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By Root 589 0

take to Honolulu to substitute for an injured principal in a main bout. They had to fly to make it, and Young was afraid of airplanes. Whitey got him aboard by telling him the trip would take only fifteen minutes. He said Honolulu was in New Jersey.) Brooks wore a black imperial under his lower lip, and was dressed for some improbable Riviera. He said that Saddler had asked him to stay at the camp but that the country was not for him. “I can’t stand those crickets,” he said. “Keep me awake. I’m a connoisseur. A boulevardier.” As we got to the top of a rise on a country road among hill pastures Johnston said, “This is the nicest part of the ride.” Brooks guffawed. “Old Charlie say that every time he get to this spot,” he said. “It’s delectably beautiful.” Johnston, who didn’t hear him, said, “Out here it’s quiet. A real training camp. Nothing to do after dark but take a walk or watch television.” A hill or two farther on, we stopped under a sign that read, “EHSAN’S TRAINING CAMP.” There was a farmhouse a hundred feet above the road, and a couple of one-story white frame buildings still higher up, at the end of a path. On the top slope and the crest of the hill was an apple orchard, and under the apple trees were fat sheep. Brooks shuddered.

Johnston drove the car off the road, and we climbed to the farmhouse together. Brooks and Daniels made off up the path. “Moore will be resting until two o’clock,” Johnston said to me. “We may as well get something to eat.” We entered through the kitchen, where Mr. Ehsan, a parchment-hided man with gray hair, sat snapping the ends off beans. He is a Turk; his mother, known as Mme. Bey, started the training camp about thirty years ago and was so frugal and severe that she attracted the patronage of a conservative class of prizefight managers. Johnston ordered bacon and eggs and coffee, and I did the same. While Mr. Ehsan set about preparing them, Johnston and I went into the bare living room to wait. “This is a serious place,” he said, surveying the dismal surroundings with approval. “No bar, no juke boxes. No women from the summer resorts with short pants on.” Finding that bilateral conversation was now possible, I asked him how many fighters he had in his stable. “Eight,” Johnston said, “but three are in Italy and three are in Argentina. The only ones I’ve got here are Moore and Saddler.”

I knew that Charlie Johnston was a younger brother of the late Jimmy Johnston, an ex-flyweight with a snub nose, indelible black hair, and a derby hat, who had been known in the trade as the Boy Bandit even when he was approaching seventy. Jimmy was a famous manager and promoter, a man of quips, rages, feuds, and funny stories. The current Johnston, like many another younger brother, has jelled in a quieter mold, but he has the Boy Bandit’s flair for fighters; I can’t remember any other manager with two concurrent world champions. I asked Johnston if it didn’t make for jealousy between them, but he said no; Moore is like an older brother to Saddler, who is twenty-seven. Moore is by temperament placid and analytical. Saddler is volatile—a string bean of a man with legs to his chin, and long pipestem arms with which he achieves remarkable feats of leverage. I saw Saddler knock out his predecessor, Willie Pep, so I have great respect for him.

Johnston told me that he had become aware of the financial possibilities of the road while touring with a great, great English fighter named Ted Kid Lewis, who flourished at about the time of the First World War. Jimmy Johnston was Lewis’s American manager. “I was fourteen then,” Charley Johnston said, “and Jimmy took me into his office. When he was busy with other fighters, he would let me travel with Lewis. Lewis knew everything anyway. He must have fought Jack Britton for the welterweight championship twenty times—every place from New Orleans to Toronto—and they always packed the house. Buffalo, Cincinnati, Dayton, Canton, Atlanta, or Jersey City, it was always a battle. They liked each other all right outside the ring, but when they got inside they would do everything.