Post by Stu-E Price on Jul 23, 2007 15:48:34 GMT -5
My mom calls my dad Buff, for Buffy, and he calls her Tiger or Tigerbell. Other than that, I have never heard him use a pet name. He would use them to be sarcastic of course: honey, shitbird or farto, if you wouldn't eat your cereal and the school bus was honking. Between running the wrestling and doing all the cooking and cleaning for 14 people, he had no time to be delicate. If we were stalling, it was, "Get on the gaddamn bus, shitbird." If anyone at the table ever said, "Do you have a sore tummy?" it wasn't out of concern. It was an accusation and caused instant heat at the house. If my dad ever said it to anyone, they got little snickers from everybody at the table. My dad would admonish anyone who left food on a plate.
"Make that disappear while I watch."
If you heckled, you'd get a thunk on the head with a metal serving spoon. "That goes for you too." One of the worst things he could call you was a “softie toffee.”
"Eat up shitbird. Do you want some softie toffee to rot your gaddamn teeth out?"
We had to eat our oatmeal, weevils and all. My dad figured they added protein to our diet. Sometimes those bugs would still be alive and kicking, even after the cereal had been boiled for 15 minutes. We would watch them swim around in our milk, if there was enough milk. It never seemed to hurt us. What's worse, that or eating a dead cow?
Though we lived inside the city limits, my dad owned 25 undeveloped hillside acres so he often bought farm animals. My dad loved our cow named Daphne, which the City of Calgary ended up accidentally killing. They picked her up with a backhoe when they where digging a roadway called Sarcee Trail, which was to pass in front of our house. They never mentioned the accident and as far as we knew, Daphne went missing. We called everywhere, but the humane society had no reports of stray cows.
Daphne had been dead for about a month when a neighbor reported seeing her body lying at the end of the road the city was building. My dad was saddened by her death. She was a lovely cow, she really was. And he was so impressed that she gave milk only having calved once.
Bruce and Smith used to compete milking her. Smith hated to lose so during one competition he top up his pail with water to make it to look like he got more than Bruce. But compared with the rich, thick, frothy cream that Bruce handed to my dad, it was pretty obvious what Smith had done. My dad put the fear of God in Smith for that one. He snatched Smith up off the ground by his Adam's apple and warned him not to try that again, gaddamnit.
We also had goats. Cicero was a goat who used to pee everywhere, even on its own whiskers. One time Cicero wet on Daphne's head and she got so mad she turned around and kicked him so hard he flew up in the air and bounced off the carriage house door. We had a rooster and hen given to us by a Mexican wrestler, Jess Ortega who wrestled under the name Mighty Ursus. We named them Mighty Ursus and Edna.
Mighty liked to crow at the crack of dawn which woke Smith up and annoyed him to no end so he decided he would try to break Mighty of the habit. One morning he snuck up on Mighty just as he was about to crow and startled him. This scared the crow right out of the bird and he strutted around for the rest of the day trying to cough it out.
In 1973 when my brother Owen was eight years old, we had a cat we found as a stray out at the beach. We named her Mom Cat, because she had so many litters. She was a great little hunter and, while playing with Owen one day, she caught a gopher in the yard. The mayor of Calgary, Rod Sykes, was over for a visit. While my dad and he were having a chat in the yard, Owen came up and tugged on my dad's sleeve. He was concerned that the cat was going to take the gopher into the house.
"Dad, Mom's got a gopher and it's still alive and she's got it in her mouth!"
The mayor's eyes widened in horror when my dad told Owen not to worry, she'd probably just eat it on the porch. We eventually donated the bigger animals to the Calgary Zoo, including our big horn sheep and our horses, Ricky and King.
Animals always figured highly in our upbringing. Even today, people take stray cats up to Stu Hart's. They know they will get the best home possible, including the best of everything, from milk, to food, to discipline.
We had a Siamese cat named Heathcliff, who helped Owen a lot with his wrestling. Owen developed quite a relationship with the cat and practiced wrestling holds on it. It was his guinea pig and Owen knew if he could do pile drivers and knee drops on Heathcliff without hurting him, then of course he could do them on a person. That's one way Owen got to be so good.
When Heathcliff got irritated about something we did to him, or if we brought a cigarette smoker into the house, he would retaliate by wetting in the toaster. My dad loved his big commercial electric toaster. It looked like a wall safe. It had six slots and made a really loud ticking sound. When my dad smelled what Heathcliff had done in his toaster, he got so mad he grabbed the cat's head and shoved it in the toilet. He flushed, yelling, "You bastard!" He'd done it to some of us kids before, but never a cat.
When I was a baby, former world heavyweight boxer Jack Sharkey was in town. My dad had invited him to appear as a celebrity attraction at the wrestling. En route to the airport, Jack and his wife stopped by the house for a visit. Jack was dapper in his knee-length yellow cashmere coat, but he was a real blowhard. My dad had suffered silently the entire weekend through Jack's recounting over and over all his wonderful accomplishments in and out of the boxing ring.
At the time my dad was breeding dogs. He owned the best dog of its breed, a grand champion boxer named BF of Rosscarack. BF was a huge animal and he had the run of the house. That night, BF was lying at my dad's side listening to Jack as he launched into yet another story about his athletic prowess in the ring.
BF stood up, yawned and studied Jack for a moment. Then he moved over toward the ex-champ, lifted his leg and urinated all over him. Jack reacted as if he'd been electrocuted. He jumped up in shock, shaking with fury. He kicked at BF fiercely in an attempt to castrate the dog on the spot with his boot. But BF was too fast for him.
"You people have no respect for a great athlete and world champion like me. You Canadians are all the same, so jealous of genuine heroes. I promise you I will never set foot in this hell hole again!"
"Ah, Jack."
My dad was on his feet helping Jack shuck off his urine-soaked coat. "I'm so sorry about that. Don't know what got into BF. Git, boy!" My dad gave the dog an affectionate nudge with his knee.
In the end, Jack was forced to board the plane sans cashmere coat, which was wrapped in plastic and tucked in his suitcase. My dad gave him money to dry-clean the coat, but Jack never spoke to him again.
My sister Alison was a picky eater. She would cry or whine or wretch if she didn't want to eat any more sauerkraut which always seemed to be in abundance. Alison would clamp her teeth together, and my dad would force her mouth open with a fork or spoon, digging it right up into her gums under her lip.
"What's the matter? Do you have a sore tummy?" He was imitating my mom, because when my mom was there, she always came to our defense. "Oh Stu, don't do that, don't make them. If they don't want to eat, don't make them."
This would frustrate my dad. Not eating what was put in front of you was one of the few things that made him furious. He'd shout, "Gaddamn it, eat up!"
We knew through my mom that he had had to eat worm-infested rabbits and gophers when he was our age in order to survive. Like Scarlett O'Hara he was determined that neither he nor his children would ever go hungry.
My dad continued to feed Alison, even into her teens. She would cry and my dad would say, "Eat up dahling..." really sarcastically. This would make everyone crack up. She would take forever. She'd chew it, pretend to swallow then secretly spit it out and give it to the dogs. Someone would catch her and tell my dad and he'd force her to fill up her dish again. "Don't be wasting the gaddamned food!"
We never visited the dentist. There was no need. My dad's strict policies limited candy and sweets. He insisted that we brush our teeth faithfully even when we were out of Pepsodent and had to resort to soap. We all had strong, healthy teeth.
Another thing my dad would never tolerate was sickness. That came into play when my brother Dean first became ill and eventually died. We were all in extreme denial throughout. "He couldn't be sick. We're the Harts. We don't get sick. Even when we're sick, we're not supposed to be sick."
One morning, poor Alison was really nauseous. She was 10 years old, but still a tiny little thing. She was so sick that while digging her clothes out of the big industrial clothes dryer in the basement, she fell right inside and passed out. My dad came down searching for her. He told her to get her gaddamned head out of the dryer and get the upstairs and he made her go to school.
When she got there she had to deal with her miserable teacher, who was particularly hard on her. She was a witch. She used to pull Alison's hair if she asked a question that had already been asked. Sometimes she'd make Alison sit in the corner in front of the whole class. She'd drag her by the hair and put her there.
Owen's grade one teacher, Miss Rubenstein, wanted to make Owen repeat the grade. My mom was just sick about it. She would not let Miss Rubenstein keep Owen back. She was adamant.
"If you keep him back, he will think he's a failure and he'll never regain his confidence." My mom was right. Owen became a good student and went on to university.
Georgia did well in most subjects, but Ellie had real trouble in math. She got 4% in math one year with Mr. Falk, the math teacher at Ernest Manning. We all did best in social studies and English, thanks to my mom. She'd check our work and make sure that our grammar and punctuation were correct. She always came to the rescue if she found a dangling participle or a problem with conjunctions.
She found it excruciating to watch the wrestlers interviewed. Sometimes she'd pause before the television set for a brief moment while they threatened to tear each other to pieces. She'd shake her head in disgust. “Ugh! Listen to that grammar!"
My mom hated bad grammar. She could barely stand talking to Mrs. Carr, one of Ross' teachers at Vincent Massey High School, due to her atrocious grammar. Ross thought Mrs. Carr was impossible. He was a good student except in her class. It seemed no matter what he did she would get on his case. When Ross was 27 and working as a substitute teacher, he got a call from Vincent Massey to work. He was late, so he hurried into the school. As he passed by Mrs. Carr she barked, "Ross! Stop running in the halls! And get rid of that baseball cap!"
The one kid among us who legitimately had a lot of trouble in school was Bret. He was handled very badly by his teachers. Some threw books at him and called him stupid and told him he would never amount to anything. Now he writes a weekly newspaper column, which includes his own cartoon drawings.
Mr. Marks taught art to both Bret and me. He was warm and encouraging and recognized talent in both of us. A few years ago when Ernest Manning High School was being renovated, Mr. Marks refused to let them sand the wall where Bret had carved his name.
Maybe some teachers picked on us because we were so poor. I remember not having any socks. My mom and dad didn't have any socks either. One year for Christmas, all the boys got was a hockey puck, socks, a mandarin orange and homemade chocolate cookies. The girls got paper dolls in lieu of the pucks.
Lunch at our house consisted of stacks of enormous corn beef sandwiches, dripping with mustard and mayonnaise on rye bread. I can still see the cats gingerly licking the meat and blood residue off the blade housed in the huge industrial meat slicer. I remember opening the fridge and seeing a huge cow tongue sitting on the shelf. We had a large cuckoo clock hanging on the wall beside the fridge covered in a fuzzy film of cooking grease. On the counter by the window there was a large wooden chopping block made of hardwood. It was at least 100 years old years old and eight inches thick. It was scarred like an old tomcat. Behind it sat an industrial-size milk machine.
Numerous sounds would fill the kitchen at lunchtime, dishes clattering, phones ringing, dogs barking, children yacking and frolicking, horns honking outside and someone yelling "Hurry up! I gotta get back to school!" Oh, how I envied the children who brought tidy little paper bag lunches to school.
When I look at old pictures of my mom, I see a prettier version of Rita Hayworth. She had long chestnut hair and an hourglass figure. Even now there is no hint of the 12 children she bore. She used to wear pretty Doris Day-type gingham dresses and sandals on her feet. She still has an upper-class Long Island accent.
She spent most of her day working on the books for Stampede Wrestling in one of the upstairs bedrooms converted into an office. When my parents met, she was a private secretary for the superintendent of the New York City School Board.
My dad used to say she was “the best gaddamn office manager in the whole city." She handled all the finances for our house and business, while his job was to promote the wrestling and take care of the kids. That included all the cooking and cleaning. I remember my mom's desk blotter. She never wanted anyone writing on it. Once, Smith drew a swastika on it and she got so mad. My dad got mad too.
"Smith, did you draw that gaddamned swastika on your mother's desk blotter?" Smith shook his head innocently, though of course he did it.
My mom used a real fountain pen, a Schaeffer White Dot. Nobody ever touched her pen. You didn't even use it to write down a phone number. Each week she had to get the weekly wrestling advertisements ready. She'd type them out, add the photos by cutting out pictures of the wrestlers' heads, add the headlines and the stars in the right spots, underline what was most important, center everything and finally tape it to a piece of paper. It was like preparing camera-ready copy for newspapers without any of the usual editing equipment. Then she had to schedule the separate lineups for each town. My dad would drive the ads to the Greyhound bus for his different partners in each location. They had to keep an eye on everybody. The Lions Clubs and the Boy Scouts always did a good job, but my parents would often work with somebody that they thought they could rely on and that person would take off with the money. That happened a lot. We never knew who we could trust.
My brother Dean was always pulling ribs and sometimes when my dad went to take out the garbage or start the car, Dean would call upstairs in my dad's gruff voice.
"Dear?"
"Yes Stu?" she would answer in a sugary tone.
"Where are those gaddamned posters for Greyhound?" he'd demand.
This would really upset her, "How dare you talk to me that way!"
Then she'd slam the bedroom door as hard as she could, sending plaster sprinkling down on my dad as he came back into the house. He'd shake his head, "Why did she do that?" But all he'd get was the muffled retort, "Go to hell!"
He'd turn to all 12 of us, sitting innocently at the dining room table. "What got your gaddamn mother all keyed up?"
I have the utmost respect for my mom and dad. I got enough attention. I got encouragement. I mean maybe they were more concerned with keeping me fed than whether I had good self-esteem, but I do remember them telling Owen and me we had so much to offer and we were the best in the world.
"Don't sell yourself short. You are so smart. You should be modeling. You should be in the Olympics."
Beginning when I was seven years old, I practiced in the gym with Owen. We taught each other nip-ups and somersaults and flips. It was just the two of us putting each other through these little workouts that we had designed. "Okay, we've got to do 100 squats now." Owen and I did everything together.
When we started school we were two dirty-faced, unkempt-looking kids. A six-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl dressed in Salvation Army clothing, with uncombed hair. Sometimes we were climbing from rags to riches and sometimes falling from riches to rags. Riches brought Cadillacs, clothes and new toys. But more often than not we were poor and the kids at school constantly heaped scorn on us.
Owen was an awesome marble player and always accumulated a bagful. At lunchtime while we waited for my dad or Dean or Bret to pick us up, we'd shoot marbles in the powdery playground dirt.
One day, three grade 10 boys—Ken, Scott and Martin—approached us. They were privileged kids who looked down on us. Scott, the ringleader, called out, "Hey, it's the Hart farts."
Martin joined in. "Little bastards. Their brother Bret is in my homeroom. The teacher says he's retarded."
Then Ken began a singsong chant, "Tar-doe. Tar-doe. Tar-doe."
Martin laughed, "The other day, she threw a book at him and told him he'd never amount to nothing."
Ken was close enough now to kick some dirt at us. "Lowlifes. Have you seen their shitmobile?"
Only Scott hung back. "I dunno, Bret is kinda tough."
Ken spit on the ground beside me. "Bullshit! Wrestling is fake. Everybody knows that, even the rummies who spend their weekends at the Pavilion." He narrowed his eyes at us. "Hey, Hart farts!"
Martin leaned in close to Owen." Hart farts, nice clothes. Where'd you get them? Green Acres? What're you waiting for? The Shitmobile?"
Owen swallowed hard, but ignored the taunts and kept focused on the marbles. I felt my eyes stinging, but pretended to concentrate on the circle in the ground Owen had made with his index finger.
Ken leaned in and grabbed up the whole sack. "Gimme your marbles."
He kicked dirt at Owen and tossed the marbles in the air. Owen stood up, wiping the dirt from his eyes.
Ken patted him on the head. "Hey a cat's eye! Thanks, Hart fart."
Although Owen only came to his waist, he stood toe-to-toe with Ken and growled menacingly. "Give it back."
Ken laughed and shoved Owen roughly and started making his way past him.
Head down like an enraged bull; Owen leg-dived and threw Ken into a headlock. The other two jumped on Owen using him as a kicking bag. Owen managed to land a kick and Ken stumbled. He held Owen's head back with one hand, debating what to do. He snarled, and then began slapping him with his free hand.
Though none of his blows were landing, Owen continued to flail away at Ken. Martin and Scott were laughing. I was on my feet and kicking at Ken's shins.
"Let go!" I shouted.
"Gimme back my marbles!" Owen screamed.
Ken shoved Owen so hard he tumbled to the ground, taking me with him. The three boys ran off laughing, tossing our marbles into the field as they left.
When Bret arrived at the school to pick us up, he could tell something was wrong with Owen. He was usually not so subdued. We were conditioned not to whine or tell on people, but Bret got it out of him.
The next morning just before noon hour, Bret's 1965 gold Brougham Cadillac came to an abrupt halt in the school ground parking lot. He waited outside his Caddy as we tentatively readied our marbles in the dirt. Ken and his buddies were headed our way and Owen made eye contact with Bret indicating they were the bullies.
As soon as Ken came within 10 feet of us, Bret started toward them. His tee-shirt sleeves were tight over his impressive biceps as they pumped through the air. He was on them as quick as a cat. He held all three tight in his grip. With one arm he caught Ken's neck in the crook of his elbow while he twisted Ken's arm up behind him at a painful angle. All three fussed and swore at him. "Ow! Let me go!" Ken demanded.
Bret smiled." I hear you like to play marbles."
"Let me go." Ken sounded a little less sure of himself. Frightened, his buddies backed off.
Bret twisted Ken's arm up a little higher. "I think you have something to say to my little brother and sister here."
Now Ken was almost crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Owen piped up, "You should say sorry to Bret too, for calling our car a shitmobile." Bret's face grew dark. "What?"
Owen nodded. "He called your car a shitmobile."
Bret goosed-stepped Ken over to the Cadillac and pushed Ken down in front of the bug-covered headlights.
"Kiss it," was all he said.
Ken was almost passing out from the pain. "No way."
Bret twisted Ken's arm so high it looked like it would break. His voice was quiet. "I'm not asking again."
"C'mon. No!" Ken pleaded.
Bret made a quick, sharp move and I heard a terrible cracking noise accompanied by Ken's scream. Then I watched a slow smile spread across Bret's face and I heard Ken kiss the grill.
It was particularly hard for us at school. The teachers were usually unsupportive and the kids teased us constantly. Every day we heard, "My dad says your dad is a fake." Owen would answer, "Yeah well that's because your dad is too much of a chicken to ever wrestle my dad."
Then they'd say, "Your dad doesn't even buy you decent clothes," because we always had holes in our knees and elbows. But when you only had one pair of pants, what could you do?
Some kids would mock us about our dad's cars. "What kind of dad buys a limousine but doesn't buy his kids clothes?"
Owen would reply, "That's because my dad can afford a limousine. What does your dad drive, a Datsun?"
This kind of exchange always turned into a fight. Owen was brilliant at saying something that really got to them and the kid would try to grab him. He and I always backed each other up. I remember one time I was trying to help Owen and I got kicked right in the groin. Later, my brother Dean got a lot of these assholes back. If he knew they had been a jerk to one of us he'd bide his time. Then when they were looking for a vehicle he'd screw them so bad. He would sell them one of his cars he knew was on its last legs, or he'd take out new parts and replace them with worn parts.
Dean had a long memory.
"Make that disappear while I watch."
If you heckled, you'd get a thunk on the head with a metal serving spoon. "That goes for you too." One of the worst things he could call you was a “softie toffee.”
"Eat up shitbird. Do you want some softie toffee to rot your gaddamn teeth out?"
We had to eat our oatmeal, weevils and all. My dad figured they added protein to our diet. Sometimes those bugs would still be alive and kicking, even after the cereal had been boiled for 15 minutes. We would watch them swim around in our milk, if there was enough milk. It never seemed to hurt us. What's worse, that or eating a dead cow?
Though we lived inside the city limits, my dad owned 25 undeveloped hillside acres so he often bought farm animals. My dad loved our cow named Daphne, which the City of Calgary ended up accidentally killing. They picked her up with a backhoe when they where digging a roadway called Sarcee Trail, which was to pass in front of our house. They never mentioned the accident and as far as we knew, Daphne went missing. We called everywhere, but the humane society had no reports of stray cows.
Daphne had been dead for about a month when a neighbor reported seeing her body lying at the end of the road the city was building. My dad was saddened by her death. She was a lovely cow, she really was. And he was so impressed that she gave milk only having calved once.
Bruce and Smith used to compete milking her. Smith hated to lose so during one competition he top up his pail with water to make it to look like he got more than Bruce. But compared with the rich, thick, frothy cream that Bruce handed to my dad, it was pretty obvious what Smith had done. My dad put the fear of God in Smith for that one. He snatched Smith up off the ground by his Adam's apple and warned him not to try that again, gaddamnit.
We also had goats. Cicero was a goat who used to pee everywhere, even on its own whiskers. One time Cicero wet on Daphne's head and she got so mad she turned around and kicked him so hard he flew up in the air and bounced off the carriage house door. We had a rooster and hen given to us by a Mexican wrestler, Jess Ortega who wrestled under the name Mighty Ursus. We named them Mighty Ursus and Edna.
Mighty liked to crow at the crack of dawn which woke Smith up and annoyed him to no end so he decided he would try to break Mighty of the habit. One morning he snuck up on Mighty just as he was about to crow and startled him. This scared the crow right out of the bird and he strutted around for the rest of the day trying to cough it out.
In 1973 when my brother Owen was eight years old, we had a cat we found as a stray out at the beach. We named her Mom Cat, because she had so many litters. She was a great little hunter and, while playing with Owen one day, she caught a gopher in the yard. The mayor of Calgary, Rod Sykes, was over for a visit. While my dad and he were having a chat in the yard, Owen came up and tugged on my dad's sleeve. He was concerned that the cat was going to take the gopher into the house.
"Dad, Mom's got a gopher and it's still alive and she's got it in her mouth!"
The mayor's eyes widened in horror when my dad told Owen not to worry, she'd probably just eat it on the porch. We eventually donated the bigger animals to the Calgary Zoo, including our big horn sheep and our horses, Ricky and King.
Animals always figured highly in our upbringing. Even today, people take stray cats up to Stu Hart's. They know they will get the best home possible, including the best of everything, from milk, to food, to discipline.
We had a Siamese cat named Heathcliff, who helped Owen a lot with his wrestling. Owen developed quite a relationship with the cat and practiced wrestling holds on it. It was his guinea pig and Owen knew if he could do pile drivers and knee drops on Heathcliff without hurting him, then of course he could do them on a person. That's one way Owen got to be so good.
When Heathcliff got irritated about something we did to him, or if we brought a cigarette smoker into the house, he would retaliate by wetting in the toaster. My dad loved his big commercial electric toaster. It looked like a wall safe. It had six slots and made a really loud ticking sound. When my dad smelled what Heathcliff had done in his toaster, he got so mad he grabbed the cat's head and shoved it in the toilet. He flushed, yelling, "You bastard!" He'd done it to some of us kids before, but never a cat.
When I was a baby, former world heavyweight boxer Jack Sharkey was in town. My dad had invited him to appear as a celebrity attraction at the wrestling. En route to the airport, Jack and his wife stopped by the house for a visit. Jack was dapper in his knee-length yellow cashmere coat, but he was a real blowhard. My dad had suffered silently the entire weekend through Jack's recounting over and over all his wonderful accomplishments in and out of the boxing ring.
At the time my dad was breeding dogs. He owned the best dog of its breed, a grand champion boxer named BF of Rosscarack. BF was a huge animal and he had the run of the house. That night, BF was lying at my dad's side listening to Jack as he launched into yet another story about his athletic prowess in the ring.
BF stood up, yawned and studied Jack for a moment. Then he moved over toward the ex-champ, lifted his leg and urinated all over him. Jack reacted as if he'd been electrocuted. He jumped up in shock, shaking with fury. He kicked at BF fiercely in an attempt to castrate the dog on the spot with his boot. But BF was too fast for him.
"You people have no respect for a great athlete and world champion like me. You Canadians are all the same, so jealous of genuine heroes. I promise you I will never set foot in this hell hole again!"
"Ah, Jack."
My dad was on his feet helping Jack shuck off his urine-soaked coat. "I'm so sorry about that. Don't know what got into BF. Git, boy!" My dad gave the dog an affectionate nudge with his knee.
In the end, Jack was forced to board the plane sans cashmere coat, which was wrapped in plastic and tucked in his suitcase. My dad gave him money to dry-clean the coat, but Jack never spoke to him again.
My sister Alison was a picky eater. She would cry or whine or wretch if she didn't want to eat any more sauerkraut which always seemed to be in abundance. Alison would clamp her teeth together, and my dad would force her mouth open with a fork or spoon, digging it right up into her gums under her lip.
"What's the matter? Do you have a sore tummy?" He was imitating my mom, because when my mom was there, she always came to our defense. "Oh Stu, don't do that, don't make them. If they don't want to eat, don't make them."
This would frustrate my dad. Not eating what was put in front of you was one of the few things that made him furious. He'd shout, "Gaddamn it, eat up!"
We knew through my mom that he had had to eat worm-infested rabbits and gophers when he was our age in order to survive. Like Scarlett O'Hara he was determined that neither he nor his children would ever go hungry.
My dad continued to feed Alison, even into her teens. She would cry and my dad would say, "Eat up dahling..." really sarcastically. This would make everyone crack up. She would take forever. She'd chew it, pretend to swallow then secretly spit it out and give it to the dogs. Someone would catch her and tell my dad and he'd force her to fill up her dish again. "Don't be wasting the gaddamned food!"
We never visited the dentist. There was no need. My dad's strict policies limited candy and sweets. He insisted that we brush our teeth faithfully even when we were out of Pepsodent and had to resort to soap. We all had strong, healthy teeth.
Another thing my dad would never tolerate was sickness. That came into play when my brother Dean first became ill and eventually died. We were all in extreme denial throughout. "He couldn't be sick. We're the Harts. We don't get sick. Even when we're sick, we're not supposed to be sick."
One morning, poor Alison was really nauseous. She was 10 years old, but still a tiny little thing. She was so sick that while digging her clothes out of the big industrial clothes dryer in the basement, she fell right inside and passed out. My dad came down searching for her. He told her to get her gaddamned head out of the dryer and get the upstairs and he made her go to school.
When she got there she had to deal with her miserable teacher, who was particularly hard on her. She was a witch. She used to pull Alison's hair if she asked a question that had already been asked. Sometimes she'd make Alison sit in the corner in front of the whole class. She'd drag her by the hair and put her there.
Owen's grade one teacher, Miss Rubenstein, wanted to make Owen repeat the grade. My mom was just sick about it. She would not let Miss Rubenstein keep Owen back. She was adamant.
"If you keep him back, he will think he's a failure and he'll never regain his confidence." My mom was right. Owen became a good student and went on to university.
Georgia did well in most subjects, but Ellie had real trouble in math. She got 4% in math one year with Mr. Falk, the math teacher at Ernest Manning. We all did best in social studies and English, thanks to my mom. She'd check our work and make sure that our grammar and punctuation were correct. She always came to the rescue if she found a dangling participle or a problem with conjunctions.
She found it excruciating to watch the wrestlers interviewed. Sometimes she'd pause before the television set for a brief moment while they threatened to tear each other to pieces. She'd shake her head in disgust. “Ugh! Listen to that grammar!"
My mom hated bad grammar. She could barely stand talking to Mrs. Carr, one of Ross' teachers at Vincent Massey High School, due to her atrocious grammar. Ross thought Mrs. Carr was impossible. He was a good student except in her class. It seemed no matter what he did she would get on his case. When Ross was 27 and working as a substitute teacher, he got a call from Vincent Massey to work. He was late, so he hurried into the school. As he passed by Mrs. Carr she barked, "Ross! Stop running in the halls! And get rid of that baseball cap!"
The one kid among us who legitimately had a lot of trouble in school was Bret. He was handled very badly by his teachers. Some threw books at him and called him stupid and told him he would never amount to anything. Now he writes a weekly newspaper column, which includes his own cartoon drawings.
Mr. Marks taught art to both Bret and me. He was warm and encouraging and recognized talent in both of us. A few years ago when Ernest Manning High School was being renovated, Mr. Marks refused to let them sand the wall where Bret had carved his name.
Maybe some teachers picked on us because we were so poor. I remember not having any socks. My mom and dad didn't have any socks either. One year for Christmas, all the boys got was a hockey puck, socks, a mandarin orange and homemade chocolate cookies. The girls got paper dolls in lieu of the pucks.
Lunch at our house consisted of stacks of enormous corn beef sandwiches, dripping with mustard and mayonnaise on rye bread. I can still see the cats gingerly licking the meat and blood residue off the blade housed in the huge industrial meat slicer. I remember opening the fridge and seeing a huge cow tongue sitting on the shelf. We had a large cuckoo clock hanging on the wall beside the fridge covered in a fuzzy film of cooking grease. On the counter by the window there was a large wooden chopping block made of hardwood. It was at least 100 years old years old and eight inches thick. It was scarred like an old tomcat. Behind it sat an industrial-size milk machine.
Numerous sounds would fill the kitchen at lunchtime, dishes clattering, phones ringing, dogs barking, children yacking and frolicking, horns honking outside and someone yelling "Hurry up! I gotta get back to school!" Oh, how I envied the children who brought tidy little paper bag lunches to school.
When I look at old pictures of my mom, I see a prettier version of Rita Hayworth. She had long chestnut hair and an hourglass figure. Even now there is no hint of the 12 children she bore. She used to wear pretty Doris Day-type gingham dresses and sandals on her feet. She still has an upper-class Long Island accent.
She spent most of her day working on the books for Stampede Wrestling in one of the upstairs bedrooms converted into an office. When my parents met, she was a private secretary for the superintendent of the New York City School Board.
My dad used to say she was “the best gaddamn office manager in the whole city." She handled all the finances for our house and business, while his job was to promote the wrestling and take care of the kids. That included all the cooking and cleaning. I remember my mom's desk blotter. She never wanted anyone writing on it. Once, Smith drew a swastika on it and she got so mad. My dad got mad too.
"Smith, did you draw that gaddamned swastika on your mother's desk blotter?" Smith shook his head innocently, though of course he did it.
My mom used a real fountain pen, a Schaeffer White Dot. Nobody ever touched her pen. You didn't even use it to write down a phone number. Each week she had to get the weekly wrestling advertisements ready. She'd type them out, add the photos by cutting out pictures of the wrestlers' heads, add the headlines and the stars in the right spots, underline what was most important, center everything and finally tape it to a piece of paper. It was like preparing camera-ready copy for newspapers without any of the usual editing equipment. Then she had to schedule the separate lineups for each town. My dad would drive the ads to the Greyhound bus for his different partners in each location. They had to keep an eye on everybody. The Lions Clubs and the Boy Scouts always did a good job, but my parents would often work with somebody that they thought they could rely on and that person would take off with the money. That happened a lot. We never knew who we could trust.
My brother Dean was always pulling ribs and sometimes when my dad went to take out the garbage or start the car, Dean would call upstairs in my dad's gruff voice.
"Dear?"
"Yes Stu?" she would answer in a sugary tone.
"Where are those gaddamned posters for Greyhound?" he'd demand.
This would really upset her, "How dare you talk to me that way!"
Then she'd slam the bedroom door as hard as she could, sending plaster sprinkling down on my dad as he came back into the house. He'd shake his head, "Why did she do that?" But all he'd get was the muffled retort, "Go to hell!"
He'd turn to all 12 of us, sitting innocently at the dining room table. "What got your gaddamn mother all keyed up?"
I have the utmost respect for my mom and dad. I got enough attention. I got encouragement. I mean maybe they were more concerned with keeping me fed than whether I had good self-esteem, but I do remember them telling Owen and me we had so much to offer and we were the best in the world.
"Don't sell yourself short. You are so smart. You should be modeling. You should be in the Olympics."
Beginning when I was seven years old, I practiced in the gym with Owen. We taught each other nip-ups and somersaults and flips. It was just the two of us putting each other through these little workouts that we had designed. "Okay, we've got to do 100 squats now." Owen and I did everything together.
When we started school we were two dirty-faced, unkempt-looking kids. A six-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl dressed in Salvation Army clothing, with uncombed hair. Sometimes we were climbing from rags to riches and sometimes falling from riches to rags. Riches brought Cadillacs, clothes and new toys. But more often than not we were poor and the kids at school constantly heaped scorn on us.
Owen was an awesome marble player and always accumulated a bagful. At lunchtime while we waited for my dad or Dean or Bret to pick us up, we'd shoot marbles in the powdery playground dirt.
One day, three grade 10 boys—Ken, Scott and Martin—approached us. They were privileged kids who looked down on us. Scott, the ringleader, called out, "Hey, it's the Hart farts."
Martin joined in. "Little bastards. Their brother Bret is in my homeroom. The teacher says he's retarded."
Then Ken began a singsong chant, "Tar-doe. Tar-doe. Tar-doe."
Martin laughed, "The other day, she threw a book at him and told him he'd never amount to nothing."
Ken was close enough now to kick some dirt at us. "Lowlifes. Have you seen their shitmobile?"
Only Scott hung back. "I dunno, Bret is kinda tough."
Ken spit on the ground beside me. "Bullshit! Wrestling is fake. Everybody knows that, even the rummies who spend their weekends at the Pavilion." He narrowed his eyes at us. "Hey, Hart farts!"
Martin leaned in close to Owen." Hart farts, nice clothes. Where'd you get them? Green Acres? What're you waiting for? The Shitmobile?"
Owen swallowed hard, but ignored the taunts and kept focused on the marbles. I felt my eyes stinging, but pretended to concentrate on the circle in the ground Owen had made with his index finger.
Ken leaned in and grabbed up the whole sack. "Gimme your marbles."
He kicked dirt at Owen and tossed the marbles in the air. Owen stood up, wiping the dirt from his eyes.
Ken patted him on the head. "Hey a cat's eye! Thanks, Hart fart."
Although Owen only came to his waist, he stood toe-to-toe with Ken and growled menacingly. "Give it back."
Ken laughed and shoved Owen roughly and started making his way past him.
Head down like an enraged bull; Owen leg-dived and threw Ken into a headlock. The other two jumped on Owen using him as a kicking bag. Owen managed to land a kick and Ken stumbled. He held Owen's head back with one hand, debating what to do. He snarled, and then began slapping him with his free hand.
Though none of his blows were landing, Owen continued to flail away at Ken. Martin and Scott were laughing. I was on my feet and kicking at Ken's shins.
"Let go!" I shouted.
"Gimme back my marbles!" Owen screamed.
Ken shoved Owen so hard he tumbled to the ground, taking me with him. The three boys ran off laughing, tossing our marbles into the field as they left.
When Bret arrived at the school to pick us up, he could tell something was wrong with Owen. He was usually not so subdued. We were conditioned not to whine or tell on people, but Bret got it out of him.
The next morning just before noon hour, Bret's 1965 gold Brougham Cadillac came to an abrupt halt in the school ground parking lot. He waited outside his Caddy as we tentatively readied our marbles in the dirt. Ken and his buddies were headed our way and Owen made eye contact with Bret indicating they were the bullies.
As soon as Ken came within 10 feet of us, Bret started toward them. His tee-shirt sleeves were tight over his impressive biceps as they pumped through the air. He was on them as quick as a cat. He held all three tight in his grip. With one arm he caught Ken's neck in the crook of his elbow while he twisted Ken's arm up behind him at a painful angle. All three fussed and swore at him. "Ow! Let me go!" Ken demanded.
Bret smiled." I hear you like to play marbles."
"Let me go." Ken sounded a little less sure of himself. Frightened, his buddies backed off.
Bret twisted Ken's arm up a little higher. "I think you have something to say to my little brother and sister here."
Now Ken was almost crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Owen piped up, "You should say sorry to Bret too, for calling our car a shitmobile." Bret's face grew dark. "What?"
Owen nodded. "He called your car a shitmobile."
Bret goosed-stepped Ken over to the Cadillac and pushed Ken down in front of the bug-covered headlights.
"Kiss it," was all he said.
Ken was almost passing out from the pain. "No way."
Bret twisted Ken's arm so high it looked like it would break. His voice was quiet. "I'm not asking again."
"C'mon. No!" Ken pleaded.
Bret made a quick, sharp move and I heard a terrible cracking noise accompanied by Ken's scream. Then I watched a slow smile spread across Bret's face and I heard Ken kiss the grill.
It was particularly hard for us at school. The teachers were usually unsupportive and the kids teased us constantly. Every day we heard, "My dad says your dad is a fake." Owen would answer, "Yeah well that's because your dad is too much of a chicken to ever wrestle my dad."
Then they'd say, "Your dad doesn't even buy you decent clothes," because we always had holes in our knees and elbows. But when you only had one pair of pants, what could you do?
Some kids would mock us about our dad's cars. "What kind of dad buys a limousine but doesn't buy his kids clothes?"
Owen would reply, "That's because my dad can afford a limousine. What does your dad drive, a Datsun?"
This kind of exchange always turned into a fight. Owen was brilliant at saying something that really got to them and the kid would try to grab him. He and I always backed each other up. I remember one time I was trying to help Owen and I got kicked right in the groin. Later, my brother Dean got a lot of these assholes back. If he knew they had been a jerk to one of us he'd bide his time. Then when they were looking for a vehicle he'd screw them so bad. He would sell them one of his cars he knew was on its last legs, or he'd take out new parts and replace them with worn parts.
Dean had a long memory.