Word: bootblacks
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...midge-sized Negro bootblack named Charles McFarland tried to get $3,000 damages from ex-Fisticuffer Jack Dempsey. His story: because he inadvertently tickled Dempsey's ribs while adjusting his coat, Dempsey fetched him a belly blow, damaged his already ulcerated innards. Dempsey's successful defense: "If I had socked this little guy he wouldn't be here to tell his story. And if I have to pay him $3,000 I feel that I should be entitled to one punch...
Hardheaded, slippery Hero Ulysses left home with his mother's blessing when he was six. At 18 he had been a bootblack, a harbor scavenger, a hashish peddler in the brothels of Alexandria. His next move was to embark for Africa with a stock of liquor for the British army in the Sudan. At Khartoum he saw Chinese Gordon killed by the Moslem Mahdi, became the Mahdi's finance minister and political adviser for ten precarious years that included his forced marriage to a captive nun in an obscenely burlesqued ceremony. Meanwhile he had become Kitchener...
When Russia first told an incredulous world of its plan to establish a transpolar airline to the U. S., it announced that its No. 1 flyer, Sigismund Levanevsky, would make the first trip (TIME, June 14 et seq.). Instead, this bootblack's son who is often called "the Soviet Lindbergh" was left behind at the last minute and Valeri Chkalov took his place. When the second successful junket was made month later by three other Soviet airmen, Flyer Levanevsky began to be mentioned in dispatches as in jail and scheduled for execution in one of J. Stalin...
...Yonkers, N. Y., Rev Verlynn Sprague was having his shoes shined by a young bootblack. One shoe finished, a policeman ambled by, ordered the boy to "scram." The boy departed. Mr. Sprague protested he was not satisfied with half a shoeshine. The policeman accused him ot interfering with an officer in performance of duty, arrested him for disorderly conduct...
...Steve Brodie, 23, Bowery newsboy, bootblack and publicity glutton, claimed to have jumped from Brooklyn Bridge July 23, 1886. Evidence persists, however, that a dummy was dropped from the bridge, while Brodie hid on a pier below, and dived in as the dummy struck. His story at the time was believed. A brewery financed a saloon for him. He made stage appearances, flourished for years, died of tuberculosis in 1901 in San Antonio...