football he was fast but weighed only 155 pounds. As a boxer his progress was considerable, and late in junior year he qualified for the varsity team in the middleweight division. Early on a Saturday morning in mid-May he was on the old, rattly chartered bus, headed for the match at West Point. They were approaching Poughkeepsie when team captain Dizzy Koch, a formidable twenty-year-old 200-pounder from Minneapolis, asked the coach, Harry Gulph, if there was a magic way to get tickets for the Joe Louis fight at Madison Square Garden that night. The coach didn’t look up from his crossword puzzle but muttered, sure, all you had to do was pay thirty bucks to a scalper.
“If you want to call it ‘magic,’ ” the coach concluded, “say Hesto Presto when you hand over the money.”
Thirty dollars was a pretty magical sum of money, Captain Dizzy acknowledged; that would buy you three hundred hamburgers. And then, as if blinded by a revelation, he stood in the swaying bus, hanging on to the baggage rack, prepared to address the team.
Dizzy was an enthusiast, and now he blared out his suggestion, his scheme. Each team member would deposit three dollars into a pool, there would be a drawing. And? And the winner to take the boodle and attend the fight! There was general enthusiasm for the idea, except for Harry Albright, who said he didn’t have three dollars, and if he did, he wouldn’t risk it on so dumb a game. There were groans all around. The coach was caught up by the idea and confessed that he had twelve dollars left over from expense money, and that he would use that as “scholarship” contributions to the pool, available only for students on scholarship—“Raise your hands, everyone on scholarship.” Three, including Henry, raised their right hands. There was animateddiscussion on whether Harry Albright should be subsidized, it went to a vote of the whole team, and he won narrowly. Everyone was now a participant.
Harry Gulph collected the bills and the boxers wrote out their names on a pad passed around. Dizzy used the scissors on his Swiss Army knife, and the slips of paper were put into the coach’s fedora. Coach Harry was by now wholly caught up in the drama and with exaggerated gestures he first blinked his eyes, then raised his left hand to cover them, and then, absolutely to insure that he was not cheating, looked up at the roof of the bus while with his right hand he twiddled the slips of paper, finally drawing one out. Without looking at it, he ceremoniously handed it over to Dizzy.
“Here you are, Captain. You read out the winner’s name.”
Henry the Winner acknowledged first the congratulatory cheers, then the groans of frustrated disappointment; and later, just before noon, he knocked out his opponent, drawing cheers from ten travelers from New Haven and boos from several hundred cadets.
Henry found the experience exhilarating. At the post-tournament lunch he apologized to his victim, who remarked that he too had been surprised. “Damnedest thing, been boxing three years; never happened before.” He felt better when Henry said that he had himself been knocked out only a week or two earlier. The cadet seated on his right asked Henry if he had served in the Army before going to Yale, and Henry said yes, he had been in Italy. This was the formulation he used—he would not say, as most veterans did routinely, that he had “fought” in Italy.
With whom?
He identified the unit. Henry hoped the interrogation would end there, but it didn’t.
Had he been in action?
Yes, Henry said, and now he took over the helm, carefully navigating the course of the conversation. To have swerved over to an entirely different course would have struck his lunch mate as rude, or defensive; when intending to divert an inquiry into what kind of a life you had had in the military you don’t returnsuddenly to the subject of boxing. Something nearer at hand …
“My roommate was in the Navy in the Italian
“If you want to call it ‘magic,’ ” the coach concluded, “say Hesto Presto when you hand over the money.”
Thirty dollars was a pretty magical sum of money, Captain Dizzy acknowledged; that would buy you three hundred hamburgers. And then, as if blinded by a revelation, he stood in the swaying bus, hanging on to the baggage rack, prepared to address the team.
Dizzy was an enthusiast, and now he blared out his suggestion, his scheme. Each team member would deposit three dollars into a pool, there would be a drawing. And? And the winner to take the boodle and attend the fight! There was general enthusiasm for the idea, except for Harry Albright, who said he didn’t have three dollars, and if he did, he wouldn’t risk it on so dumb a game. There were groans all around. The coach was caught up by the idea and confessed that he had twelve dollars left over from expense money, and that he would use that as “scholarship” contributions to the pool, available only for students on scholarship—“Raise your hands, everyone on scholarship.” Three, including Henry, raised their right hands. There was animateddiscussion on whether Harry Albright should be subsidized, it went to a vote of the whole team, and he won narrowly. Everyone was now a participant.
Harry Gulph collected the bills and the boxers wrote out their names on a pad passed around. Dizzy used the scissors on his Swiss Army knife, and the slips of paper were put into the coach’s fedora. Coach Harry was by now wholly caught up in the drama and with exaggerated gestures he first blinked his eyes, then raised his left hand to cover them, and then, absolutely to insure that he was not cheating, looked up at the roof of the bus while with his right hand he twiddled the slips of paper, finally drawing one out. Without looking at it, he ceremoniously handed it over to Dizzy.
“Here you are, Captain. You read out the winner’s name.”
Henry the Winner acknowledged first the congratulatory cheers, then the groans of frustrated disappointment; and later, just before noon, he knocked out his opponent, drawing cheers from ten travelers from New Haven and boos from several hundred cadets.
Henry found the experience exhilarating. At the post-tournament lunch he apologized to his victim, who remarked that he too had been surprised. “Damnedest thing, been boxing three years; never happened before.” He felt better when Henry said that he had himself been knocked out only a week or two earlier. The cadet seated on his right asked Henry if he had served in the Army before going to Yale, and Henry said yes, he had been in Italy. This was the formulation he used—he would not say, as most veterans did routinely, that he had “fought” in Italy.
With whom?
He identified the unit. Henry hoped the interrogation would end there, but it didn’t.
Had he been in action?
Yes, Henry said, and now he took over the helm, carefully navigating the course of the conversation. To have swerved over to an entirely different course would have struck his lunch mate as rude, or defensive; when intending to divert an inquiry into what kind of a life you had had in the military you don’t returnsuddenly to the subject of boxing. Something nearer at hand …
“My roommate was in the Navy in the Italian
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