FIGHT FICTION: REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY!

FIGHT FICTION: REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY!

KNOWN FOR HIS HARD-BOILED, REALISTIC BOOKS ABOUT THE OUTCASTS AND VAGABONDS OF AMERICA – THE HOBOS AND BOXERS, IRISH DITCH DIGGERS AND PROSTITUTES, CIRCUS CARNIES AND PRISONERS – EARNED JIM TULLY RAVE REVIEWS IN NATIONAL PUBLICATIONS AND CELEBRATED COMMENTS FROM THE LIKES OF H.L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN . . . THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER HAS A COOL ARTICLE TODAY REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY, ONE OF OHIO’S FORGOTTEN SONS . . .

Jim Tully hardly fit the portrait of the poet as a young man, at least the one of popular imagination. He came out of St. Marys, Ohio, the son of poor, alcohol-bedeviled Irish immigrants -- "shanty Irish," he called his family.

After his mother died young, he spent six brutal years in a Cincinnati orphanage and another year in virtual bondage to a cruel farmer. At 14, he ran away to spend six years riding the rails as a "road kid," a sort of junior hobo.

He then went on the small-town boxing circuit as a featherweight, survived the hot furnaces of chain-making factories in Columbus and Kent, and worked as a traveling tree surgeon, even tending the trees of future U.S. senator and president, Warren G. Harding . . .

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

KEVIN I. SLAUGHTER MAINTAINS JIM TULLY’S LADIES IN THE PARLOR BLOG. TO CHECK IT OUT CLICK HERE

HAT TIP TO JOHN STICKNEY