Post by Stu-E Price on Jul 23, 2007 15:57:59 GMT -5
To this day, my dad says Owen and I showed the most promise of all his kids. If he were to have favorites, it would be the two of us. We were his little blond palominos.
We would run around the big mansion on the hill where we lived, naked. Both of us had pretty, long blonde hair. Owen's was especially white. In the summer we had dark suntans and we were free and happy.
Ellie and Georgia doted on Owen and me. We were like their little baby dolls. They changed us, gave us affection, fed us and pushed us around in our baby carriages.
Saturday nights were the only opportunity my parents had to spend time outside the family. They didn't have much money, but they were often invited to charitable events such as The United Way Gala. My dad would dress up in his dark gray cashmere suit and my mom had a wonderful sense of style. She would arrive on his arm looking like Jackie Onassis.
Ellie and Georgia at 16 and 15, would be left to baby-sit. Bret always objected to their being in charge. Georgia was only a year older than Bret and he didn't want her telling him what to do. Besides he was bigger. At 14, he had just gone through his first growth spurt. He was around five foot ten and strong as an ox. On top of that, he wrestled with his seven brothers all the time.
As soon as my parents were out the door, Ellie and Georgia would begin ordering everyone around.
"Okay, Georgia is going to make toasted egg sandwiches, then we are all going to watch Peyton Place and then everyone has to be in bed by nine o'clock!"
"No, I hate Peyton Place!" Bret would argue. Georgia would remind Bret that Mom and Dad had put them in charge and the fight would begin. It would often escalate to physical blows. I remember watching Bret holding Georgia in a tight headlock and knuckling her on the head repeatedly as hard as he could. Ellie would have Bret's hair in her fist, trying to pull him off Georgia. On several instances he grabbed Georgia by the hair and yanked her down all 18 stairs that led to the kitchen. You could hear her body banging against each step as she screamed bloody murder.
As soon as my parents returned home, Bret would disappear and Ellie and Georgia would carefully chronicle the events of the night and show my parents all their injuries. My dad would become incensed. His sons were taught never to hit girls. Bret was the only brother who repeatedly had to be told, "Keep your gaddamn hands off your sisters."
Dad would order a search of the house and Ellie and Georgia would inevitably find where Bret was hiding.
"Here he is!"
He had some pretty clever hiding spaces, like the top shelf of the closet in the boys' bathroom, or behind the five vacuums in the huge broom closet.
My dad would snatch him by his chin, lift him off his feet and cuff him in the head. My dad was good with his cuffs to the head. They made one hell of a whacking sound and scared onlookers and the person being punished. They stung too, but didn't do any real damage.
"If I hear about you laying a hand on your sisters again, I'll knock your gaddamned head off."
Owen and I were the last two kids that my mom and dad could have. They were heartbroken that they couldn't have any more. The doctors told them they had to be responsible parents because my mom was in her 40s and had already had 12. The doctors couldn't be sure she would survive another pregnancy. If she didn't, my dad would be left with 12 kids to raise without a mom. So they did their best to keep us young as long as they could.
My mom and dad gave Owen and me a bottle every night until we were five. She mixed our milk with a little bit of vanilla and sugar and heated it. Owen had his little blue furry blanket. I remember my mom saying asking in her Long Island accent, "You want your furry blanket, Owen?" She was smitten with him.
My dad didn't get into the silly stuff like that. He did tuck Owen and me in every night. He'd kiss us on our heads and say, "Seepy bye." He would brush my hair out with his comb, which hurt like hell, but he tried to be gentle.
He was affectionate, but he would rarely give you a kiss or anything. Dad was more comfortable with hugs. He can see the beauty in things and animals and furniture and houses and trees and a nice dinner. When you were crying you could bury your head in his shoulder and cry, and he would pat you on the head and somehow it would be all right.
My dad displayed his artistic side redesigning his house. His favorite thing to work on was the kitchen. He converted it into a commercial kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and a brick tiled floor. The walls were covered in beautiful yellow tiles from Italy with a fleur-de-lis design. It's such a pretty kitchen, so useful and so masculine.
We lived in a beautiful house. The Hart House, originally known as Crandall House, was built in 1905 by William Hextall for Edward Crandall. There were three buildings: the servants' quarters, the carriage house and the mansion. Crandall moved to Calgary from Ontario and set up the Crandall Press Brick and Sandstone Company. His bricks were used to construct most of the big houses in Calgary in the early part of the century. The Crandall House was built on a hill overlooking the city and the Bow River. He chose the location because he speculated that the downtown Calgary core would spread west toward the mountains.
In the 1920s and during World War I, the Red Cross used the building as a hospital. After the war, Judge Patterson bought the house and then sold it to my dad in 1951. When the judge and his wife moved, they left my dad their cat as my dad was desperate to get rid of all the mice before my mom moved up from New York. He had bought the house before she had a chance to see it. He paid $25,000 for it.
I'm sure the house is haunted due to all the soldiers who died there when it was a hospital. At night, the chandeliers will sometimes rock and doors will slam. Each one of us has seen some strange happenings. Ellie has watched curtains blowing although the windows were closed and a lot of us have had the same dreams at night. Now, since Owen and Dean have died, I can feel their presence.
When my dad saw this house he fell in love with it. He added 24-karat gold borders around the ceilings. He chose the 100-year-old Persian carpets and the chandeliers and the china in the dining room. He wanted a Florentine turquoise china pattern with a place setting for each of us, but my mom would not let him get it. She said it was a horrible investment.
"I don't want you buying 144 dishes, Stu!"
He went ahead and placed an order with Birks anyway. The sales lady knew my mom and informed her of the order, which my mom had cancelled instantly. This was the late '70s. Wrestling was doing a lot better and my dad wanted to capitalize on the small fortune that he was making, buying the best of everything. From 1957 to 1981, he bought over 30 mint-condition Cadillacs.
In the '70s, he acquired a limousine and he'd transport us to and from school with the glass partition down so he could eavesdrop. But often one of the boys, usually Bret, would roll it up to talk about something he didn't want Dad to hear, driving my dad nuts. My brothers would torment the hell out of him sometimes.
My dad hated gum. If he smelled it in the car, he'd demand to know who was chewing the gaddamned gum or the Thrills or Tooty-Fruity! Then, if that partition came up, he'd pull the car over and throw open the door. Everyone would dive-bomb over each other trying to get away from his grip. He'd catch someone by the scruff of the neck and shake him or her.
"Do you understand, gaddamnit? I don't want you to do that ever again. Do you understand?" Though it was just a stern warning, it would put the fear of God into us. My mom never, ever spanked us. She never even laid a finger on us. My dad admits that he did, but my mom never did.
Mom and Dad always took in strangers and animals. Right now they have four dogs and 10 cats. The house itself is worth a million dollars. The land it sits on is probably worth more. And some of the furniture and antiques are priceless. Unfortunately, there is a lot of cat pee around.
If you know what cat pee smells like, it’s easily noticeable when entering my dad's house. If one of the animals has been sick or unable to get out, you might have to step over the dog mess on the hand-knotted antique Persian carpets in the foyer. Although my parents are no longer able to keep house they do not want strangers there cleaning, so everything is falling into disrepair.
People have moved in and my parents are too polite to ask them to leave. Bob Johnson was a prime example. He was an itinerant wrestling fan and moved in 1989 ostensibly to help my mom out with the office work. He was still there eight years later.
Bob claimed he was Icelandic. He had thinning silver hair and false teeth and blue eyes. He was built like a pear so he had a big back yard with a little head. His hands and feet were tiny too and he was allergic to cats. He slept on a Salvation Army cot in the basement next to the furnace.
He was a sick, perverted person. He kept child pornography magazines and horrible, disgusting triple-X-rated video cases lying around. He was obsessed with pornography. They were all out in plain view and if anyone complained he was defiant.
"This is my room where Stu and Helen Hart said I could stay. If I want to have my literature out, I will."
When my own two children, Harry and Baby Georgia, and my sister Alison's daughter, Brooke, were four and six years old, they went down to his room and threw all of his stuff out. They were disgusted with it. They put socks over their hands because they didn't want to touch the filthy books and magazines. Then they poured sticky green mint jelly, which had been a Christmas present to my mom and dad, all over his bed. Finally, they sprinkled saltine cracker crumbs on top of the jelly.
Everyone was so proud of them. But Bob raised hell about it. He sobbed to my dad that someone—he didn't know who—had poured mint jelly all over his bed and he wanted justice.
But my dad didn't react. "Well better clean it up, Bob," was all he said.
I remember Harry and Brooke and Georgia were wide eyed, like the three bad little kittens, but everyone supported them. We had warned my parents a million times that Bob Johnson was leaving his pornography around the basement and they did nothing to stop it. They never stood up to a guest in their home. They were determined to be gracious hosts at any cost.
The basement also houses a running machine. This big treadmill looks like something you'd put a racehorse on to get it in shape. My sister Ellie's husband, Jim Neidhart, ran on it when he was with the Oakland Raiders. It's a big, noisy, cumbersome machine, but God, can it get you in shape. It's on a two-foot-wide conveyor belt. The tread is made of twine and jute and sandpaper so your feet can get traction. There are ball bearings in every single roller. It was shipped up to my dad's basement in the '80s and everyone trained on it.
I loved it. My greatest physical achievement was running on that thing for 90 minutes straight. I still have the record. I would get on there and think about things and run and run. There wasn't a hill I couldn't tackle after that. I built such strong hamstrings from it too. I try every so often to run on it now. Your throat burns so bad you feel like you swallowed a Christmas tree.
Next to the treadmill is the incinerator room and beside it, the shower that has so much force it feels like it's ripping your skin off. The spray is so forceful and fine it's like sharp quills piercing you. It is the same shower that we all used when we were little. We had an assembly-line approach. There was just time to get in, get rinsed off and get out. We kids would line up in our birthday suits. Nobody was really thrilled to be standing there naked waiting their turn, but there was no embarrassment.
A bubble bath was practically unheard of. The only way we would get bubbles would be to use dishwashing liquid in the tub, but it was expensive so we seldom had it. We always had dishwashing powder because it was cheaper. The odd time we would have lemon Sunlight liquid, but God it was hard on your skin. After using it we'd come out of there with skin like parchment paper. To pull out the tangles from our hair, we'd use Fleecy or Downy whenever we had it. It was really nice but it hurt like hell if you got it in your eyes. We used Cascade or Sunlight bar soap or Castile. That was our shampoo too.
The basement stairs leading to the shower are made of iron. They look like those grates you see on the sidewalks with the solid iron footprints. These stairs are heavy duty and quite steep. My dad made them steep because he refused to let them curve. He wanted them to run straight up and down. As a result, they are brutal. I've got so many dents in my shins to prove it. They're deep too. Most stair steps are a standard height. These are double that. Many times hurrying to get my clothes out of the dryer, I'd skin my shins running up and down those goddamn stairs.
Sunday dinners have been a regular part of our lives ever since I can remember. Even as grown-ups living elsewhere, we always make sure to arrive at our parents' house for our dad's Sunday dinner no matter what, no matter who you're fighting with. It's an unwritten law. You must attend Sunday dinners.
By the time everyone got married the dinners had degenerated into hostile get-togethers. Everyone was always at each other's throats. If you have ever witnessed what happens with chickens when one gets injured, you'll have a good idea of what happens at our Sunday dinners. If a chicken has a cut or injury, the other chickens peck at that injury, one by one, until it becomes a huge wound and the injured chicken bleeds to death.#
If I was the one getting picked on at Sunday dinner, it might begin with Davey sniping. "Di 'ad a hard day, she broke a nail unwrapping 'er clothes from 'er shoppin' spree." This would bring gales of laugher at my expense.
"Whatever Baby wants, Baby gets," my sister Georgia would chime in. Alison would be busy showing off by listing all the latest books she'd read. "And just what have you read lately Diana, besides People Magazine that is?"
On the rare occasion Owen's wife Martha happened by, she would contradict everything anyone said. I remember remarking how pretty I thought Christie Brinkley was. Martha shook her head and rolled her eyes, "Ugh, that woman is as homely as a mud fence."
Week after week we would get into the same altercations. Smith would load up dishes for his kids, giving them more than they could possibly eat so there would not be enough left for the rest of us. Then he would force-feed his kids at the table while everyone tried to look the other way.
Bruce would talk non-stop about trying to get Stampede Wrestling off the ground again. After Dean and my nephew Matt died, my mom started drinking more and more at these family get-togethers. She would sometimes rise to her feet, fist raised and rail at the ceiling, "Dean and Matt we miss you!"
Martha and the kids didn't join us too often, but when they did, if things got the least bit chaotic they were gone. As soon as it started to get crazy, Owen would just get up and leave, "Yeah well, I've got to get going." Maybe he figured he went through enough fighting when he was growing up so he wasn't going to go through it anymore.
The rest of us would jump all over him. "What's the matter, Owen? Are you losing your connection with the family? Why? Because of Martha?"
My mom would always act surprised. "Dahling where are you going?" She would be sad to see him leaving, but she wouldn't have spent any time with him. Meanwhile, my dad would engage him in a conversation the minute he stood up to leave.
"Have you had any luck talking to Vince about taking Jim back? I would like to talk to him about getting Jim working for him again." And Owen would nod, "Yeah, okay."
Despite all this, my dad is still proud of his Sunday dinners. Saturdays are his Sunday dinner shopping days. He goes to Safeway and shops the aisles and leans over the shopping cart carefully inspecting each item. He buys enough food for 40 people, cooks it, serves it and cleans it up every week.
As a kid, I'd love going to Safeway with my dad. He'd usually buy me Sesame Snaps or if I were especially lucky I'd get to go to the Old Smoothie and buy a big ice cream. Dairy Queen was also a rare treat. We'd get big vanilla chocolate-dipped cones. This was reserved for only a few times a year, after church. There was no rhyme or reason to our church-going. We'd go to St. Mary's Cathedral, the big Catholic Church downtown, but only if someone happened to suggest it.
Of course, fitness and muscle-building figured heavily in our upbringing. My dad had nickel weights, beautiful weights. He had “Hart” engraved in big letters on every single one of them. A lot of wrestlers who used the dungeon thought it was a novelty to steal my dad's weights as souvenirs. Thus his collection has diminished quite a bit.
My dad even built his own equipment. His pulley cables were hooked up on two walls across from each other with thick ropes. His neck-building machine had wrestling rope threaded through two holes in the wall, the top rope was attached to a 20-pound weight and the bottom rope was attached to a helmet made of cross straps. It looked like the shell of a football helmet. The idea is to put on the helmet and rock your head back and forth.
Dad built his own leg press. You would lie on your back, place your feet on the bottom of a board covered in weights and push your legs upward. My dad had these big wooden blocks put between the floor and the board to hold the board above ground so you could squeeze yourself into position.
One time Owen wanted to move the blocks so he would have more room to position himself. He was 12. My sister Georgia and her boyfriend Howard Zerr were downstairs watching Owen do a few reps. He loved to perform. He got the middle finger of his right hand caught under the blocks in it and just about chopped it off. It was terrible. He came upstairs crying but not sobbing and my dad took him to the hospital. Nobody made a big fuss. That wouldn't have gone over very well.
My dad's squat racks were made from PVC piping and the sides of the shelves were made of rusty cast iron soldered to the pipes. It was all very raw looking. There is a 17-by-17-foot wrestling mat in the basement, covering the floor of an entire room called the dungeon. Falling on that wrestling mat is like falling on sand. We used to wind ourselves when we didn't land just so. The bottom half of the walls in the dungeon are covered in pine wainscoting.
We played so many games in the dungeon. I remember the resounding thud the pine paneling would make when someone ran into it playing British bulldog down there. The game involved running from one end of the gym to the other trying to duck the big, heavy leather medicine ball coming your way. Someone would always get hit. It was a good lesson in learning how to fall. Ross would throw it at us to try to knock us right off of our feet as if he were bowling. So we learned to jump pretty high.
We had three of these big, heavy leather medicine balls. My favorite game with them was when we'd stand in a circle, eyes closed, and throw the medicine ball at each other. With your eyes shut you didn't know who was throwing it, but you had to be prepared to catch it because dropping it meant being expelled from the game.
Other times we'd use it like a football, throwing it back and forth. We called this game Stampede Wrestling, because those are the letters we'd call out to keep count of who made the most catches. We'd get into a big triangle and throw the ball to the person across from us. It had to be a fair throw, but if you missed it you would get S, then T and so on. Whoever got the words Stampede Wrestling spelled out first was out of the game.
We used to have contests to see who could do the most squats in a row and who could skip rope for the longest period of time without stopping. We would try to get the contestant to laugh so they'd lose control.
The board game Risk was Bret's favorite. He would goad us into killing Ross's men just to watch how mad he got. We would all kill poor Ross's men and he would blow up, kick the whole game over and run out of the room crying. I feel bad about it now. But it was typical of Bret. It was about ruling the world.
We would run around the big mansion on the hill where we lived, naked. Both of us had pretty, long blonde hair. Owen's was especially white. In the summer we had dark suntans and we were free and happy.
Ellie and Georgia doted on Owen and me. We were like their little baby dolls. They changed us, gave us affection, fed us and pushed us around in our baby carriages.
Saturday nights were the only opportunity my parents had to spend time outside the family. They didn't have much money, but they were often invited to charitable events such as The United Way Gala. My dad would dress up in his dark gray cashmere suit and my mom had a wonderful sense of style. She would arrive on his arm looking like Jackie Onassis.
Ellie and Georgia at 16 and 15, would be left to baby-sit. Bret always objected to their being in charge. Georgia was only a year older than Bret and he didn't want her telling him what to do. Besides he was bigger. At 14, he had just gone through his first growth spurt. He was around five foot ten and strong as an ox. On top of that, he wrestled with his seven brothers all the time.
As soon as my parents were out the door, Ellie and Georgia would begin ordering everyone around.
"Okay, Georgia is going to make toasted egg sandwiches, then we are all going to watch Peyton Place and then everyone has to be in bed by nine o'clock!"
"No, I hate Peyton Place!" Bret would argue. Georgia would remind Bret that Mom and Dad had put them in charge and the fight would begin. It would often escalate to physical blows. I remember watching Bret holding Georgia in a tight headlock and knuckling her on the head repeatedly as hard as he could. Ellie would have Bret's hair in her fist, trying to pull him off Georgia. On several instances he grabbed Georgia by the hair and yanked her down all 18 stairs that led to the kitchen. You could hear her body banging against each step as she screamed bloody murder.
As soon as my parents returned home, Bret would disappear and Ellie and Georgia would carefully chronicle the events of the night and show my parents all their injuries. My dad would become incensed. His sons were taught never to hit girls. Bret was the only brother who repeatedly had to be told, "Keep your gaddamn hands off your sisters."
Dad would order a search of the house and Ellie and Georgia would inevitably find where Bret was hiding.
"Here he is!"
He had some pretty clever hiding spaces, like the top shelf of the closet in the boys' bathroom, or behind the five vacuums in the huge broom closet.
My dad would snatch him by his chin, lift him off his feet and cuff him in the head. My dad was good with his cuffs to the head. They made one hell of a whacking sound and scared onlookers and the person being punished. They stung too, but didn't do any real damage.
"If I hear about you laying a hand on your sisters again, I'll knock your gaddamned head off."
Owen and I were the last two kids that my mom and dad could have. They were heartbroken that they couldn't have any more. The doctors told them they had to be responsible parents because my mom was in her 40s and had already had 12. The doctors couldn't be sure she would survive another pregnancy. If she didn't, my dad would be left with 12 kids to raise without a mom. So they did their best to keep us young as long as they could.
My mom and dad gave Owen and me a bottle every night until we were five. She mixed our milk with a little bit of vanilla and sugar and heated it. Owen had his little blue furry blanket. I remember my mom saying asking in her Long Island accent, "You want your furry blanket, Owen?" She was smitten with him.
My dad didn't get into the silly stuff like that. He did tuck Owen and me in every night. He'd kiss us on our heads and say, "Seepy bye." He would brush my hair out with his comb, which hurt like hell, but he tried to be gentle.
He was affectionate, but he would rarely give you a kiss or anything. Dad was more comfortable with hugs. He can see the beauty in things and animals and furniture and houses and trees and a nice dinner. When you were crying you could bury your head in his shoulder and cry, and he would pat you on the head and somehow it would be all right.
My dad displayed his artistic side redesigning his house. His favorite thing to work on was the kitchen. He converted it into a commercial kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and a brick tiled floor. The walls were covered in beautiful yellow tiles from Italy with a fleur-de-lis design. It's such a pretty kitchen, so useful and so masculine.
We lived in a beautiful house. The Hart House, originally known as Crandall House, was built in 1905 by William Hextall for Edward Crandall. There were three buildings: the servants' quarters, the carriage house and the mansion. Crandall moved to Calgary from Ontario and set up the Crandall Press Brick and Sandstone Company. His bricks were used to construct most of the big houses in Calgary in the early part of the century. The Crandall House was built on a hill overlooking the city and the Bow River. He chose the location because he speculated that the downtown Calgary core would spread west toward the mountains.
In the 1920s and during World War I, the Red Cross used the building as a hospital. After the war, Judge Patterson bought the house and then sold it to my dad in 1951. When the judge and his wife moved, they left my dad their cat as my dad was desperate to get rid of all the mice before my mom moved up from New York. He had bought the house before she had a chance to see it. He paid $25,000 for it.
I'm sure the house is haunted due to all the soldiers who died there when it was a hospital. At night, the chandeliers will sometimes rock and doors will slam. Each one of us has seen some strange happenings. Ellie has watched curtains blowing although the windows were closed and a lot of us have had the same dreams at night. Now, since Owen and Dean have died, I can feel their presence.
When my dad saw this house he fell in love with it. He added 24-karat gold borders around the ceilings. He chose the 100-year-old Persian carpets and the chandeliers and the china in the dining room. He wanted a Florentine turquoise china pattern with a place setting for each of us, but my mom would not let him get it. She said it was a horrible investment.
"I don't want you buying 144 dishes, Stu!"
He went ahead and placed an order with Birks anyway. The sales lady knew my mom and informed her of the order, which my mom had cancelled instantly. This was the late '70s. Wrestling was doing a lot better and my dad wanted to capitalize on the small fortune that he was making, buying the best of everything. From 1957 to 1981, he bought over 30 mint-condition Cadillacs.
In the '70s, he acquired a limousine and he'd transport us to and from school with the glass partition down so he could eavesdrop. But often one of the boys, usually Bret, would roll it up to talk about something he didn't want Dad to hear, driving my dad nuts. My brothers would torment the hell out of him sometimes.
My dad hated gum. If he smelled it in the car, he'd demand to know who was chewing the gaddamned gum or the Thrills or Tooty-Fruity! Then, if that partition came up, he'd pull the car over and throw open the door. Everyone would dive-bomb over each other trying to get away from his grip. He'd catch someone by the scruff of the neck and shake him or her.
"Do you understand, gaddamnit? I don't want you to do that ever again. Do you understand?" Though it was just a stern warning, it would put the fear of God into us. My mom never, ever spanked us. She never even laid a finger on us. My dad admits that he did, but my mom never did.
Mom and Dad always took in strangers and animals. Right now they have four dogs and 10 cats. The house itself is worth a million dollars. The land it sits on is probably worth more. And some of the furniture and antiques are priceless. Unfortunately, there is a lot of cat pee around.
If you know what cat pee smells like, it’s easily noticeable when entering my dad's house. If one of the animals has been sick or unable to get out, you might have to step over the dog mess on the hand-knotted antique Persian carpets in the foyer. Although my parents are no longer able to keep house they do not want strangers there cleaning, so everything is falling into disrepair.
People have moved in and my parents are too polite to ask them to leave. Bob Johnson was a prime example. He was an itinerant wrestling fan and moved in 1989 ostensibly to help my mom out with the office work. He was still there eight years later.
Bob claimed he was Icelandic. He had thinning silver hair and false teeth and blue eyes. He was built like a pear so he had a big back yard with a little head. His hands and feet were tiny too and he was allergic to cats. He slept on a Salvation Army cot in the basement next to the furnace.
He was a sick, perverted person. He kept child pornography magazines and horrible, disgusting triple-X-rated video cases lying around. He was obsessed with pornography. They were all out in plain view and if anyone complained he was defiant.
"This is my room where Stu and Helen Hart said I could stay. If I want to have my literature out, I will."
When my own two children, Harry and Baby Georgia, and my sister Alison's daughter, Brooke, were four and six years old, they went down to his room and threw all of his stuff out. They were disgusted with it. They put socks over their hands because they didn't want to touch the filthy books and magazines. Then they poured sticky green mint jelly, which had been a Christmas present to my mom and dad, all over his bed. Finally, they sprinkled saltine cracker crumbs on top of the jelly.
Everyone was so proud of them. But Bob raised hell about it. He sobbed to my dad that someone—he didn't know who—had poured mint jelly all over his bed and he wanted justice.
But my dad didn't react. "Well better clean it up, Bob," was all he said.
I remember Harry and Brooke and Georgia were wide eyed, like the three bad little kittens, but everyone supported them. We had warned my parents a million times that Bob Johnson was leaving his pornography around the basement and they did nothing to stop it. They never stood up to a guest in their home. They were determined to be gracious hosts at any cost.
The basement also houses a running machine. This big treadmill looks like something you'd put a racehorse on to get it in shape. My sister Ellie's husband, Jim Neidhart, ran on it when he was with the Oakland Raiders. It's a big, noisy, cumbersome machine, but God, can it get you in shape. It's on a two-foot-wide conveyor belt. The tread is made of twine and jute and sandpaper so your feet can get traction. There are ball bearings in every single roller. It was shipped up to my dad's basement in the '80s and everyone trained on it.
I loved it. My greatest physical achievement was running on that thing for 90 minutes straight. I still have the record. I would get on there and think about things and run and run. There wasn't a hill I couldn't tackle after that. I built such strong hamstrings from it too. I try every so often to run on it now. Your throat burns so bad you feel like you swallowed a Christmas tree.
Next to the treadmill is the incinerator room and beside it, the shower that has so much force it feels like it's ripping your skin off. The spray is so forceful and fine it's like sharp quills piercing you. It is the same shower that we all used when we were little. We had an assembly-line approach. There was just time to get in, get rinsed off and get out. We kids would line up in our birthday suits. Nobody was really thrilled to be standing there naked waiting their turn, but there was no embarrassment.
A bubble bath was practically unheard of. The only way we would get bubbles would be to use dishwashing liquid in the tub, but it was expensive so we seldom had it. We always had dishwashing powder because it was cheaper. The odd time we would have lemon Sunlight liquid, but God it was hard on your skin. After using it we'd come out of there with skin like parchment paper. To pull out the tangles from our hair, we'd use Fleecy or Downy whenever we had it. It was really nice but it hurt like hell if you got it in your eyes. We used Cascade or Sunlight bar soap or Castile. That was our shampoo too.
The basement stairs leading to the shower are made of iron. They look like those grates you see on the sidewalks with the solid iron footprints. These stairs are heavy duty and quite steep. My dad made them steep because he refused to let them curve. He wanted them to run straight up and down. As a result, they are brutal. I've got so many dents in my shins to prove it. They're deep too. Most stair steps are a standard height. These are double that. Many times hurrying to get my clothes out of the dryer, I'd skin my shins running up and down those goddamn stairs.
Sunday dinners have been a regular part of our lives ever since I can remember. Even as grown-ups living elsewhere, we always make sure to arrive at our parents' house for our dad's Sunday dinner no matter what, no matter who you're fighting with. It's an unwritten law. You must attend Sunday dinners.
By the time everyone got married the dinners had degenerated into hostile get-togethers. Everyone was always at each other's throats. If you have ever witnessed what happens with chickens when one gets injured, you'll have a good idea of what happens at our Sunday dinners. If a chicken has a cut or injury, the other chickens peck at that injury, one by one, until it becomes a huge wound and the injured chicken bleeds to death.#
If I was the one getting picked on at Sunday dinner, it might begin with Davey sniping. "Di 'ad a hard day, she broke a nail unwrapping 'er clothes from 'er shoppin' spree." This would bring gales of laugher at my expense.
"Whatever Baby wants, Baby gets," my sister Georgia would chime in. Alison would be busy showing off by listing all the latest books she'd read. "And just what have you read lately Diana, besides People Magazine that is?"
On the rare occasion Owen's wife Martha happened by, she would contradict everything anyone said. I remember remarking how pretty I thought Christie Brinkley was. Martha shook her head and rolled her eyes, "Ugh, that woman is as homely as a mud fence."
Week after week we would get into the same altercations. Smith would load up dishes for his kids, giving them more than they could possibly eat so there would not be enough left for the rest of us. Then he would force-feed his kids at the table while everyone tried to look the other way.
Bruce would talk non-stop about trying to get Stampede Wrestling off the ground again. After Dean and my nephew Matt died, my mom started drinking more and more at these family get-togethers. She would sometimes rise to her feet, fist raised and rail at the ceiling, "Dean and Matt we miss you!"
Martha and the kids didn't join us too often, but when they did, if things got the least bit chaotic they were gone. As soon as it started to get crazy, Owen would just get up and leave, "Yeah well, I've got to get going." Maybe he figured he went through enough fighting when he was growing up so he wasn't going to go through it anymore.
The rest of us would jump all over him. "What's the matter, Owen? Are you losing your connection with the family? Why? Because of Martha?"
My mom would always act surprised. "Dahling where are you going?" She would be sad to see him leaving, but she wouldn't have spent any time with him. Meanwhile, my dad would engage him in a conversation the minute he stood up to leave.
"Have you had any luck talking to Vince about taking Jim back? I would like to talk to him about getting Jim working for him again." And Owen would nod, "Yeah, okay."
Despite all this, my dad is still proud of his Sunday dinners. Saturdays are his Sunday dinner shopping days. He goes to Safeway and shops the aisles and leans over the shopping cart carefully inspecting each item. He buys enough food for 40 people, cooks it, serves it and cleans it up every week.
As a kid, I'd love going to Safeway with my dad. He'd usually buy me Sesame Snaps or if I were especially lucky I'd get to go to the Old Smoothie and buy a big ice cream. Dairy Queen was also a rare treat. We'd get big vanilla chocolate-dipped cones. This was reserved for only a few times a year, after church. There was no rhyme or reason to our church-going. We'd go to St. Mary's Cathedral, the big Catholic Church downtown, but only if someone happened to suggest it.
Of course, fitness and muscle-building figured heavily in our upbringing. My dad had nickel weights, beautiful weights. He had “Hart” engraved in big letters on every single one of them. A lot of wrestlers who used the dungeon thought it was a novelty to steal my dad's weights as souvenirs. Thus his collection has diminished quite a bit.
My dad even built his own equipment. His pulley cables were hooked up on two walls across from each other with thick ropes. His neck-building machine had wrestling rope threaded through two holes in the wall, the top rope was attached to a 20-pound weight and the bottom rope was attached to a helmet made of cross straps. It looked like the shell of a football helmet. The idea is to put on the helmet and rock your head back and forth.
Dad built his own leg press. You would lie on your back, place your feet on the bottom of a board covered in weights and push your legs upward. My dad had these big wooden blocks put between the floor and the board to hold the board above ground so you could squeeze yourself into position.
One time Owen wanted to move the blocks so he would have more room to position himself. He was 12. My sister Georgia and her boyfriend Howard Zerr were downstairs watching Owen do a few reps. He loved to perform. He got the middle finger of his right hand caught under the blocks in it and just about chopped it off. It was terrible. He came upstairs crying but not sobbing and my dad took him to the hospital. Nobody made a big fuss. That wouldn't have gone over very well.
My dad's squat racks were made from PVC piping and the sides of the shelves were made of rusty cast iron soldered to the pipes. It was all very raw looking. There is a 17-by-17-foot wrestling mat in the basement, covering the floor of an entire room called the dungeon. Falling on that wrestling mat is like falling on sand. We used to wind ourselves when we didn't land just so. The bottom half of the walls in the dungeon are covered in pine wainscoting.
We played so many games in the dungeon. I remember the resounding thud the pine paneling would make when someone ran into it playing British bulldog down there. The game involved running from one end of the gym to the other trying to duck the big, heavy leather medicine ball coming your way. Someone would always get hit. It was a good lesson in learning how to fall. Ross would throw it at us to try to knock us right off of our feet as if he were bowling. So we learned to jump pretty high.
We had three of these big, heavy leather medicine balls. My favorite game with them was when we'd stand in a circle, eyes closed, and throw the medicine ball at each other. With your eyes shut you didn't know who was throwing it, but you had to be prepared to catch it because dropping it meant being expelled from the game.
Other times we'd use it like a football, throwing it back and forth. We called this game Stampede Wrestling, because those are the letters we'd call out to keep count of who made the most catches. We'd get into a big triangle and throw the ball to the person across from us. It had to be a fair throw, but if you missed it you would get S, then T and so on. Whoever got the words Stampede Wrestling spelled out first was out of the game.
We used to have contests to see who could do the most squats in a row and who could skip rope for the longest period of time without stopping. We would try to get the contestant to laugh so they'd lose control.
The board game Risk was Bret's favorite. He would goad us into killing Ross's men just to watch how mad he got. We would all kill poor Ross's men and he would blow up, kick the whole game over and run out of the room crying. I feel bad about it now. But it was typical of Bret. It was about ruling the world.