After moving several times, often to larger places, the Smiths finally settled in an apartment with just enough space for four, six blocks from a brownstone where the magician/escape artist Harry Houdini had lived from 1904 till his death in 1926. For a while, Sugar himself proved to be an escape artist, as he cleverly avoided the roughnecks in his new neighborhood.
One pleasurable site for Sugar was Dave’s Vegetable and Meat Market, right around the corner on Seventh Avenue. Almost daily, a hungry Sugar would dash by the market, grab a piece of fruit, and vanish down the block. One day neither his feet nor his hands were fast enough to elude Dave. Rather than punish the little thief, Dave offered him a job delivering groceries. “It pays three-fifty a week,” Dave told him. Sugar couldn’t believe his good fortune, and promised to arrive early the next morning, ready to work.
For Sugar to get a job bordered on the miraculous, especially in Harlem, where the unemployment rate for blacks was almost four times that of whites in New York City. Blacks in the city constituted about 20 percent of the people on welfare or receiving aid for dependent children, though there is no indication that the Smiths were ever on relief.1
Along with his pay, Sugar was able to pick up additional change whenever Bojangles came to town and appeared at the Tree of Hope or the “Wishing Tree,” which was located on Seventh Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets, near the Lafayette Theatre. Black performers believed the tree to be the purveyor of good luck to those who stood beneath its branches. “It was their totem pole of hope. More than that, the immortal Bojangles Bill Robinson used to pay a weekly visit to the tree, which had been there when he was a kid with dreams of greatness. Young Sugar and the other boys would wait for Bojangles. When he arrived, he would have the kids dance for him, rewarding the best ones with a handful of coins. It was no contest. Sugar always won. With his natural grace and lithe, limber body, he would tap his way to a perfect imitation of the grinning Bojangles.”2
Sugar did not grin, though, when he was provoked by the neighborhood bullies. One day while they were playing a game of racing from sewer to sewer, about a twenty-five-yard dash, “Shake” (Samuel Royals), the fastest kid on the block, challenged him to a race.3 When Sugar won the race, Shake challenged him again. Sugar told him he didn’t want to race anymore because he was too tired. The boy offered another sort of challenge to the fatigued Sugar, and threw a punch at him. Sugar showed Shake that he was just as fast with his fists as he was on his feet, and bloodied Shake’s nose. Soon, he had a reputation both as a fast runner and a hard puncher. Then he learned the fine art of defense, at the Police Athletic League.
A PAL supervisor, Benny Booksinger, heard about Sugar’s talent and invited him to participate in one of his tournaments, held in a “boxing ring” whose perimeters were marked off by orange crates. In Sugar’s first bout with gloves on, he won a three-round decision. The loser’s big brother stepped in front of Sugar and demanded the next fight. Booksinger4 was coaxing them on when, out of nowhere, Leila appeared. All the while she had apparently been watching the matches from their apartment window. She pushed Sugar out of the makeshift ring, turned to Booksinger, and commanded he get off the block and leave her son alone. Booksinger didn’t move fast enough, and Leila slapped him. He never came around again, but he knew how to find Sugar—and Sugar knew how to be found. He became a regular in Booksinger’s bouts.
Sugar at thirteen stood about five feet eight inches and weighed around eighty-five pounds. Lean as a whippet, he won all of his fights except one. His one loss was to a tough Irish kid named Billy Graham, who would one day be a top welterweight contender. Although they never fought as adults, they had several common opponents, including Carmen Basilio and Kid Gavilan, and Graham held his own against both of them. Sugar’s early neighborhood bouts didn’t mean much in terms of money or prestige, but he began to turn heads with his ability after he defeated a boy who was considered the best in his weight division. Boxing was now Sugar’s passion, and it took up most of his time. His interest intensified when a classmate at Cooper Junior High School, at 116th and Madison Avenue, convinced him to stop by the Salem Crescent gym, located in the basement of the Salem Methodist Church on Seventh Avenue at 129th Street.
Back in those days, bootleg fights were matches in which boxers were paid under the table. They were quite common. One of the fighters told Sugar the bouts were staged in upstate New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. For the payoff, each fighter was given a watch, then had it bought back from him. If a boxer won, he was given fifteen dollars for the watch; if he lost, he got ten. To participate, Sugar was told, he had to do roadwork—laps around Central Park—as well as workouts at Salem under the guidance of George Gainford. Gainford, who had a growing reputation as a trainer, had fought under the name of Kid Ford as a middleweight back in the late twenties. Like any good coach or manager, Gainford could give a boxer the once-over and determine almost immediately if he had what it took to be a good fighter. Sugar had never done roadwork and didn’t know who Gainford was, but he understood the value of the money. No further inducement was necessary. After several months fighting with Booksinger, he was ready.