• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 546 0

and there weren’t nearly enough special cops to stop them. Once in a seat, each of these fellows would try to avoid attention until the rightful ticket holder arrived, upon which, after a conversational delaying action, the interloper would move to another empty seat, continuing to move until the lights went out for the main bout. Then, if evicted again, he would squat in an aisle. The specials were flushing them all through the show, in a succession of comedy chases. The rush, because it was so concerted, did not amuse me; in a previous decade and in other circumstances, the louts might have been wearing black or brown shirts, I thought, and a time might come when they would be again. The night was sweating hot.

I could identify one ticket holder who was already in his seat. He was a man who looks like Ethel Waters, especially when he has his mouth open, and who calls himself Prince Monolulu. He says he is an Ethiopian prince, and wears a bright-red jacket embroidered with the Star of David and the signs of the zodiac, as well as headdress of ostrich plumes and a set of flowing skirts. These make him fairly easy to recognize if you have seen him once, and I had seen him several times in England—once at Epsom, plying his regular trade as a race-track tout, and on endless Sundays at Hyde Park Corner, where he preaches Zionism. I had read in the morning paper that he’d come over on a chartered plane with fifty other Turpin supporters. When working, Prince Monolulu shouts, at unpleasantly frequent intervals, “I got a ’orse!” and then, to those who gather around in response to his shouts, he tells about the dialogue between the camiknickers and the nightgown, winding up by selling his horse, on a folded slip of paper, for a modest half crown. I bought Black Tarquin from him at Epsom, and it beat twenty-four other horses, finishing eighth. At the Polo Grounds, I noticed, he was silent. He may have been molting.

In the very first preliminary, one boy knocked the other down for a count of nine in the first round, and the referee stopped the fight. This apparently exaggerated solicitude, I felt sure, could be attributed to the death of a preliminary fighter named Georgie Flores, who had been fatally injured when knocked out in Madison Square Garden a couple of weeks earlier.

In another preliminary Jackie Turpin, an older brother of the champion’s and a featherweight, defeated a boy named Wamsley in six rounds. Jackie is a light tan, like his bigger brother, but on the night of this fight the resemblance ended there. I thought he boxed a bit like Jackie (Kid) Berg, an English lightweight of the thirties, getting inside fast and throwing dozens of punches, most of which landed but none of which seemed solid. Still, the other boy went down for short counts twice, and Turpin earned the decision. I knew that somewhere in the stands there were five hundred members of the Queen Elizabeth’s crew, and the cheering for the featherweight Turpin showed where they were sitting—behind the third-base line.

The semifinal was between two big Negro heavyweights, one of whom, apparently beaten, knocked the other out in the last thirty seconds. “How do you like that?” one of two Garment Center Corinthians on my right asked his companion. “Just before he landed the winning punch, he was supremely out.”

Then the ring was full of fighters, the majority of them colored, being introduced to the crowd, and the belated ringside-seat holders were pouring in, a number of pretty women with them. Jersey Joe Walcott, then the heavyweight champion; Ezzard Charles, his predecessor; and Joe Louis entered the ring together and were introduced, one at a time; Louis got an ovation, although he was then just the champion-before-last. (When he walked out on the field to his seat before the semifinal, he was given a bigger hand than General MacArthur, who preceded him.) Louis looks like a champion and carries himself like a champion, and people will continue to call him champion as long as he lives.

The two seats at my left, which had been vacant all evening, were