I have thought about it for years. It is a moment that is never out of my mind. Perhaps it defines who I am, the man I have become. Perhaps not. It took place June 18, 1941 about a month before my seventh birthday. That was the night of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn heavyweight title fight broadcast live across the county on radio at 10 p.m. Joe Louis, The Brown Bomber, the icon of the day, a hero to everyone in then racially-divided America, was to fight Billy Conn, the light heavyweight champion for the heavyweight championship of the world. During his championship reign, he transcended race, but as a kid in those days, I knew nothing of race or class nor what it meant to many in America. He was Joe Louis and along with Joe DiMaggio, a figure my friends and I could look up to. I cannot speak for the adults, or my father, but everyone my age wanted Joe Louis to win. My father rarely, if ever, divulged his prejudices. Over the years, we never discussed what happened to me that night nor did we ever discuss the fight. Ever.

We were living in an apartment on Avenue H and East 19th Street in Brooklyn. I did not want to sleep. I wanted to hear the fight despite it being on well after my bedtime. Already in my pajamas, I went to my father and asked him if I could stay up. He said no. I insisted. He said no again. I persisted. He said I was too young. Boxing was something I did not need to know about. He was also sure it would be in the newsreels and when I went to the Saturday movie matinee, I would see the fight then, which was better than hearing it on the radio. In my small boy voice, I told him that was not good enough. I told him my friends would be listening. He said no again. Then, unlike me, I had something of a tantrum. I stamped my feet. I cried. I made a scene. Normally when I went into that rare mode, my father would slam me on the top of my head, and pound me once or twice on by backside with his fist or his open hand. Standing in front of him, I prepared myself for that eventuality. It did not happen. He did not hit me. What he did was in some ways worse.

He finally relented and said that if I wanted to listen to the fight I could. But there was one condition. I would have to stand in the middle of the living room without moving or saying a word. Stand absolutely still, he said. Without hesitating, I said I could do it, not thinking of the consequences. I nodded my head several times in affirmation. He told me to move into the center of the room. I did. My memory of the room is that it was very dark. There was no ceiling light. We had only one floor lamp by my father’s easy chair. There were lamps and ashtrays on the end tables at either side of the couch. A coffee table sat in front of the couch. As a child, I thought the room very dark. Standing in the middle of the room, I realized how dark it really was.

Ten o’clock came. The fight started. Usually in bed at that time, I was very tired. The living room took on the appearance of a dungeon. But nothing would deter me from my mission. Not that I thought of it that way. I was, after all, a nearly seven-year-old boy with a stubborn streak. I thought I had won some sort of victory. I would listen to the fight through the massive floor model, the centerpiece for entertainment in our living room. The next day I would tell my friends what I did. That is all that mattered. I stood in that spot without moving through the whole fight. I did not whimper. I did not cry. I did not shift my position. My legs hurt. My head hurt. I wanted to sleep. I refused to fold. When the fight ended, my father said nothing and waved me to my room. I did with great difficulty. My legs were numb. I managed to move anyway. My kidney’s about to burst, I went to the bathroom and then dragged myself to bed where I fell into a deep sleep.

Until I looked it up I had no idea who won the fight or how long it lasted. For the record, after nearly losing Joe Louis knocked out an overly confident Billy Conn in the 13th round to retain his title. Now that does not matter. I think without realizing it, I vowed that my father would not defeat me. I think he did not but who really knows. Did the incident affect my life? I am sure it did. I cannot say how. In retrospect I would rather, he had hit me. I could have handled that. The moment, though painful, would have passed. The torture he put me through that night was worse. I am sure he knew what he was doing. For that I can never forgive him.

I did not cry that night. Since that incident, it is hard for me to cry at all, ever, unless the moment is so overpowering that it eclipses my early defenses. Understand, I have cried over the years, but never if I could help it. For me to cry, it would have meant defeat. I had little understanding of what was happening, but something inside me recognized that crying in front of my father would undermine my life forever. It was a test of his will against mine. When the battle ended in the middle of the living room, I still cannot say who won. What took place that night was only the first of many skirmishes between my father and me over who would dominate my life. I only regret we never discussed what took place while he was alive. I wonder what he would have said in his defense.

My father was a man of great pride. A white-collar worker who never wanted to get his hands dirty, he wanted the life he believed a pressed suit would bring. Every day he went to work dressed as a banker, his shirt freshly starched and pressed by my mother, his dark tie knotted just so, his shoes shined, his hands washed, his fingernails cut close and clean. He was fastidious. He was of average height and slim. His size allowed his clothes to fit him well. He wore a pencil thin mustache; his hair neatly clipped, with the back and sides, as they used to say, short. Nothing about him seemed out of place. When he arrived home, he immediately untied his shoes, slipped them off his feet and wandered through the house in his stocking feet. I don’t remember if he owned a pair of bedroom slippers. He showed me photos of the way he looked in the 1920s before the Crash. In them, he had about him the touch of dandy. He wore two-toned brown and white Oxford shoes. He wore custom-fitted suits, buttoned vests, and neatly knotted ties. In summer he wore a straw boater and in winter a dark fedora with a snap-brim. It took me years to understand that dressing as he did, even in the worst of times after the Depression and during the years of recovery, gave him the dignity I think he never associated with the work he was doing.

My father owned a small, one-person insurance agency. He had a desk and filing cabinets in a large open room on John Street that he shared with other brokers who were in the same business. I remember going with him to his office by subway and feeling overwhelmed by the tall, imposing buildings in the Wall Street area. I got bored waiting for lunch or the trip home. I sat in his office and drew on the backs of old insurance contracts. I tried to type on old table model Remington typewriters, but I screwed up the keys while getting black ink from the ribbon on my fingers.

My father had a friend named Max who worked for Bantam Books in Chicago. Every month for years, he sent us the paperback books Bantam published. These were mostly novels, Westerns, mysteries, some science fiction, but there were also biographies and history books. I started carrying a book everywhere I went, even in grade and high school. My only escape, it seemed, was reading those books. Some months I read as many as fifteen books. I also read the funny pages in his newspapers, some sports, and almost nothing else.