It was in this manner that Ben Hogan first entered the Oil Country—a region where he was destined to become more notorious, perhaps, than any other man who ever entered it.
His first adventure in Pit Hole was the meeting with Jim Linton, who carried with him a pair of boxing-gloves. Ben pretended not to know what they were; but having been taken around to “Heenan’s Cottage”—a famous resort for the sporting fraternity—he very soon showed that he could use his hands in a thoroughly scientific manner. This, of course, made him “solid” with the crowd, and he very soon became known.
Nothing better turning up, Ben joined Diefenbach’s show, to do general gymnastic business, while young Burke did a lively business in watches. The latter was so industrious that he came in often at the end of a night’s work with half a dozen “tickers” in his pockets.
Probably Pit Hole, at that time, was the wickedest place on the globe. The roughest and most desperate classes had centred there. Pistols and bowie-knives were the ordinary adornments worn by pretty nearly everybody. It was no unusual occurrence for half a dozen men to be killed in a day, and if twenty-four hours did happen to pass without somebody’s being shot, it set the inhabitants of the town to wondering what was the matter.
FIGHT BETWEEN HOGAN AND HOLLIDAY AT PITTHOLE, PA.
At the time of which I am writing, Fred Hill and Dean Wilson came to the town to give a sparring exhibition, and Hogan was trotted out as a “green Dutchman,” who would put on the gloves “just for fun.” Hill naturally supposed that he had a soft thing, but that idea left him by the time four rounds had been fought. He was so used up that he did not want any more of the “green Dutchman.”
From Pit Hole, Ben went to Oil City, where he worked in a variety show, and afterward in O’Hara and Hill’s Theatre, keeping order where nobody else could.
He next joined Capt. Smith, and played in Rouseville, Petroleum Centre, and Pit Hole, at which latter place Ben, who carried the “boodle,” lost nineteen hundred dollars at faro. That bursted the show, as the captain couldn’t make out where the profits were under such management.
Remaining in Pit Hole, Ben’s next venture was in the dance-hall and restaurant line, he becoming the business manager for a woman known as Em Fenton. She had conducted the place on a one-horse scale, but Ben ran the trade up to a hundred dollars a day.