My father used to bet on me a lot in the speakeasies. We’d be in a new section of Philadelphia where they didn’t know us too well yet and he’d go in a speakeasy and bet somebody that he had a ten-year-old kid who could lick any fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy. He’d bet some kid’s father a quarter for beer, and us kids would have to fight it out in front of all the grown men. If I won, which was almost always the case, he’d toss me a dime. If I lost he’d cuff me hard on the back of the head.
