It was fun to find this website of my Grandfather who was a lightweight pro boxer. He boxed initially at 140 lbs.
then later boxed at welter weight 165 lbs

I have a bunch of old newspaper clips of his 109 bouts.

It’s fun to read the press releases of the fights & how they went down.

https://boxrec.com/en/proboxer/157483

He told me he trained & made extra money by cutting firewood & selling it to neighbors.

He said used a crosscut saw to build his arm strength up

In the 1930s he had a little mini farm on the sammamish slough. He trapped muskrat & mink for furs to sell & help haul garbage regularly for Bothell residence to feed his wife & 7 kids
He had one son (my dad) and 6 daughters.

His health was poor.

He had two cauliflower ears,
his nose had been busted 13 times &
he was punch drunk.

When I remember the times I visited with him it felt like his eyes had no foundation and rolled around in there sockets.

Later in life my dad bought him a newspaper stand on 3rd & pike.
It was kind of a smaller version of
The news stand at the farmers market in Seattle. I have some Seattle post intelligencer articles with a pic of him
at his wood shack newsstand.

He was will liked & died young at 63
His gravestone has a set of boxing gloves etched into the stone.

I am just a poor boy
though my story’s seldom told

I have squandered my resistance
for a pocketful of mumbles,

Such are promises, all lies & jest,

Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, hmmm

When I left my home & my family,
I’s no more than a boy

In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin’ scared, laying low,

Seeking out the poorer quarters,
where the ragged people go,

Looking for the places only
they would know.
Li la li

Asking only workman’s wages,
I come lookin’ for a job,

But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from
the whores on 7th Avenue.

I do declare, there were times
when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there.
La la la
Li la li

And I’m laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone,
Goin’ home

Where the New York City
winters aren’t bleedin’ me,
leadin’ me, Goin’ home.

In the clearing stands a boxer,
and a fighter by his trade

And he carries the reminders
of every glove that laid him
down or cut him

‘Til he cried out in his anger & his shame

I am leaving,
I am leaving,

but the fighter still remains.
Li la li