Memoir: Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Wrestling

We were painting our kitchen when the Kellns dropped by. Chris's parents had farmed near Leader and were my parents’ good friends. When his job with the CPR moved the young couple to Calgary, they rented a house on 3^rd Street around 15th Ave SE, just three blocks down from the three-storey frame rooming house which gave us our home and living.

"It's Thanksgiving," Chris insisted. "You can't work on Thanksgiving. We're having turkey, you’re coming, no excuses. We’ll eat around two. Stella’s made more than enough food. ”

Ruthie and I had never tasted turkey. Though nothing there was not kosher, that dish with all those trimmings seemed exotic, tantalizing, goyish. The stuffing had nuts and spices we’d never tasted. There was a red berry jam to eat with the meat. What a terrific idea: jam with meat! The dessert was a wonderful pumpkin pie, with your choice of vanilla or chocolate ice cream, but we kids got a little of each. The men had a bottle of beer with the meal. It was all so sophisticated.

Chris paid me special attention. "You like hockey?" 

"I don't know."

"You ever go to a hockey game?" 

"No."

"Look, Sam. Why don't I take your boy to a hockey game on Sunday. You come too. It's a lot of fun. It's the Big Six League. They play in the Pavilion at the Stampede grounds. Just teams from around here, the towns. It's Sunday so they can only charge a silver collection. I always put in two bits, that would cover him too. I'd like to take him.”

Dad saw my silent prayer and agreed. 

So Chris took me to the Sunday hockey games. Though I always said he didn't need anything — Mum had taught me that — when Chris went for a coffee he always brought me back a hot dog or a bag of peanuts.

I loved the game. My favourite team was the Canmore Legionnaires. They had a pepperpot redhead named Phil Kotchonoski and an Andy Chakowski who were dynamite on blades. But just being in the stadium with other boys and men, that was a thrill.

Then Chris started taking me to the wrestling matches on Tuesday nights. This needed Mum’s special permission because it was a school night. But I begged. I promised to do all my homework before and not to be tired the next day. 

Her son was taking a major step away from her, from her values, with all those rough sports. But when Dad sided with me, she gave in. I had to grow up some day. Theoretically.

Chris never let Dad or me pay for anything. It was like Dad had over the years built up a credit that Chris was trying to repay. Treating me was the least he could do for his sick old friend. 

Years later Mum told me what favour Dad had done Chris, back in Leader. When Chris wanted to marry Stella his Protestant family were aghast because she was a Catholic. His parents would disown him. His cousins and brothers would break every bone in his body if he married “the Catlick.” Dad, whom the Kellns esteemed, tried to talk sense into them.

          “Have you met her? Stella is a wonderful girl. Beautiful, she’s smart, a fine homemaker. She’s a beauty! You never tasted her pierogy?  Her poppyseed strudel? You should be honoured to get her in your family. What are you thinking? You’d break up your family because your son married a woman he loves? You’d rather he married someone he didn’t love? Then he’d be in hell or he’d have to fool around. That would make you happy? Chris is a good boy and he’s lucky to get a girl like Stella. Don’t forget, since her he stopped drinking. You should be proud.”

I think some of the Kellns would never accept Stella. But bolstered by Dad’s support Chris married her -- a decision he never regretted.

***

In sports I could participate imaginatively in a world from which my clumsiness and weakness disqualified me. Dad, I’m sure, would have excelled at any sport, if he’d ever had the time to play any. He had been, after all, well known as a bronco buster and all-around capable rancher before he was felled by his asthma and a broken leg. 

Sports also drew me into the outside world. I started to read the Herald every afternoon, not just the comics, but reports on the hockey teams in the Big Six and Western Hockey Leagues. I listened to the WHL Stampeder hockey games on the radio, then moved on to the Saturday night NHL

I would have sold my soul to go see a WHL game. But it was expensive. Maybe half a buck, for a kid. So, I told himself, why pay when you can hear it for free on the radio? 

***

I was an even more avid wrestling fan, thanks to Chris's introduction. 

The matches almost always pitted an obviously evil man against a virtuous one. The good guy had the superior skills -- like George Gordienko from Winnipeg -- but the bad guy usually won -- by breaking the rules!

 If you can win by breaking the rules, who wouldn’t? The good guys, that’s who, so they usually lost and I’d go home angry and frustrated but excited and happy to have been there.

The referee could never enforce justice. His incompetence was especially apparent in a match between women wrestlers or when the midgets, like Little Beaver and Sky Low Low, came to town. But those matches were always funny anyway -- midgets and women pretending to fight like men! -- so it didn't matter much what happened. The tragic miscarriages of justice only happened when real men were involved. 

Occasionally there would be a match -- always a preliminary -- between two good guys. Like George Gordienko vs. Stu Hart. This would be touted as a return to the classical glories of The Greco-Roman Game. The Science of The Mat. It was boring. 

In those matches I’d wonder which good guy would be the favourite. For the ethnics involved, the choice was clear. The Italians would cheer for the Italian, the Ukrainians for the Ukrainian, and so on. Of course, there was never a Jewish wrestler. Never. Not between Jacob and Goldberg, not one. 
But if there was no ethnic issue the choice of hero hung in the air. Usually the issue was only resolved when one stepped over the line and threw a punch. Until that moment, each wrestler battled not just his opponent but his own temptation to break the law. The first punch restored the normal dialectic.

I concluded from that: life itself must be a constant battle to resist that outlaw impulse. Good and evil make war even within a hero. You don’t need a villain to find evil, not when you can grab an advantage by breaking some rule. 

So when two good guys battled cleanly, eventually one would cross the line and become the villain -- until next week’s match against a bigger villain -- and make the victim the hero. It sure was easier to be good when you were up against an evil that was outside you.

When a match pitted two villains against each other, the audience sided with the more local one. Though Al "Mr. Murder" Mills was everyone's most hated villain for months, he immediately became the hero when he faced Kenji Shibuya, with his dread Sleeper Hold. For Al Mills hailed from Camrose, Alberta, and the sinister Oriental from -- ostensibly Japan, though in fact from a no more mysterious East than Cleveland.

***

I especially appreciated wrestlers who had a specialty hold. It usually had a fancy name but was something very basic. Anyone could do it, but this one wrestler had developed it to a point where it distinguished him from all others. 

Pat McGill had his drop-kick, Legs Langevin his Javanese Stretch, Earl McCready (from Amulet, Saskatchewan!) his Rolling Cradle, and those two exotics, The Cardiff Giant and Shibuya, their Sleepers. 

The last such specialty I remember was Tex Mackenzie and his Bulldogger, but Tex always smiled when he talked about it, like he knew it was hokey. As this was on Ed Whalen's television show already, it was. 

But in the old days, when wrestling was pure, when it was on radio not TV, I liked the idea that somebody could distinguish himself by developing a simple signature hold. A personal specialty.

When Pat McGill sat his dazed opponent up high on the turnbuckle, then drop-kicked him off it, it proved not just skill but confidence. Had Pat missed his mark, he could have flown out of the old Victoria Pavilion onto 17^th Avenue! To the Dilly Dilly almost! (That’s where you got a rainbow of ice cream flavours for five cents a huge scoop.)

*** 

My favourite wrestler was Paul Baillargeon. Paul was a muscular, handsome young Quebecois from a family of wrestling brothers. 

All the Baillargeon brothers were weight-lifters converted to the sport. Younger Adrian had a brief career in the Calgary ring but never caught the local fancy. Older Jean would climb up a special telephone pole that had been rigged up in the arena. Strapped to his back was a platform carrying eight or ten men or a live horse. Battling in the ring he was less impressive.

Paul was the best wrestler. His specialty was the Giant Swing. It began as the harmless Full Nelson, but with Paul Baillargeon’s arm-strength it meant game over. With his arms up around the adversary's neck and shoulders, Paul would lift him and swing him around the ring, 360 or 720 or 1440 degrees, until -- quite disoriented -- the victim could be slammed to the mat for an easy pin.

That usually worked, but not when Paul took on the towering Sky High Lee. Every giant swing Paul managed only got Lee’s feet entangled in the ropes. I forget who won.

One night Paul Baillargeon was matched for the world championship against the great Lou Thesz. Thesz travelled the globe, defending his belt every night in a different arena, always accompanied by his manager, the legendary star of The Golden Age of Wrestling, Ed “Strangler” Lewis. 

When I saw the reverence accorded Mr. Lewis, I wondered how a Strangler could be a hero. Maybe he strangled the right people, I decided, bad people, who deserved to get strangled.

But there was a problem. Paul’s chance to win the world title in Calgary was on the usual Tuesday night. But this Tuesday was not like other Tuesdays. It was Pesach. 

No, Dad insisted, I could not go to the wrestling match that week. I had to stay home for the seder. No, God wouldn’t understand. Well, He would understand, because He knows and understands everything, but He would not approve a boy from a good Jewish home skipping a seder for a wrestling match. 

No, not even a world championship. A Jew puts religious responsibilities first. Jehovah was more important than Paul Baillargeon. Besides, if I went to the wrestling match who would ask The Four Questions?

Okay, I planned, I’ll ask “How is this night different from all other nights?” But then I’ll add “Because this is the night my Paul can become World Champion and I couldn’t go see!” 

But Dad proposed a Solomonic compromise that assuaged my revolt: Between sections of the seder I could slip out to the kitchen radio for updates on the match. 

In the event, right after the chicken soup with matzo-ball dumplings, Paul Baillargeon proved the sacrificial goat. Lou Thesz squirmed out of Paul’s Full Nelson and took his championship belt on to the next night’s challenge in Medicine Hat.

    ***

Baillargeon's most epic confrontation was with the aforementioned villain, Al "Mr. Murder" Mills from Camrose. Mills and his younger brother, Tiny, an even larger hulk in black tights, were a vicious, no-holds-barred tag team. They were equally effective as solos, though Al was the more lethal. 

Al Mills was beating up on everyone. When Paul Baillargeon was contracted to put Mr. Murder in his place, it was as clear a collision of Good and Evil as you could find outside the Bible comics in the waiting room of the Ursuline convent (where Ruthie and I went for our Saturday morning piano lessons).    

The two men fought it out weekly for over a month. In every match, Paul would take the upper hand. But Mr. Murder’s chicanery — sometimes involving help from his brother outside the ring (which was really against the law) or an oversight by the dumb referee — would turn the victory to Mills. When Mills punched Baillargeon bloody, I remember leaping out of my seat screaming in my thin voice: "Get dirty, Paul! Get dirty!" Chris smiled at my ardor -- but shared my indignation. 

I knew it was wrong to urge my virtuous hero to break the rules. But he was getting slaughtered. Sometimes you have to cross the line to defend yourself. Maybe some laws are not so inviolable after all. 
Of course, Paul could never quite get dirty. When he cocked his fist at Mills, the villain would cower until Baillargeon softened back into honest strategies. Then Mills would beat the hell out of him again.   

In my hero’s worst humiliation, Mills punched Baillargeon senseless, then picked him up, carried him to the corner, sat him on the turnbuckle, turned and walked away. Paul's white handsome face was a streaming red pulp. I never forgot that sight.

Years later I learned that some wrestlers were known as “bleeders.” They carried a razor blade taped to a finger with which they would cut their own face, causing the bleeding we attributed to the villain’s haymakers. My Paul was a bleeder not a sacrificial saint. Still, he rules.

***

In 1953 Calgary had a murder. The victim was a woman named Hannah Middlestadt. The Herald reported that she was the sister-in-law of two wrestlers from Camrose, Alberta, Al Middlestadt, who worked under the name, Al "Mr. Murder" Mills, and his brother, aka Tiny Mills. Police were looking for clues to who might have murdered the woman.

So the evil Mills brothers had changed their name! Shortened from Middlestadt. My faith was shaken -- until Mum assured me, No, trimming the name does not mean they’re necessarily Jewish. Other people also change their names, for other reasons. 

But still, there was the murder. 

"Dumb cops, what's the matter with them?" I seethed to myself. Sometimes to Dad, who would patiently listen. "Can't they see? It must have been Al Mills! Nobody else could have done it! Some family fight maybe and he went crazy, like in the ring. If he’s called Mr Murder he’s probably done it somewhere else already. What's the matter with them? Are the cops as blind as the damn referees?"

"Don't swear," Dad corrected softly.

I thought I should investigate the murder myself. Like the Bowery Boys would’ve. Maybe if I followed him after a match, Mills would lead me to some incriminating evidence. I would turn him in to the police and be a hero. Paul Baillargeon could return. 

But the detective’s mother wouldn’t let me. Wrestling was on a school night. If I didn’t come right home with Chris after the match she wouldn’t let me go at all.

The police never did charge Al “Mr Murder” Mills. In fact, in May, 1954, another man was hanged for the crime. He was the last capital punishment case in Canada. 

But Mills got his comeuppance anyway. It was in the ring, from the then-living legend -- Stu Hart.

In those days Stu Hart was a preliminary wrestler. That is, fodder in the opening matches. He wrestled clean but he didn't have George Gordienko's flair. Or Lawrence O'Toole's handsome face (a moustache just like Errol Flynn’s). Every week journeyman Hart wrestled in the first or second bout. Sometimes he won, but usually he lost to some new villain, about to rise through the card. 

Then one week Hart refereed a main event, in which Al "Mr. Murder" Mills got out of hand, which was not unusual. He punched the referee, also not that unusual. But when the referee punched back, that was. Especially when Referee Hart -- his striped shirt ripped and reddened -- ran Al “Mr. Murder” Mills out of the ring all the way back to the dressing room. Mr Murder was scared of this referee!

The main event the next week pitted Al Mills against Stu Hart. Mr. Hart defeated Mr. Murder handily. Mills left town, his tail between his legs, and I never heard anything about him again. The next week it was announced that Mr. Hart was taking over the Calgary wrestling franchise.

"Boy," I thought, "it's a good thing Stu Hart won that one!" The very idea that Mr. Murder Mills might have taken over the local wrestling government made me shiver. How could I have lived with such injustice? But what could I have done about it?

***

I have a postscript. 

As late as my MA year in Edmonton I would occasionally follow the pro wrestling circuit on TV — the high-powered industry Stu Hart created. It was popular culture. It was theatre — an exercise of our tendency to make myths to live by. Of course by now I knew it was fakery — but it was fiction, a fabrication that told some kind of truth.

Hence the national stereotypy — sly Japanese, evil blond Nazi Germans, brutish Russkies, fiery Irish, etc. Sweet Daddy Siki was the poor man’s rewrite of Cassius Clay. The various Haystacks — Muldoon, Calhoun, etc. — were the simple country rubes in their farm overalls confronting city slickers. Gorgeous George — in reality a highly skilled athlete and wrestler — played the Effeminate card as a way to stir up the homophobic’s anger and inadmissible fear. Pro wrestling was just another way of reading the macro culture out of a micro.

 I even used wrestling in my popular culture courses, analyzing the conventions of that particular theatrical form, especially the different dynamics in the arena and on TV.  As it happened, one live episode I’d assigned my class happily slipped into an out-of-ring drama in which Randy Savage’s lover/manager got caught in a love triangle. That effectively turned the wrestling match into a soap opera, even to the point of the camera following the fallen grappler into a hospital room. 

Fast forward another few decades. The Winchester Gallery in Victoria is exhibiting paintings by one George Gordienko. 

I have to phone. Yes, they confirm, it’s the same George Gordienko. 

That sparkling clean wrestler from Winnipeg turns out to have lived a double life. He was also a painter — and a very good one. His work evokes Miro in its brightness, whimsy and edge. 

Indeed Gordienko’s travels as a wrestler introduced him to modern art. He’d hit the galleries wherever he was booked to fight. Then he studied painting in Europe. He came to move in the higher circles of European art. He showed with the likes of Miro and Picasso.
Indeed, one dealer got Gordienko to meet Picasso, at the latter’s home. Gordienko wanted to talk art, Picasso wrestling. Turns out Picasso was a huge wrestling fan. He insisted on reserving a daily afternoon period in which he would leave his work or family to watch it on TV. 

In fact, Gordienko lived a triple life. Here he was one of those dutiful “clean” wrestlers, working the prelims, fodder for the newest villain to pass through. But abroad Gordienko established a real reputation as a villain. He was a spectacular success in Europe and especially in India, where a monstrous crowd threatened his very safety, so powerful was his villainous persona.   

Gordienko was clearly a master of the craft, on both forms of canvas. His painting is crisp, lively, bright,  a pleasure to move through. In wrestling,  he was so strong, agile and capable that Lou Thesz and Strangler Lewis invited him to become Thesz’s successor to the world title when Thesz decided to retire. 

There was a hitch. Again, it was his life and engagement outside the ring. He was also a thinker. In the forties Gordienko had been drawn to socialism. He’d briefly been a member of the dread Communist Party. So he couldn’t cross the American border. America’s loss was Europe’s and India’s gain.   

There’s a lesson even there.