going back upstairs for some reason, maybe to buy a ticket. When I came back down Joe Louis was gone.
I got into a conversation with a uniformed guard. When I mentioned seeing Joe Louis he became agitated. He hadn’t seen him. He said he normally looks for big people that may be of help in case of an altercation. He hadn’t noticed anyone resembling Joe Louis.
“Are you sure it was him?” he said.
It was him. No question. Joe Louis had a recognizable, innocent face. A nice man’s face. And even if it wasn’t him, by the guard’s own admission, he should have noticed a really big guy. And gray hair or not, sweet face or not, even in old age, I bet that Joe Louis could punch like a mule.