Читать книгу The Dwelling Place of Wonder - Harry L. Serio - Страница 11

My father was a fighter. A lean, scrappy kid with a hair-trigger temper who moved up the ladder from street brawls to the boxing ring. Danny Ardito taught him how to control his powder-keg nature and wait for the right opportunity to ignite and direct the explosive wrath of a frustrated childhood.

When my grandfather’s first wife died after bearing two children, Luigi married her sister. My father was her first-born. His older brother and sister were also cousins. Seven other siblings were to follow to comprise a family of twelve. For an immigrant from Italy this was enough to fertilize the new soil of the American dream and roots took hold.

Dad bought into that dream, but he didn’t want to wait. He had to reach the pinnacle as quickly as possible and break out of the Italian ghetto. As the asphalt basketball courts in today’s urban playgrounds fuel the hopes of young African-Americans, so the boxing ring became the arena of my father’s dreams.

Harry Serio was regarded as a tough fighter who never backed away from an opponent. One writer said that he combined the art of boxing with his great speed and power punching. He won the Golden Gloves as a welterweight in 1940 and retired with a record of 38–5. In 1987 he was inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame, one of his proudest moments.

My earliest memories of travels with Dad were to the run-down gymnasiums and converted warehouses where punching bags were hung from rafters, canvas was stretched over springless mattresses, and ropes were tied to two-by-fours embedded in buckets of sand at the corners.

Two-Ton Tony Galento, the heavyweight contender and the only man to knock Joe Louis down before losing the bout, made a guest appearance at the Rivoli Theater. He had a minor role in the classic Marlon Brando film, “On the Waterfront.” He was waiting for a cab after the crowds had left. I had heard that he had sparred with my father, but it was more likely Tony threw a punch at him in some bar. Dad was fortunate Tony didn’t connect. I asked Tony if he remembered my father.

“Yeah, kid, I remember him. Good fighter. Knows how to take a punch. How’s he doing?”

Before I could answer, he got into the taxi and was off, and I was left wondering, “Could I have been a contender if I had taken seriously my father’s encouragement and urging?”

My father wanted me to follow in his footsteps as a boxer, but I could never master the footwork. He thought that exposure to the gyms and boxing arenas, the smell of sweat and blood, would somehow entice me into the glamorous world of mayhem and that I would find fulfillment in inflicting pain on others. He expected me to learn the fine art of strategic assault and battery, breaking down an opponent’s defenses and knocking him to the canvas before he could do the same to me. The Golden Rule of the ring was “do unto your opponent before he has a chance to do unto you.”

The hardwood floors, the smell of sweat and blood, the sound of leather against leather, and sometimes bone, are vivid. By the age of seven I had seen all I wanted of open wounds and broken teeth and bruised eyes.

One Sunday afternoon at the ring, Dad put a pair of boxing gloves on my hands and said, “You’ve got to learn to defend yourself.” He taught me to keep my left up and lead with my right, occasionally jabbing with the left. Stay on your toes and move fast: it’s harder to hit a moving target. I learned the art of bobbing and weaving, of constant motion. Feints are important, and so is taking a hit in order to assess whom you are up against. These are lessons that could be applied to life as well as to the ring.

The following Christmas I found under the tree my own pair of Everlast gloves. Dad also had a punching bag mounted on a flexible metal rod. After suiting up and trying on the gloves, I went to war with the bag. I gave it a good shot, putting all of my 65 lbs. behind the jab. The bag hit back, smacking me in the face. I had had it with boxing.

Boxing is both an art and a science—the same as war. It is the art of patience and opportunity, of vigilance and attack, of discovering and exploiting the weakness of your opponent. Evander Holyfield notwithstanding, it is not a Christian sport.

There was also the matter of paying your dues. Ever since the Marquess of Queensbury imposed a set of rules, there were those who tried to bend them. Boxing was a sport that straddled the borders of respectability. Thugs in tuxedos at boxing events always seemed a bit paradoxical. There were often bits of chicanery and questionable legalities. One never knew whether a fight was legit. Young fighters on their way up were sometimes told that the only way to advance their careers was to throw an occasional fight. In that way, everybody could make some money.

Dad was asked to take a dive and he agreed. In the ring, however, his opponent hit him a little too hard in the jaw. It was enough to infuriate my father, and he fought back and won the bout.

While boxing never really appealed to me, I did try Graeco-Roman wrestling. It certainly wasn’t a career move, but I learned a lot in three lessons. The instructor was a college kid working with neighborhood guys at Wilson Avenue School. He approached wrestling like Sun Tsu’s Art of War, seeking ways to win by exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses. Wrestling was more cerebral than knocking your adversary senseless.

You circled the ring and studied your opponent, testing his defenses and reflexes with your feints. You learned not to commit too soon, and did so only when you were sure. You did not want your aggressive move turned against you. When you committed to the take-down, you did so wholeheartedly. It was a zen-like action, without conscious thought. If you thought too much, you could outwit yourself. You had to trust your instincts and training and put your actions into the hands of a higher power.

An early lesson I learned from wrestling was that sometimes the best way to deal with a problem was to engage it directly rather than to try to escape from it. If your opponent has you entangled in a predicament, turn towards him, not away. Your advantage is most often gained when you seize the initiative.

In Genesis, Jacob wrestled throughout the night with an unknown stranger that turned out to be an aspect of the divine, and emerged from his ordeal scarred, but blessed. For centuries, those close to God have wrestled with angels in the dark night of the soul and been tormented, some to the point of insanity. It is because of their anguished struggles with God’s presence, as well as God’s absence, that we have the gifts of their encounters, not only in their words but in the majesty of their deeds.

Sometimes we are broken by God and carry the wounds with us for a lifetime, like Jacob’s disjointed hip, but God also heals and uses our wounds to bring healing to others.

Paul referred to shadow boxing when discussing the importance of being conditioned for warfare with the world. He does not “box as one who beats the air,” but in all things exercises self-control and is deliberate in where he will land his punches.

I soon found that boxing and wrestling were not sports in which I wanted to invest my life. While there were some useful applications and valuable principles, they were additional tools in the toolbox for living. You still had to know when the hammer was more appropriate than the screwdriver. As in many sports where one individual contends against another, the object is to emerge victorious by defeating your opponent. Our competitive society glorifies the individual whose advancement is made possible by the defeat of an adversary, whether a personal rival or a corporate competitor in the marketplace.

Paul also used a metaphor about runners competing against one another for an imperishable prize. That seems inconsistent with my instinctive feelings about the mercy of God. I have always distrusted those who professed a belief in a personal salvation to the exclusion of the redemption of the world. We are not competing for top seeds in the hereafter, but rather we share the same spirit of God that is in each of us and need to strive together as members of one team so that we are all victorious in the end.