I was still
fascinated by pro wrestling, and my dream was to be a wrestler one day. At
first my Mom tried to talk me out of it, telling me that her family in Texas
saw wrestling as some kind of carnival freak show. My rebuttal was that Manny
had been a boxer, and she left it at that because, indeed, she and Manny and
her family had fought along that road before. I sold the idea to Kenny and
Georgie, who were always fighting anyway, and we declared the Butler Street
Wrestling Club. Georgie, who always got the best of Kenny, was the champ, Kenny
was the top contender, and I was Number
Three. Poor Mark Roman ended up the bottom man. Jesus, Mickey Reyes and the
Orlando Brothers didn’t even rank, they were declared midgets! Of course, when the Yodels came along, things
changed dramatically. Until then, I enjoyed my spot behind the fearsome Reyes
brothers.
Historically, the
first BSWC champion was…my Mom! She had been tussling with me since I was a
weeun and somehow or other Kenny and Georgie got in on the act, and at that
point of time she was literally scrubbing the floor with us. Only her drinking
and our maturing eventually brought those days to an end. One night she had
been on the sauce and we were scuffling, and to her chagrin, I got the best of
her! I was elated that I had reached such a pinnacle but made nothing of it.
She, however, harbored resentment that smoldered until that Christmas holiday.
Manny used to
paint the windows with Christmas displays every year (a tradition Lea continued
to the next generation), and one night she was sipping and brooding in the
front window, well-hidden from view. I was in front of the house amidst a
ruckus with Georgie and called him a bastard at the top of my lungs as he trotted
off. My Mom saw the opportunity to call me inside and throw me a solid beating
with her fisticuffs. I squirted a few tears to placate her but contemplated the
unreasonable severity of the attack for years later. It took me a few decades
to realize it was all about having bested her at wrestling, and she just needed
to reestablish her physical dominance over her upstart son.
The first
piledriver I ever gave out was to my sister. Mom had bought me a couple of
flimsy exercise mats when I told her I wanted to put a wrestling set-up
together. Actually I don’t think it was her choice, it was just we were both
clueless. Anyway, I was anxious to put them to use and invited Lea to the
vacant apartment downstairs (that I would rent years later) where I would teach
her to wrestle. Determined to find out how well the padding worked, I announced
that the first maneuver we would practice was the piledriver. Well, I executed
it perfectly (as described in a Wrestling
World article on Killer Buddy Austin), then stepped back to evaluate the
results of the experiment (after a loud bang resulting from her head hitting
the floor). She was motionless for a few tense moments, then slowly arose to a
seated position like the Undertaker. I anxiously asked if she was okay (fearing
certain comeuppance from Mom), then graciously excused her from the rest of the
class.
My sister and I
would have a weird relationship until our final split in 2004. During her
pre-pubescence she became the neighborhood flirt, largely because of the lack of
male affection in the family (Manny later confessed in his senior years that he
was always fearful of someone accusing him of abuse). I ratted her out at every
opportunity, mostly because she was doing her thing down around Smith Street
with blacks and latinos. It wasn’t
until she hit her teens that I was able to tolerate her life choices, and by
the time she left NYC to attend the University of New Mexico at Portales, we
had become close. We had our ups and downs after she got married, but I never
anticipated the Butler Street Screw Job of 2004 which I’ll go into later.
(To be continued...)
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