Good Old Days Online - Stories

Harry, the Hobo
by Mario DeMarco

Jack Dempsey, as he was pictured later in life, the successful businessman and operator of his own famous restaurant.

In the annals of "hoboing," there were some very interesting individuals who specialized in the art of "train hopping." In this unique category was one individual who chose this rough lifestyle not because he wanted to, but because it seemed he had to. Unlike most hobos, this young man,whose name was Harry, would become one of the most famous and heralded persons in the world. It sounds a bit farfetched, but it's true.

Harry was born out West with a mixture of Choctaw Indian, Irish and Scottish blood flowing through his veins. He was tall, black-browed and hard all over, with muscles of steel.

Harry left grade school to work in the Colorado copper pits. His job wasn't an easy one -- he was a mucker, an ore loader. He was performing a man's job, working and sweating in the mines over half a mile underground. One day, something happened to Harry that changed the course of his life and made him stand out among the hard-as-nails, tough miners who worked alongside him and his brothers.

One particular miner, a large, muscular fellow, had established himself as the top scrapper of the pits. Once, while Harry was doing his job, the young "tough" thought he would have some fun at Harry's expense. He picked up a chunk of dirt and hurled it at Harry, hitting him in the face. Then, with a menacing, growling voice, the miner asked how he liked it. Harry, who was working below him, instantly dropped his shovel and jumped up the embankment with fire in his black eyes. The scrap that followed didn't last too long, and in no time the 200-pound bully was on the ground, unconscious. Thus was born one of the greatest fighters of all time.

Young Harry soon discovered that he could make more money fighting in dance halls and back rooms of saloons, "taking on" all comers, than sweating and laboring in the underground mine pits. And he considered fighting a lot easier. It was a brand-new life for Harry.

Between fights, he took odd jobs in lumber camps, laboring as a miner, and even as a rack-up boy in pool halls. To travel to various places to fight and work, he "rode the rails," and when he came to the edge of a town, he would hop off before the railroad cops discovered him.

A photo of Jack Dempsey, the "Manassa Mauler," at the height of his fighting career -- bursting with power and muscles of steel.

It was a tough and dangerous life for a youngster. He was hungry most of the time and often had to fight other hobos. But the experience made him "animal tough" as he fought for his life in the "hobo jungles." He once spent a long time in the coal mines of West Virginia as a coal shoveler. But he eventually quit and hopped the freight car to Colorado -- his job was fighting. By now, Harry was as tough as nails; he never smoked or drank and never had to worry about being in top condition. He fought bouts almost every day, and when he won,he would head for the next town.

In time, his reputation as a fighter grew. He fought and slugged his way across Utah, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. Harry had never really had any training as a fighter. On many occasions, at the sound of the bell, he would go out swinging and slugging. If he got knocked down, he would bounce up and punch with both hands and keep punching until his opponent went down for the count. Harry took on older gents who outweighed him by many pounds. Even so, none could stand up to the "young tornado." His list of KOs grew, and fights became harder to come by in the Western states because of his fighting reputation. No man wanted to face him in the ring. Harry soon learned that to continue being a fighter, he had to obtain a manager -- one who could teach him to fight professionally and handle his bouts.

Harry had taken the name of an old-time outstanding boxer named Jack Dempsey; Harry's real last name was Dempsey, and he adopted "Jack" as his first name. He approached an old-time fight manager and tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked at the dark, scowling young hobo and asked what he wanted. The lad replied, "I'm a fighter and I'm looking for bouts, but I got no manager." The manager asked him what his name was. "Jack Dempsey," Harry replied.

The manager had seen the "real" Jack Dempsey, who had been a middleweight sensation during his fighting years. Figuring that Harry was using the star fighter's reputation, he turned to the bar and told him he wasn't interested in handling him. It would be the costliest mistake the old manager would ever make. Harry the Hobo "Jack" Dempsey went on to find himself several managers in his career -- one named Jack Kearns, and the other Tex Rickard, a promoter who lifted him from fighting in pool rooms and small arenas to the highest pinnacle in the fight game: the heavyweight championship of the world.

"All good things come to an end," and thus it was in the case of Jack Dempsey when he lost his championship title to the "Fighting Marine," Gene Tunney, on Sept. 23, 1926, in Philadelphia, Pa.

In Harry's illustrious profession, he would become a super attraction. His bout with George Carpentier, the popular French lightweight, attracted more than 80,000 wildly cheering fans and became boxing's first million-dollar gate, with $1,789,238 in receipts. Dempsey won in the fourth round. In another fight, Dempsey slugged it out with Luis Angel Firpo, the "Wild Bull of the Pampas," drawing 82,000 fans with $1,188,603 gate receipts. Jack knocked him out in the second round. The champion would face his greatest challenger in a ring-wise ex-Marine named Gene Tunney. It was the biggest viewed bout in ring history with an attendance of 120,757 fans, and it pulled in a total of nearly $2 million.

This fight was won by Tunney, who would later fight Dempsey a second time. That bout was called "the biggest fight of the century" and was staged at Soldier Field in Chicago on Sept. 22, 1927. It attracted more than 100,000 fans and drew gate receipts of over $2.5 million! This historic fight also went to Tunney. Despite those hard-fought losses, no one could dispute that Harry the Hobo, or Jack Dempsey, had risen from the hobo jungles to become one of the greatest boxing champions of all time.