Baa Baa Black Sheep (52 page)

Then I needled him: “Oh, come on, let’s build it up just a little bit more.”

He said: “To hell with you, there isn’t a cop in the joint, we’re going to ‘finish’ right now.”

So the main event and the evening were wound up, I thought. It was just another tag-team match with two baby-faces against two heels. The baby-faces (guys with hair and youth) were beaten by every piece of foul play and skulduggery known to man. The heels (balding men with fat bellies) had triumphed. The arena was a holocaust—a bedlam. Wadded-up paper cups, because the fans aren’t permitted to keep bottles for obvious reasons, women’s shoes, and other non-lethal weapons came sailing into the ring.

The heels were going up an aisle to the dressing room back to back, so that the fans who were now a mob couldn’t jump them from behind. The baby-faces who pretended to be demolished and would never speak to the heels again were not far behind them—to protect their play-acting buddies in case things got too rough for them.

The referee was waiting in the falling debris in the ring,
as usual, waiting for the wrestlers to open a path in the aisle leading to the dressing room. Prior to my reaching the dressing-room door my path became blocked by some oversized fan who had enough to drink to make him brave. In trying to work my way around this gent I soon found that I was surrounded by an infuriated mob, and the wrestlers were out of sight.

The safest thing to do was to get through as diplomatically as possible, I knew; I was an old hand at this. I had no fear of this big jerk and was itching to belt him, but I was also smart enough to know that if I didn’t flatten him with one punch I would really be in trouble.

Whatever I did, it would have to be quick!

This big fellow seemed to know what I had in mind—and he wanted my blood. He wasn’t going to attempt this with his own capable hands. He wasn’t that type of hero. He was going to give the mob a chance to jump me by delaying my exit. I sensed all this.

The mob would do the job if he could stall me a few seconds. They would release all their pent-up hatred for every crooked public official they had ever known, such as mayors, policemen, congressmen, and what have you. So I said: “Come on, be a good guy, and get out of my way.”

He answered: “Come on by, I’m not going to stop you.”

I said: “Thanks,” and started to pass. But instead of permitting me to pass he grabbed me, and I was forced to give him the knee to shake him loose.

This was all the encouragement the mob needed, and I felt someone trying to jump on my back. The same thoughts I had when I was shot down in the South Pacific came through my mind: “Wise guy, you finally got it, didn’t you?”

My wife screamed: “Turn around, Greg!”

She had jerked some man from my back. I started a swing going as I wheeled about and planted it flush on the button of this man, who dropped like a steer in a slaughterhouse line.

It was only a matter of a few seconds before Franny and I were standing in the center of a circle of fallen fans. About that time the eight wrestlers came back to help. After all this commotion there wasn’t a scratch on my body other than a few skinned knuckles, but Franny had lost a couple of her
precious fingernails, and some dame had sunk her teeth into a wrestler’s arm while he was pulling me off the guy who had stopped me.

One might gather that all the fans were alike, but this is far from true. However, it was obvious that most of them used these matches for emotional releases, or believed that the purchase of a ticket entitled them to act along with the paid performers. Outside of a few people who seemed to laugh throughout the entire program, no matter how we acted, the bulk of the fans were mousy-looking people who appeared hen-pecked. They looked like they spent five or six days each week saying to their boss, or to a mate, yes sir and no sir. The type of people who felt like they had to laugh at a joke whether it was funny or not, just because somebody told it. But these people changed once the matches started; they were different persons completely. They would yell what they were going to do to the referee and the heels after the matches, just like they were sure of themselves for the first time in their lives. Some of these milquetoast creatures would take off their glasses and pull off their coats, shaking their fists in anger. Yet they were confident that their threats, swearing, and actions were never going beyond the ring ropes.

One night, out of a clear blue sky, one of the wrestlers started another one of our conversations that had nothing to do with wrestling. As a matter of fact, very few of them did. He said: “Pappy, did you realize that wrestling fans had such stupid faces before you started refereeing?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s a pity my psychiatrist couldn’t work in my place some night.”

“How’s that, Pappy?”

“My God, he’d find enough customers in one arena to last him a lifetime.”

“I have a more horrible thought than yours.”

I asked: “Yeah, what is it?”

“Look at them again. Then stop and think that each one has a vote, and that it counts as much as yours or mine.”

“I see what you mean. Nauseating, isn’t it?”

Sometimes one of the wrestlers would get to laughing when he was supposed to be registering pain or anger, so his opponent would cover his face with his body somehow. He
would have to pretend he had some kind of new hold, or something, until the laughter died down.

The largest part of our audience was out of sight, the television fan. However, many of these would send in complaints to various addresses. The Athletic Commission would answer some of this mail, but the majority was unsigned for obvious reasons, or needed no answer. But when some of the more persistent folks got a letter into the governor’s office—now, then, that was a horse of a different color.

To begin with, a governor usually doesn’t give one Nippon Rising Sun about anything but votes. He weighs everything in his mind against so many votes—a unit of measure with a man in that position. The fact that some voters are crazy doesn’t make a particle of difference; it is their votes that counts.

Because it was mandatory that all wrestling had to be announced several times as an exhibition during every television show, about all the governor’s office had to do was send a mimeographed letter emphasizing this to some stupe. But no, the votes. The commission secretary gets the bright idea of having the referees answer these crackpots whose important-sounding letterheads had reached the governor’s office—to take any “heat” off His Lordship.

The few I did answer were much the same, with a copy mailed to the Athletic Commission, and an extra copy marked for the governor’s office. Being a “patsy” in the ring was of my own choosing, but I have always balked when somebody else tried to make one out of me. Perhaps the few letters I did answer were sufficient, I don’t know, because there never was any response from any address.

The commission stopped passing the buck to me when they read their copies. Whether they ever forwarded the governor his copies, I don’t know, and care less. But the most amazing thing about these letters and their personal slurs is that not one of these mentioned a single word about my drinking, which was no doubt the most damning thing in my character.

My wife dreaded this hobby of mine, and pleaded with me to referee differently or to quit. But I couldn’t seem to stop this part of my life any more than I could drinking. They went hand in glove. Refereeing doesn’t affect some people
the way it did me, but, by the same token, neither does alcohol. Perhaps, because I wasn’t capable of controlling my own immature emotions, I was taking sadistic delight in fooling around with thousands of other human beings’ emotions—such as violence, fear, hatred, and even passion—but violence seemed to be my pet.

About four years ago I was forced to give up my hobby, but not because anyone asked me to leave. The most powerful thing that I had run into up to date, alcohol, had made up my mind for me.

I had reached the point where I knew that I could work the entire card and not even sober up for the main event. This is the only reason I stopped refereeing.

Greek legend is very applicable to my past, for it was as though a Minotaur was gradually taking possession of my mind and body. The tales of my black-outs that my friends told about after some of my drunks were so horrible that I had to believe that they were fables in order to consider myself sane.

Another vent was the sympathetic feeling I had for the so-called minority groups. Rooting for the underdog is more or less prevalent in us all, I guess. But whether these minority groups were large or small made no difference, I was attached to them all. And they seemed attached to me—more or less—in common bond. For I have been taken home, or taken care of, by the very rich, the very poor, the Catholic, the Jew, black men, brown men, yellow men, and red men. And invariably, in so many words, I recalled their self-pity for being what they were. It is logical to assume that my company brought some of this out.

My case was different from any of theirs, I thought. In fact, I didn’t see how any of them had a right to indulge in
feeling sorry for themselves. But they were probably helped somewhat by taking care of me—if nothing other than by comparison. I didn’t have to be born into any minority group because I was the kind of a person who made his own. Some people might term my actions as an effort to be exclusive—but I don’t. Unless, of course, exclusiveness is synonymous with unhappiness. I never found peace of mind in whatever I was seeking for forty-two years.

It seemed to be inevitable that, when I finally found steady employment, it would be in the alcoholic beverage business. It was, and I became a draught-beer salesman.

During those six years with the brewery I had to force myself to sober up countless times by sheer determination, so I would not lose this special job. If I had used the same amount of effort in flying, I would have been the first man to fly to the moon.

During the brief spells when I was sober I had better-than-average sales, so my employers held me on in the hope that someday I might see the light. They raised my salary three times, gave me special assignments, in fact, they did everything except the right thing—they should have fired me.

While I was employed by the brewery I had a lengthy session with a competent psychiatrist who called in consultants much as though I had the first head ever to have been pickled in alcohol. But they found no answer for me.

Many an early morning when I arrived home by taxicab I discovered that somebody had slipped religious literature into my pockets while I was blacked out. But I wanted no part of religion. I feared that religion would make me so pure if it cured my drinking that I would never want to do anything I considered pleasant.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had hopes that science would someday develop a pill, or something, to make me a social drinker like other people. Finally I came to the conclusion that I had about as much chance of becoming a social drinker as I would in starting a new political party in the Kremlin. I resigned from the brewery in the spring of 1955 because I was sick and tired of drinking, and everything that goes with it.

A few days after this two well-known men whom I knew
only by names and pictures dropped over to my home and had a long chat with me. They had had problems with alcohol at one time, but both of them had been sober and happy for years. I listened to their stories and somehow thought that they had lived part of my life.

For several months I remained sober by merely talking to these two gentlemen occasionally, then for some reason I felt so good that I thought I would try a drink just to see if it would bother me.

This time I awakened in some unfamiliar room, so ghastly ill that I felt I couldn’t sit up. I must have looked like death warmed over because I was flat on my back on a bed with nothing over me but a sheet. The lights were on, and I hoped that this would turn out to be a bad dream. As soon as I heard footsteps and voices and somebody opening the door to this room, I knew that it was no dream. A man and a woman were talking, but I couldn’t recognize either one, so I closed my eyes in a futile attempt to hide from my visitors.

The woman said: “What gives with this?”

The man answered: “Damned if I know. But he looks like he’s left this world some time ago.”

The woman pulled back my sheet and tried to feel my pulse, dropping some hot cigarette ashes on my arm, but I didn’t flinch because I didn’t have enough strength to. There was considerable alarm in her voice when she repeated: “Speak to me, speak to me.”

“Hello,” I said, and slowly opened my eyes.

“Thank God, he’s alive.”

Why all the concern for me was beyond me because I had not the slightest idea who she was, but I blubbered out: “Gosh, you’re so
nice
to me—and I hardly
know
you.”

Just how nutty can you get? This was it! As soon as I could get some coffee down, I was back to my sober drunk friends, willing to do business their way. I asked: “How can I stay sober and happy?”

“You have to progress spiritually, otherwise you will drink again.”

“How on earth is a guy like me ever going to progress spiritually, I’d like to know?”

“By meeting with us several times each week, and helping others to stay sober.”

This happened pretty close to three years ago and I haven’t had a drink since, simply because I like their way of life a lot better than I ever thought I liked to drink. Otherwise there would be absolutely no reason for living the way I am.

In my lengthy career of violence and fighting this was the first time I ever won by being counted out—by admitting to myself that I was powerless—for a change.

As I live my life from day to day as best I can, past character defects rise to the surface, and I am now able to understand and cope with them. And I find myself gradually joining up with society—something to which I never belonged in my past life.

People never even suggest that I have a drink like I imagined they would at one time; others seem to turn them down for me. Most of the places I go, without a word being spoken, my drink is the first served. Even the waiters and waitresses, though I am not conscious of it, seem to bring me a large pot of coffee before they serve my nonalcoholic friends their drinks.