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Edition 21

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HYLAND It was a glorious place, the Del Prado Hotel was. If you listen closely, you can still hear the echoes of the young lovers and swaggering big leaguers who used to make its lobby so fresh, so vibrant. But to open your eyes in there is to see the other side of midnight. e furniture is cheap and frayed, and the old folks arrayed on it live with a fear dramatized by a sign taped to the front desk: sorry, no money on premises—please pay rent by check or money order. Yes, that is what has become of Hyde Park's leading hostelry, and the change is a hurting thing for everybody except the lost soul dozing in the corner, the one the fight crowd used to call Honey Boy. He lives in a world that skirts reality, a world filled with panhandling buddies and visions of old movies, a world where no one can hurt him. Late at night, when he is alone in the lobby, alone with his jumbled thoughts, he will rise from the couch where he sleeps and slowly walk toward the full-length mirror. He will raise his fists and bend at the knees and, suddenly, he will be Johnny Bratton, welter-weight champion, once again. Never mind that his hair is more gray than black or that he is an easy fifty pounds over his fighting prime. You can't take the past away from him. He bobs and weaves, jabs, recalculates the old combinations— all in slow motion. How sad and yet how perfect for the setting. It is as if you aren't allowed in the front door of the woebegone

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