As part of the process of researching and writing my book about the Klan-fighting editor George Dale, I've been penning short character studies and historical sketches most every morning. It's been a nice way to get into form—like training for a fight—and a way to work through ideas on tone and voice and practice integrating heaps of often-dry research into a readable narrative. Here's a piece from the dozens of sketches I've written, very much a work in progress, about George's love of fighting.

It was a record crowd for boxing in Muncie. It was early September 1931, and the air was still warm, the last lingering clutches of summer. The air in the armory—everyone called it the "new" Armory back then—was even warmer as the stands filled, hot and thick with the smoke from cigarettes and cigars. The crowd was loud and it was ready.

So was George Dale, now mayor of Muncie, victorious after his long battles of the 1920s.

He loved it, loved the energy of the crowd, the anticipation before the blows began. Boxing was his favorite sport, that and polo—which he'd played when he was young, back when, as he put it, it "was really dangerous." The danger was a big part of it for George. With boxing it was one-on-one, just you and them and fists.

It was a position George had found himself in for decades. Not in a ring though. In 1910, back in Hartford City before he'd moved to Muncie, before he'd started the Post-Democrat, before the Klan came to town and made his life hell, he was in court, fighting.

This is not a metaphor: this is George, in court, attacking a judge with his fists. At the time, he was the managing editor of the Hartford Journal newspaper, a reform-minded publication helmed by Charles Reeves. Reeves had been hauled into court on some bullshit and let go on what the judge said was a technicality. But before releasing him, the judge let Reeves have it, giving him the what-for.

And then.

And then, let's let the Indianapolis Star tell it:

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