By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 24, 1933.
“Jimmie,” I said, “this Hitler business in Germany ought to teach us a lesson.”1
“Which way?”
‘Well, you never can tell when people will get tired of things the way they are and suddenly turn everything upside down and the first thing you know somebody will be trying to make you and me drink castor oil because of our beliefs. Or they will invade our houses and squeeze our fingers in the door crack. Or beat us up.”
“Wouldn’t we be on the other side?” asked Jim.
“Oh, no, we’re capitalists,” I said. “We live by our wits.”
“What is the lesson?” asked Jim.
“The lesson Hitler teaches,” I said, “is that in times like this, every man ought to know the principles of self-defence. Every man ought to be able to take care of himself, quietly, neatly and efficiently.”
“I have two shotguns and one rifle,” said Jim.
“No, no!” I cried. “Guns are too noisy. And anyway, you would soon run out of shells. I am talking about boxing. The manly art.”
“At our age?” asked Jim scornfully.
“I’m not talking about making money at it,” I explained. “I am merely suggesting that we ought to take lessons in boxing, so as to know where to hit a guy so it hurts. Right now, if I got into an argument, all I would do would be clinch.”
Jim looked at me with one of those poker face expressions he assumes when he is having a funny idea.
“I wouldn’t mind taking a few boxing lessons,” he said. “With you.”
So we asked Lou Marsh2 where we could. find a gentlemanly prize-fighter who would teach us the rudiments of fighting.
“What’s the matter?” asked Lou. “Is somebody’s brother laying for you?”.
“Oh no, just exercise,” we said. So Lou telephoned a fellow named Harry “Dirty Neck” Mulligan, who kept a small gymnasium in the cellar of his house on Berkeley St., and arranged for us to take our first lesson the next evening.
“Do we need to buy costumes?” we asked Lou.
“Oh, no. Just strip to your shorts,” said Lou.
Dirty Neck Mulligan was not a big, thick, short-necked man with a pug face, as we expected. He was a slim, foreign-looking young man with what appeared to be two glass eyes. Their expression never changed. He was pale and dead looking. He spoke with a cold in his head, and invited us down cellar.
“Gents,” he said, ‘to-night we will learn the position first. Just stand opposite each other, put your left foot forward balance easily on both feet, and now take this position with your arms.”
And he stood in the boxer’s pose, weaving and swaying with a curious snake-like rhythm. We imitated him.
“Youse Guys are Soft”
For ten minutes he explained positions, and lectured us on the broad general principles of defence.
“You must practise this position all week,” said Dirty Neck. “Get your waist muscles loosened up. Sway. Stretch. Get on your toes. Youse guys are pretty old, but I think I can make youse at least a couple of imitations.”
Jim and I practised shadow boxing at each other, but of course, not touching.
“Another thing,” said Dirty Neck, “youse guys have got to get used to being hurt and not minding. Just let me show youse a thing or two here.”
He squared off in front of Jimmie.
“Now,” said Dirty Neck, “see if you can stop me hitting you. It won’t hurt.”
Jim put up his guard. Dirty Neck just flicked out one hand, there was a loud slap and Jim fell back against the cellar wall with a look of astonishment on his face.
“Now, you,” said Dirty Neck, dancing in front of me.
“Easy, there,” I said, putting up my arms which seemed to have become as thin as soda straws as I waved them all over in front of me, wishing I had arms like a centipede. I didn’t see anything. I just felt a stinging slap on my jaw and I joined Jim against the cellar wall.
We got dressed. We paid Dirty Neck a dollar apiece3 and practically without a word, we went up and got in the car and drove away.
About six blocks off, Jim said:
“I didn’t see it.”
“It was his open hand,” I said.
“If he can teach us to do that,” said Jim, “and with our fist closed, we could knock a man six feet off the ground.”
“I never felt anything like it in my life,” I admitted. “It didn’t hurt. It just was sort of numb.”
“That’s it,” said Jim. “Numb.”
All week, Jim and I went turn about to each other’s cellar after dinner and in our underwear practised positions, shadow boxed and limbered up our waist line, and then we went back to Dirty Neck’s for our next lesson. He had a little fellow about my size there who looked as if he had been through a stone crusher at some time or other.
“Meet Mr. McGiverin,” said Dirty Neck. So McGiverin took me and Dirty Neck took Jimmie and with gloves on we boxed slow motion, each position being explained, each blow, each place to hit for, while at the same time, covering up with the other forearm.
“Youse guys,” said Dirty Neck, “are soft. Between now and the next lesson, you got to do some road work. Every night, you got to go down to Sunnyside and run a mile.”
The evening ended with McGiverin, with his mouth slightly open showing his broken teeth, batting me all over the cellar while Dirty Neck slapped Jimmie up against all the walls of the cellar and finally punching him, laughingly, into the coal bin.
“Just a little work-out,” explained Dirty Neck as he helped Jimmie to his feet, and as McGivvern sat me down on a box to stop the whirling.
Jim and I religiously got up at 6 a.m. all week and did a fast half hour walk. And after dinner, we went down and alarmed all the beachcombers at Sunnyside by running steadily from the Humber to the Exhibition Grounds.
The next lesson, Dirty Neck and McGiverin, whose first name was Boo, on account of the reception he used to get when he was in the fighting business, gave us another lesson and then faced Jim and me off to each other, they acting as seconds.
“He’s got the reach on me,” I protested.
“Work for the body,” said Boo. “If youse guys are learning the art of self-defence, you won’t always be matched with a guy your own weight, will youse?”
We admitted that. And squared off.
Jim spotted me several on the beezer, as they call the nose and I socked him several just where his ribs curve up to join on his chest.
Then, second round, Jim made one of those short, snappy punches straight out, and I happened to be wiping my nose with my mitt, the way the experts do, so this punch slid off sideways, hurt my eye severely and sort of snapped my head backwards. I was dazed for an instant, and then I got mad.
“Git mad!” hissed Boo, as I staggered back.
But I was already that way.
I crept at Jimmy and wove around him, watching for an opening. Jim had a queer grin on his face. It irritated me. I aimed at the grin and before it got there I felt something catch me low down and lift me in the air. Boo caught me, and when I got my breath back, I shouted:
“He kicked me!”
Dirty Neck just laughed.
“With a nice one to the body,” he sneered.
“Git mad!” hissed Boo, steadying me on my feet.
“How do you think I am?” I snarled.
I made a rush at Jim and swung for his body, to give him the same as he gave me. Jim landed two quick ones on my mush, and I was pushed back as if he had shoved me. Again Boo steadied me.
“Don’t swing,” he said.
I pulled myself together and crouched down. I circled around Jim, who was leaning back, his arms weaving.
I made a feint at his middle and was just drawing back to sock him, when everything stopped, darkness fell, I was swept softly and sweetly away on a sort of cushion, and the heavens were filled with bright stars and music seemed to fill the firmament.
When I came to, Jim and Dirty Neck and Boo were all kneeling around me, slapping me with wet towels.
“Ah,” I said.
“Sorry,” said Jim. “Gee, I’m sorry!”
“It’s all in the game,” said Dirty Neck.
“Sure, it’s all in the game,” I repeated, and it was quite a lot of trouble to smile. But I was a good fellow. I reassured Jimmie that it was quite all right and that next time I would put him to sleep.
When we got home, I had a black eye. and my wife was very angry with me. We had several engagements the next few nights and how could we keep them now? I stayed home from the office next day and my eye got green, my body felt as if I had been blown up by a shell, my head ached and I had all day to sit there and think about Jimmie.
That night I telephoned to Dirty Neck and asked him to get McGiverin to give me a ring. McGiverin called on the phone later and I explained the scheme to him.
“You get here about seven o’clock,” I said. “Jimmie will arrive about seven-thirty.”
I called Jim and asked him to come over and have a workout next evening. McGiverin arrived at seven and I took him down cellar and hid him in behind the furnace.
Jim came about eight-fifteen, which is the best seven-thirty he ever did in his life, and we sat around while he explained to me how sorry he was he knocked me out. A big fellow like him.
We boxed a little, friendly, and shadow-boxed and took it easy until it began to get dark.
“Jimmie, I said, “the great thing we are trying to do, after all, is not to learn prize-fighting, but to learn how to look after ourselves in case of trouble.”
“We’re learning,” said Jim.
“Well, here we are shadow-boxing and sparring. But just for fun,” I said. “let’s turn the lights out and have a tussle in the dark. You have got the advantage of me in size, but with the lights out we could see how far we’ve got in the business of taking care of ourselves.”
Be Sure Your Gang’s With You
To my delight, Jimmie agreed at once. He seemed eager for it.
“It’s just a little variety,” I explained, as I went out of the fruit cellar into the hall to turn off the switch. And to give McGiverin the signal.
I turned off the light and opened the furnace cellar door. McGiverin leaped out and I led him back into the pitch-dark fruit cellar. I proposed to wait at the door until McGiverin went in and found Jimmie and then I could lean up against the door and listen to the fun.
But as I reached the door I got a stinger right on the nose.
“Hey!” I cried. “Not so sudden, Jimmie. Wait until we both get in the room and I say ready, go.”
“Oh, all right,” said Jim, in the dark.
“Ready, go!” I called, leaping for the door.
I heard a couple of grunts and a thud, and then I felt an arm go around my neck in the dark and I was yanked right into the middle of the fruit cellar. I got down on my knees and started to crawl for the door again when two arms got me under the arms and hoisted me to my feet and I was sent staggering into the corner with a jolt on my chest. And all the while the room was fairly hissing with thuds, grunts, sniffs and the other music of the manly art.
“Hey!” I hissed, to give McGiverin the sign that he was busy with the wrong man.
And as I hissed a glove socked me right on my sore eye.
So I started to punch in all directions. Every punch hit something and every punch I got spun me the length of the cellar. I could hear thuds and gasps, I was pushed over, stepped on, punched, hoisted, and I realized something had gone terribly wrong.
In the midst of it all, as I tried to get my directions so as to reach the hall and turn on the light, I heard a creak and a groan and then an awful, long-drawn-out crash as the fruit shelf collapsed and about a hundred jars of pickles, fruit and preserves landed on the cellar floor.
I got to the hall. I snapped on the light.
And there was Jim amidst the crockery.
And there was Boo McGiverin sitting on the floor.
And there, standing in the middle of the room, his lean chest heaving, and his two glass eyes fixed on Boo McGiverin, stood Dirty Neck Mulligan.
“Dirty Neck!” I cried.
“You bum!” said Boo from the cellar floor.
We heard feet running upstairs, so I knew we would be in trouble in a few seconds.
“Grab your clothes,” I cried, leading for the cellar stairs.
We got out the alley and into Jim’s car. We drove around the corner and then parked under a street lamp. We still had our gloves on and four of us were half-dressed and panting and sniffing.
“Double crossed,” said I.
“I figured it out,” said Dirty Neck, proudly. “When you called up for McGiverin I telephoned Mr. Frise, and he and I figured what you were up to.”
“I didn’t think you would offer to fight in the dark,” said Jim. I thought you would accidentally break the light or have the power go off.”
“So Dirty Neck?”
“Dirty Neck was waiting at the top of the cellar stairs,” said Jim, “with instructions to come down the minute the light went out.
“Well,” I said, “my eye is closing again.”
“Sorry,” said McGiverin. “That was me that done that. When I found it was a pro beating on me I thought you had framed me.”
“The lesson of this,” said Jim, at the wheel, “is if Hitlerism ever gets going here make sure you got your gang with you.”
And they let me out at my side drive to go back and peek through the fruit cellar window.
Editor’s Notes:
- At the time of this article, Adolf Hitler had become German chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire, and the Enabling Act was enacted giving the Nazis absolute control. Obviously Greg and Jim had no idea what this would lead to. ↩︎
- Lou Marsh was the Toronto Star’s Sports editor at the time. ↩︎
- $1 in 1933 would be $23 in 2025. ↩︎
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