Earl Walker stood between the two combatants on the dance floor of his New Knights.

Lord only knows how many times he’d been in this position through the years. Part of owning a bar means breaking up fights.

Earl Walker had no patience for fights in his club. With help from a heavy flashlight, a group of well-trained bouncers, and a solid knowledge in the art of boxing, he’d shut down a fight immediately.

Start a fight in Earl Walker’s place and you were liable to face more damage from those breaking up the fight than the other fighter.

If at the end of that breakup you found yourself damaged, legend always claimed that Earl would more than likely drive you to the ER for first aid.

But this night, Earl stood between two of his employees. It was after hours at the Knights. The usually dimmed lights shined brightly. The dance floor had become a boxing ring. The drinkers and drunkards, the dancers and partiers, the men and women on the prowl had all gone their separate ways into the night.

Earl had invited a few of us, myself included, to stick around and watch him train one of his bouncers in the art of boxing. He wasn’t training the employee how to be a better bouncer. The bouncer wanted to learn how to spar so he could perhaps one day box in a real ring.

This was no barroom brawl. The two combatants didn’t bow up and talk smack. They didn’t swing wildly or revert to a combination of punches and grappling.

They wore sparring gloves and mouthpieces. They punched with precision. Their feet moved back and forth, and around the dance floor, with more rhythm and purpose than most of the dancers from earlier in the night.

Earl Walker circled the boxers. He offered instruction. He had joined the Navy at 17 and became a Golden Gloves champ in Texas and Georgia in his youth.

Now years later, he’d walk between a swing to talk the boxers through a better way to deliver a jab. Earl had put in a full night of business and showed no signs of slowing as the rest of us sat on bar stools, watching, sipping beers and smoking cigarettes into the wee hours.

This night was back in the early 1990s, which would have made Earl Walker either in his late 50s or early 60s, a time when many men might think better of staying up all night. But not him.

On March 15, 1974, Earl opened a club in an area VFW hall. He soon had a place of his own, which he called The Knights of Georgia. In the early 1980s, fire destroyed the original Knights. So, he moved the business to 3472 Bemiss Road and renamed the club the New Knights of Georgia, a name it kept for nearly 20 years until changing it, with daughter Pam Ringos, to Rock ’N Rodeo in 2004. There were a few rough times in the early 2000s, a few quick name changes such as Club 2000 and The Knights, before gaining a new popular foothold with the successful Rock ’N Rodeo.

Still, decades in a bar isn’t what one would have expected from Earl Walker.

Though surrounded by cigarettes and whiskey every night, Earl Walker would always tell people he had never smoked and never drank. He’d offer this information as a suggestion, a bit of free advice, to many of his customers through the years.

He loved the outdoors. He loved to fish. Part of the reason he chose the night life as his daily job: He didn’t want to spend a beautiful, sunny day cooped up somewhere working 9-to-5. Earl Walker started a night club so he could keep his days free for things he wanted to do.

Even if he might stay late some nights, teaching a bouncer the fine art of boxing, or sharing some of his boxing stories with a few patrons he’d invited to stay a little longer.

He stayed a long time himself, working the club into his 70s. He had battled illness the past few years. This past weekend, he passed away. He was 77 years old.

Though he hadn’t worked the club in several years, and though it has been Rock ’N Rodeo for nearly six years, I still think of Earl Walker driving past what was once the New Knights.

I think of the boxer and the legend, the bar owner and the teetotaler, who walked out the doors into the squinting, sweaty shine of a South Georgia summer morning, after a night of work, boxing and stories. An old night over and a new day just begun.



Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times assistant managing editor. His book, “Waiting for Willie,” a novel, is available at The Valdosta Daily Times’ 201 N. Troup St. offices.