I had no idea Johnny Damon was from my hometown. (Actually, my home town is Gotha, FL, so NO ONE is from there, but I have an expansive sense of place).
He moved to Dr. Phillips when he was young. At that time, Dr. Phillips was not much of a place (it isn't exactly Paris now). It had to be a little hard to have an Asian mother in redneck city. When I was in high school, there were lots of Klan boys and Klan wannabes, proud of the knives they brought to school. There were small towns in the area whose proud motto was "The sun has never set on a live [n-word, meaning black man] in ______." These sundown towns were not exactly hospitable to outsiders.
Of course, by the time that Johnny D moved there, in 1978, it was...not much better. Way to go, John. Way to get out of there. A big part of the reason he got out is this sort of behavior.
A picture and story of Johnny D and DPHS lads; for some reason removed from local paper server, but available for a little while on the Google cache.
(Nod to MMartin, my best stringer)
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