The time has come the Walrus said to talk about many things. Ships and Sea and Mustache Wax and Bruce Lee

When I was in college there was a graduate student in the Speech Department at Temple University that had trained a bit with Bruce Lee when he was an undergraduate in Seattle. I knew of Bruce Lee from the TV show The Green Hornet, but I really knew much more about him. I only knew this fellow slightly and only one time he demonstrated a bit of his training. At that time I had no interest in Bruce Lee or his art, and what I saw did not inspire me to find out more.

 

This was well before the kung fu movie craze began and before the Bruce Lee movies.

 

Rolling forward a few years and I did see the Bruce Lee movies. In fact on our 2^nd date, I took a young woman (my future wife) to see  Bruce Lee movie in a drive in. Enjoyed the movie but more interested in she who would become my wife. Again I was not inspired to find out more about Bruce.

 

Then time and circumstances conspired to allow me the chance to study Isshinryu karate with Tom Lewis, and that would be the ride of my lifetime.

 

Sometime later I was still very raw in my art, but I had heard or a school teaching Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kuen Do in a nearby town in Deleware.

 

I was somewhat interested and one Saturday morning drove over there to see what it was about. Met the owner and introduced myself explaining I was studying Isshinryu but wanted to hear about what he was teaching.

 

He explained that he had been teaching a kung fu program. He, himself, was a student of that system from Washington DC. In reality he was but a part time student when he could travel to train. But he had taken his studies and opened his own school in Delaware, the same time he was a student.

 

But he decided to switch his school over to Jeet Kuen Do after he read Bruce Lee’s book. He never mentioned training with anybody,  My best quess he was making it up, interpreting that book based on whatever knowledge he had gained previously.

 

I remember politely saying thanks, then leaving.

 

I was never tempted to join and happy to return to my Isshinryu studies.

 

I do not believe I have ever discussed this before.

 

No idea if he was doing that in an attempt to get students. I know I read many programs were cashing in on Bruce’s movies at that time.

 

In time I read Bruce Lee’s books. Never  gained much from them myself.

Never sought out instruction in Jeet Kuen Do. Mo one I know of was teaching that in any area I later lived.

 

Not that I have a problem with those that do study the art.  Just no interest myself.

 

There were literally thousands of magazine covers with Bruce Lee on them, simply because Bruce sold copies mostly movie fans. I remember the Tuttle Publications Martial Arts book editor explaining they always published books about Bruse because those books far outsold their other martial arts books.

 

That was my brief brush with the Way of the Intercepting Fist.