Orson Pratt Bird, O.P. as he was known to most, was born near Topeka, Kansas in the late 1880’s.  He was a gifted athlete as a youth. He loved and played all sports, but excelled in football and wresting.  Upon reaching adulthood O.P. enrolled in college with the goal of becoming a football coach.  There he met the love of his life, Aileen Powell, and the course of his life changed.

After they were married they moved to southern Colorado and homesteaded a farm near Walsenburg.  It was a hard life in what was then wilderness territory. The winters were harsh and the summer sun unrelenting.   The “cabin” had been dug into the hill side and had a dirt floor.  O.P. got a job in the local coal mines and together they set out to raise a family of six children.  After an accident at the mine O.P. was laid off and set out with the family to visit relatives in California.  While they were out west the mines back home flooded and there was no work to go back to.

Settling in Stockton, O.P. opened a garage and tried his hand at the mechanics trade.  However the depression wiped out his business and left the family in a desperate situation.  So in order to put food on the table O.P. went pro.  Signing on with a carnival he traveled the state under the moniker “Husky” Bird and would take on all comers to a match where for a small fee a local could win a few bucks if they could last three rounds.

Of course the real money was in the side bets as the towns folk would lay wagers in support of the local challenger.  And shills in the crowd were more than happy to take their money.  O.P. stood about five foot six and weighed maybe one fifty soaking wet.  So a lot of the locals in these towns…especially after a couple of beers…would think, “Hell, I can take him”.  What they didn’t know was that O.P. was AAU state champion.  He had a rock hard body and a miner’s grip.  Most of them ended up flat on their backs by the middle of round one.  He would take them on one after another all night long, then pack up and head for the next town.   In the summer when school was out the family would join him on the road, working on set up and selling tickets.  At times the challenger and his buddies…their pride wounded and their money gone…would start trouble, causing a hasty exit in the dark of night.

After Pearl Harbor O.P. took a job as a welder in the shipyards, building Liberty ships for the war effort. After the war he opened a small amusement park in Stockton, fabricating most of the rides himself. And thus ended the professional career of my grandfather, Husky Bird, the man who went to the mat to get his family through the depression.