Depression Daze?

(Excerpted from SUPERSTAR: Life and Times of an Underground Rock and Wrestling Icon)

 

           The Depression never really hit the Sanders ranch since they were already living a self-sustaining lifestyle. Grandpa hired cowboys to bring his cattle to market, and they had livestock in the barns and vegetable gardens near the house that supplied fresh produce and dairy products as well as poultry. And, of course, there was always more than enough beef and pork to go around. The girls grew up around cowboys and were rough-and-tumble tomboys who, according to Mom’s account, could ride like the wind.

            Nora followed her daughters to an early grave due to an illness that she was unable to have treated properly. J.D. Sanders was unable to recover from depression and eventually lost the ranch. Marian, nicknamed Cottontop, then Sandy (because of her platinum hair which eventually turned auburn), was shuttled off between her married sisters until she was old enough to fend for herself. By her teens, she was a spitfire who learned to drive cars with the breakneck speed and daring of her days as a horseback rider. She developed a severe case of wanderlust and often drove back and forth between her sisters’ homes, Frank Pilcher in Arizona, Marge Abbott in Fort Worth, Texas and Jim Tibbetts in Colorado. She thought nothing of crossing the border into Mexico or going as far west as California. I’m pretty sure I inherited that road warrior spirit from her as well.

            As the Dizon family made it through the Depression, Dolfo became a reclusive bookworm who would one day make history as a nuclear physicist at NASA. After a messy divorce, he made ends meet as a deputy sheriff and was again part of a historic Texas episode during a shootout with Mexican cartel drug lord Jose Carrasco. Back in the day, however, he gave place in grade school to Manny and Daniel, who had been getting boxing lessons from their Uncle Butch. Ed Welk, a pro boxer, (a distant relative of Lawrence Welk) married Stella’s sister Charlotte and spent lots of time with the boys, Manny being his favorite. Manny took his fair share of lumps from Butch but, along with Daniel, put away every school bully they faced during their early years. Freddie would try and fail to follow his brothers’ footsteps but would go on to a career in the Marines as a drill instructor. Now you can surmise how I got to be such a hard case.

The clan was stunned by the loss of Stella, who died of uremic poisoning in her mid-twenties. Grandpa was left to raise the boys, and Manny stepped up as big brother in helping raise Freddie. Manny was an excellent student who made the National Honor Society alongside Dolfo on a regular basis. After school, he and Daniel began training at the Alamo Street Boxing Club on East Houston Street and soon became Golden Gloves standouts. Manny was one of those people who excelled both academically and athletically, and was also quite the ladies’ man, like his Dad.

 

(To be continued...)

Four Brothers/Five Sisters?

(Excerpted from SUPERSTAR: Life and Times of an Underground Rock and Wrestling Icon)


            Stella Munoz was one of five daughters of Beatrice and Eduardo   Munoz, who migrated to northern Mexico from Barcelona after the Spanish-American War along with their seven children. The marriage disintegrated shortly after their arrival and Beatrice somehow made ends meet until the children reached their teens. John and Pete acquired a reputation on the streets of Laredo as knife fighters and hard cases. They eventually made enough connections to make their way to San Antonio, sending for their sisters in time. Most people managed to steer clear of the Munoz Brothers and were very cautious when courting the sisters. Teodulfo met up with Stella and, after a traditional courtship, the couple grew impatient and eloped to Austin.

            When the smoke cleared, the Dizons returned to San Antonio and bought a frame house at 116 Can’t Stop (the street name was listed in Ripley’s Believe it or Not during the 20’s). Stella gave birth to four sons, Teodulfo Jr., Manuel, Daniel and Frederick. Manny was about nine years old when the Depression hit. Stella’s sister Beatrice, her husband Gilbert Perez and their nine children moved in next door, and Grandpa often found himself the only breadwinner among two households of seventeen people. I’m pretty sure his American dream darkened at times as he relied on a bicycle to make it five miles to work at Fort Sam Houston. Still, no one went hungry though things got pretty dire at the Munoz home from time to time, as my cousins would tell me over a half-century later.

            Unfortunately there’s not a lot of background that was made available to me on John Sanders, a strapping, two-fisted cattle man who carved out a 100-acre ranch in the wilds of an extinct town called Bangs, Texas. He began wooing a local girl named Nora Brooks, whose father was one of the original settlers of the town. Nora, by all accounts, was a lovely, petite woman who stood a shade above five feet tall. They got married, built their home and raised a family on the Sanders Ranch. Try as he might, Big John gave up trying to have a son after seven daughters. The eldest daughters, Elizabeth and Dora, died of illness in the wilderness community. Three of the survivors, Brooks, Frank and Jim, were named thusly by a frustrated man desperately wishing for a male child. Marge and Marian, my Mom, lucked out.           

(To be continued...)

In The Beginning?

(Excerpted from SUPERSTAR: Life and Times of an Underground Rock and Wrestling Icon)

            My first lifetime started on Butler Street in November of 19__ as the pride and joy of Manny and Sandy Dizon. Manny was a pro boxer who became a neighborhood icon thanks to the advent of television in homes throughout the country. He settled into a job with the Coast Guard once his boxing days were over and found an apartment where we lived until the mid-60’s after my sister Lea was born.

            My grandparents, only one of whom I ever met, had the necessary credentials to produce two such offspring who, in turn, spawned an individual such as yours truly. Teodulfo Dizon was born to a captain of the Spanish Army and his wife who were stationed on the Philippine Islands at the turn of the century. After the collapse of the garrison during the Spanish-American War, my great-grandparents chose to remain in their home in the city of San Pedro. While attending grade school, Teodulfo took on work as a houseboy at the local US military base which had replaced the Spanish garrison.

            In my novel Generations II (unpublished as of this writing), I portrayed Grandpa as a card-playing, womanizing slickster, which was not very far from the truth. He was unquestionably a cunning opportunist. He made a strong connection with Colonel Sibley and his family, and when they got reassigned to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, they offered to take him to America and he didn’t think twice. When I went to visit him in 1973, he was teary-eyed with regret that he never saw his family again. Regardless, when he got to San Antonio he became a prominent figure within the Filipino community, having known most of those who migrated there. He had the foresight to organize a social group, the Filipino-American Society, which named him as their president. The Texas Heritage Society in San Antonio features my Grandpa in their downtown museum to this day.

 

(To be continued...)

 

Is That All There Is?

(Excerpted from SUPERSTAR: Life and Times of an Underground Rock and Wrestling Icon)

 

Is that all there is?

That may have been one of the questions I asked myself three and a half years after that fateful day during the summer of 1981. I was standing on a flatbed stage overlooking a sea of faces at the Court Street Carnevale, the scene of the Ducky Boys’ greatest victory a year earlier. Back in June of 1980, we were the self-proclaimed South Brooklyn Heavy Metal Champions, styling and profiling before over two thousand fans, at the peak of our careers. This time around, it was different.

            Last year’s show, sponsored by the local music store, featured the Boys as the main event. This year I had envisioned a Punkfest sponsored by Miguel’s Hair Salon featuring three other punk bands beside us. The music store was far more adept in managing the event than I was and it turned into a comedy of errors, in a series which resulted in the end of the Ducky Boys and my departure from NYC.

             One of my ‘rivals’, Tumbleweed (AKA Malcolm Tent), deliberately stretched his thirty-minute set to nearly an hour which, combined with the delays and setbacks on that dismal day, cut our own performance time to about ten minutes! The flatbed was surrounded by the NYPD as I took the stage and launched into “Bloody Sunday”, our best new song which was developed too late to make our recently released EP. Ironically, we were set up right across the street from O’Beirne’s Pub on Court and Wyckoff in Cobble Hill, an Irish pub which helped inspire the spirit of rebellion behind the tune.

            I sang my heart out and posed for some memorable photos, but when it was over… well, so was the Carnevale. Our guitarist, Al Catraz, desperately launched into “Hooked on Junk”, our hardcore finale, but I had barely gotten out the first line when one of the cops literally pulled the plug on the show, the amps dying out in unison as drummer Eddie Havoc flailed away.

            Eddie quit right after the show, something he had plotted long before that afternoon. He thought it would break our backs but we survived until 1982, and I floundered until 1984 when I went into self-exile, hoping that the Lord would resurrect my dreams and allow me to return victorious to the ‘Invisible Empire’ I had left behind.

 

(To be continued...)

 

 

The Last Hurrah?

Been a while, huh?

Inasmuch as the band's been on life support since September 2012 and the KC music scene's been just as dead, I figured I'd try something else. To elaborate, the Newsroom closed its doors last year and resurrected or some weird tribute to the Missouri Tigers - Black and Gold Tavern or some other dorkass name. John Tierney's still there, but the last time I saw him he grew a white goatee and seemed happy to still have a job. He gave us his number to call for an audition (!) but Terri never called back.

It seems almost as if the zombie craze has been one of God's little jokes reminding us what the world's coming to. I drove by a boarded-up Thriftway in Raymore the other day, and kids had spraypainted in giant letters: DO NOT OPEN! DEAD INSIDE! How apropos. For sure, the walkers have taken over the music industry as well as the consumer market. I think of all the people who came up to us after Newsroom shows, telling us how great we were and how KC desperately needed a band like us. Most of them never came back. Probably had their brains eaten by zombies.


I'm semi-retired now, trying to hawk my literary wares under my Christian name. Since the biography isn't getting any bites, I'm going to post it page-by-page right here with time remaining. I'll let you know if I get a deal for it, and if I suddenly stop posting again well...rest assured Broadway Turk Superstar has passed into history.

This should be a fun read, so...stay tuned!

Prattle for Missouri?

The Battle for Missouri was a bummer.

Leaf Humpy told me that Jesse Jeffers was sponsoring the event here in town but I wanted another crack at Jerry's Bait Shop even though I knew it would be a screwjob.

Jeffers and I go back to Halloween Havoc '07 at the LM Alcott Center in KCK. He and another jobber were supposed to back me up but started falling apart after song one. We exchanged flames on MySpace, Jeffers accusing me of shoddy musicianship, but unfortunately I have the video. The closer, "Do You Love Me", was a classic.

When I checked in after 2 PM on 6/27/10, Jeffers had one sob story after another. Two bands supposedly cancelled (after paying a $40 entry fee???) and left a gap between my set and the next group of over two hours. That doesn't give the judges the best comparison time, I figured. I got pretty nasty with ol' Southern Grace after that, and it got worse when he said there were no amps available. By then I was ready to hammer the little bastard but, as they say, the show must go on.

What followed next was another episode of my love/hate relationship with Mr. Machine. I've got one of the best crap tape Spoiler practices of all time in my truck right now, courtesy of Little Mac. I was backed into that corner by Big Mac (John Mc Guffin), who canceled out a week before showtime. The set was bitchin' at the house, but onstage, well...acoustics can be a stubborn animal sometimes. The first three songs were on the money but "Man Grenade" had a bad takeoff, and "Obamanation" almost didn't make the finish line. "Back From Iraq" had the Bait Shop crowd calling for an encore, but that wasn't going to amount to a pile of dog poo with Jeffers' judges.

The business end of the industry was what defeated me in NYC, and it's starting to burn me out here in KC. It gets harder and harder to give your best every night when you know the movers and shakers don't give a damn what the audience thinks. All you feel like doing at the end of the show is give a pencil-pusher a piledriver. Count your blessings, JJ.

Well, we've got the LPAT in Liberty next month, and I'm hoping the judges there will give us a fair shake. Even if they don't, we'll get another great video out of it.

I got $1,000 for the Ducky Boys' acetate a couple of years ago. Wonder what these Spoiler movies'll be worth...

...after the Obamanation?

Prolly not a plugged nickel, collapsed economy or not.

Broad Street Bullies?

I wonder whether someone at HBO corporate offices contemplated a form of artificial providence in coinciding the broadcast of the Flyers’ documentary with the 2009-10 NHL playoffs. Damned if they didn’t cause Flyermania to inspire the bottom-seeded Flyers to nearly win the Stanley Cup…and galvanize the Spoiler Empire in the process.

I was a kid when the Flyers last hoisted the Cup. Bobby Clarke, Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, Flyer captain Ed Van Impe…they were all featured on the “Broad Street Bullies” presentation, showing us how time had flown. Thirty-five years, who would’ve thought. It had been forty-nine years for the Black Hawks. When they interviewed Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Company, the general consensus was that they would have savored the moment far longer. They were kids themselves, and they thought the Cups and champagne would just keep on coming. It made me think of how the Spoiler thought we were destined for superstardom and never considered otherwise. It was the height of the Punk Revolution in NYC, and we just knew we would cure the country of Disco Fever. Who would’ve thought the Music Industry and MTV would synthesize it all into New Wave and wash us all away...thirty-five years ago

Who would’ve thought.

The apostle Paul wrote that the Greeks sought wisdom as the Jews looked for miracles. Doubtlessly the Flyer Nation and the Spoiler Empire watched for signs and wonders as the Bullies clawed their way to the Finals, only to lose it on a fluke goal that seemed to symbolize their post-season. Was it real, or Memorex? Was it all a dream, or a harbinger of bigger and better things to come? Is tomorrow only just a day away?

Signs and wonders…signs and wonders.