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The Clays of Louisville are an old Kentucky family. Not rich, maybe, like the folks who play pool in the Pendennis Club and chew mint leaves on the veranda at Churchill Downs. But the Clays have been there for six generations—ever since their ancestors worked as slaves on the plantation of Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was Lincoln's Minister to Russia. They like the name, and they like Louisville, and they have a red brick house with five rooms, all of them on one floor. It's got wall-to-wall carpeting in every room and a picture painted right on the white plaster wall in the living room.
Old Cash Clay did that mural himself. Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. is a sign painter. Up there where it says KING KARL'S THREE ROOMS OF NEW FURNITURE on Market Street—he did that, just as he painted A. B. HARRIS, M.D., DELIVERIES & FEMALE DISORDERS on Dumesnil Street, Louisville. His son, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., has just turned 21 and has far larger ambitions. "I'm gonna drive down Walnut Street in a Caddy on Derby Day." he says, "and all the people will point and say, 'There goes Cassius Clay.' Pretty girls will be there, and I'll smell the flowers and feel the nice warm night air. Oh, I'm cool then, man. I'm cool. The girls are looking at me, and I'm looking away.
I'm wanting to know them worse than they want to know me—only they don't know it." By Derby Day next year, Cassius figures, he will be the heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
"I'm the Greatest." Some people think Cassius Clay talks too much. But Cassius just laughs, and keeps on talking. Sometimes he talks in doggerel:
This is the story about a man With iron fists and a beautiful tan, He talks a lot and boasts indeed Of a powerful punch and blinding speed.
Sometimes he sticks to prose. "I'm beee-ootiful," he croons. "I'm the greatest. I'm the double greatest. I am clean and sparkling. I will be a clean and sparkling champion."
Cassius Clay is Hercules, struggling through the twelve labors. He is Jason, chasing the Golden Fleece. He is Galahad, Cyrano, D'Artagnan. When he scowls, strong men shudder, and when he smiles, women swoon. The mysteries of the universe are his Tinker Toys. He rattles the thunder and looses the lightning. "I was marked," he says. "I had a big head, and I looked like Joe Louis in my cradle. People said so. One day I threw my first punch and hit my mother right in the teeth and knocked one out. If you don't believe me, ask her."