An Anaheim Hills man named David Jones has written a book in which he describes growing up in a tiny, all-black town in central Florida during the early '50s. When he was 12 and walking out of church, a group of white teenage boys who were riding by tossed a watermelon at the churchgoers along with some racial slurs.
The watermelon, Jones writes, knocked over a frail, elderly woman, who hit her head on a stone when she went down. She died. Nothing was ever done about it.
The name of the book is "Headslap," which has a double-meaning: The author faced a lot of headslaps in life growing up in the segregated South. But he also became famous in part for legal headslaps against his opponents in the National Football League.
On his first day of training camp for the Los Angeles Rams in 1961, David Jones became Deacon Jones, because he told the media: "I've come to preach the gospel of winning football for the people of Los Angeles." He went on to a Hall of Fame career.
You may have heard the titles "King of Sacks" and "Secretary of Defense." Those referred to Jones. Along with being part of the "Fearsome Foursome." He became so good at those headslaps, the league had to make them illegal.
Deacon Jones' career had ended by the time the Rams moved to Orange County before the 1980 season. But a few years ago, Jones gave up his part-ownership of the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League and moved here to become a Rams radio analyst. When the Rams moved on to St. Louis, Jones and his wife, Elizabeth, decided that Orange County would remain their home.
"People here treat me great," Jones told me this week. "It's as if I'd just walked off the football field yesterday instead of 22 years ago."
Jones said he started the book (written with John Klawitter) more than six years ago. He's spent most of the past six months promoting it. But now he's busy with "Headslap II," the sequel.
Jones explains: "I had about 1,200 pages of manuscript and we only got to use about 500 pages. I've got a lot left to say."
The book ends with the last year of his career, 1974, when he played a season for the Washington Redskins and his beloved former Rams coach, George Allen. (Jones writes that their relationship was fiercely bonded when he once overheard Allen using Jones as a role model while lecturing his own young children.)
