As a result, he said, he came out even: 'I was broke when I started boxing, and broke when I finished.' He took part in almost 300 bouts all over the country, winning about two-thirds of them. What is known - to me at least - is that he decided he could box, and he liked to tell how he picked up 75 cents by winning his first match in the old Phoenix Athletic Club downtown. In fact, one sportswriter described his boxing style in this manner: 'There was never anything else in heaven or earth quite like this crazy gyration, but if you can picture the frantic antics of a kangaroo which had just experienced the misfortune of sitting on an anthill, you will get a faint idea.'

He was born Logan Hipp in 1903, and he acquired his distinctive moniker because of the energetic way he bounced and bobbled as he dodged opponents' blows, much as I did. For one thing, 'Shifty' wasn't his real name. 'Shifty' Logan had a bit more luck than I did, so I don't mind writing about him here, especially because he was such an interesting character. That was the hardest-hitting Girl Scout I have ever encountered. As soon as the assembled crowd spotted my flat chest, sticklike arms, and generally ill-proportioned figure, they began shouting, 'Look, it's Gumby! Hey, Gumby!' Swinging those hefty gloves, and skipping about the canvas like a ballerina, I managed to last almost half a round before I was sucker-punched and knocked out. Watching from the sidelines, the matches looked like great fun, and in a moment of madness, I clambered into the ring to go a few rounds with one of the toughest kids from the neighborhood. Some years ago, when I was a precocious tyke - oh, I was barely 29 or 30 years old - my parents, in a rare burst of civic involvement, decided to put on a boxing match in the Lauderdale Gymnasium for the benefit of the neighborhood orphans. The topic dredges up one of the lowest moments of my life. What can you tell me about him?Дear D.C.: There's a good reason I rarely write about so-called 'prize fighting' in this column.

Dear Vance: When I worked at the Claridge Hotel in the late 1950s, there was an ex-prize fighter who hung around the place called Shifty Logan.

Shifty vault