More Than Just Hardcore (3 page)

At the time, that old trailer didn’t seem small to me. Heck, even the back window of our Oldsmobile seemed big. I remember crawling up in the space between the rear window and the back seat and riding for hours down the road. I always liked it best when we were traveling at night. Mom would make Dory Jr. a bed on the back seat with blankets and a pillow, and then fix me up a bed in that little rear-window nook.

We would listen to the radio for hours as we drove across the country. I loved “The Life of Riley,” but “The Shadow” scared the devil out of me.

Wrestlers in the late 1940s were like a bunch of gypsies—roving vagabonds traveling throughout the country. We stayed at a trailer park in towns that were centrally located to the towns the promoter ran, as did a lot of other wrestlers’ families, and we bonded with a lot of them. It was immediate acceptance with the other wrestlers’ families. The kids stuck together, and the families did, too. It was much more of a circus atmosphere than what you might imagine—not as far as how they earned their money, but in the way of life. It was close to what the circus or carny’s way of life was. You’d go into a territory, stay three or four months, or as long as you could, and then move on to your next territory.

In those trailer courts, we were all part of a big, extended family. I believe a lot of it was that we had common enemies. We might fight with each other, but we could come together against the people who called wrestling “fake” or “phony.”

On weekends they would have get-togethers with plenty of beer and all the food everyone could eat. I never knew a wrestler or a wrestler’s wife who couldn’t make one hell of a meal!

Looking back, I guess that 30-foot trailer was a little small for a family of four, but it was home. My mother decorated the room Dory and I shared with paper stars that glowed in the dark. At night we said our prayers, and she kissed us good night. Then she turned off the lights, and the moment she did, the stars would glow. We were among the heavens, or at least we thought we were. You talk about neat!

For years, it seemed like the Trudells were always in the same territory as us. Benny and his wife, Lil, had four children, three beautiful girls and a boy. After seeing all of them packed into their trailer, I realized ours really wasn’t so crowded.

They were from Montreal and originally spoke only French, but the kids picked up English fast. As for their parents, well, Benny did OK, but Lil brutalized the language and could not have cared less. All that mattered to Lil was that her husband was OK and her kids, too.

Benny was never really a great wrestler, but he was hard-nosed and pretty tough, pound for pound. He would fight for the wrestling business at the drop of a hat, but at five-foot-eight and with a pot belly, promoters would never let him be a main eventer. Like most of the wrestlers I’ve known through the years, Benny was hooked on the business. He doubled sometimes as a referee but just knew that if he had the right gimmick, he could make his fortune in wrestling.

Wrestling in the late 1940s and 1950s was a six-night-a-week occupation. No promoter would chance working on Sunday, or it would’ve been seven, but the guys wanted that day of rest to be with their families.

Driving to a different town every night could get monotonous, and good traveling companions were necessary. For my dad, Benny was the perfect companion, I believe, because he thought everything Dory did was grand, and thought everything Dory said was hilarious. Looking back, I guess he was living vicariously through my father.

My father worked in the Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma and Arizona territories before returning to Ohio for a second run under promoter Al Haft. Soon after we got there, promoter Moppen announced they were bringing in the heavyweights. Anything over 205 pounds was considered a heavyweight. At 190 pounds, soaking wet, Dad was a junior heavyweight, and he saw the writing on the wall—he was out, and the big guys were in. He gave his notice, and we were off to Texas.

By 1948, Mom and Dad were thinking about putting some roots down. Junior was in school now, but it was difficult for him. Moving from territory to territory, he had to change teachers and friends a couple of times a year, even though he usually did well and was an exceptional student. My parents wanted a home and some stability, like other families had.

I wasn’t yet at school age, so it wasn’t as hard for me as it was for my brother. He and I were like all brothers, I guess. We loved each other to death and hated each other, too, sometimes. We would get into terrible fights, and I usually got the worst end of it. My mom would stop it by hitting us over the head with a newspaper. For some reason, we were just like dogs. When the dog pisses in the house, you hit him with a newspaper, and that’s what she did. Boy, we were scared to death of that newspaper! For some reason, hitting us with a newspaper was the worst thing she could do to us.

Our house had a kitchen with two doors leading to it on opposite ends and an island counter in the middle. Traffic would go in one door, around the island and out. It was almost like a circle. One time, when my brother and I got into a big argument, I said something that would turn it into a fight, as I often did. But it was only going to be a fight if he could catch me!

I took off with the idea I would try to get enough of a lead on him that I could make it to the bathroom and lock myself in before he could get to me. It was a great plan, except for one thing—I would also have to make it through the kitchen, where my mother was ready to spring into action with her newspaper, rolled and taped up.

I tell you, all she had to do after a while was take that newspaper out, and Junior and I would calm down as soon as we saw it. She had us trained, just like dogs!

It was always evident that my brother and I had different personalities. Junior would operate behind the scenes, while I was just goofy enough to try anything.

One time, he said, “Hey, Terry, I have an idea.” “What’s that, Junior?”

“I think you’d be able to run really fast if we tied a piece of plywood to your back.”

So that’s what we did.

Well, the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour that day. We found a large piece of plywood to put around my arms and tied me to it. I picked up a lot of speed, as I recall, but soon became the world’s first manned tumble-board.

Junior was the quiet one, but he was the one with all the ideas. My dad was the same way. He always had stuff for me to do.

We had a skunk named Stinky. It’d had its scent glands removed, but at some point, Stinky ran away, so we went out looking. Soon enough, my dad spotted a skunk and said, “Terry, there’s Stinky.”

“Dad, I don’t think that’s Stinky.”

“Goddammit, that’s Stinky! Look how tame he is! Get out there and get him!”

So I went out there and got sprayed by the skunk. It sure was stinky, but it wasn’t Stinky!

We lived for a while in the trailer court with the other wrestlers’ families, but then my father got a job as superintendent at the Boys’ Ranch under Cal Farley, who was also a professional wrestler. Dory Senior ran the entire thing for all 140-plus kids out there. He dealt with all their problems. Nowadays, you have to go through a tremendous amount of litigation to get a child to a place like that. Back then, they’d get a call from the sheriff, or sometimes even from out of state, with someone saying, “Hey, I have a boy for you here. He’s a problem child, his parents aren’t around, and he needs a place to live.”

My dad would say, “All right. Bring him out.”

The boys were anywhere from six to 18 years old.

Dad would work at the ranch all day and then occasionally wrestle at night.

As a child, I thought Dad was out there fighting for his life. Even though I knew that they knew each other, I never once questioned that their matches were real. I truly believed. I would go to the arena and bawl every Thursday night, terribly upset, the way my kids would years later, when they saw me getting beaten up. And I had fight after fight at school, defending it all my young life.

One time, a kid told me my dad was a phony, so I asked him what his dad did.

“He’s a doctor.”

“Well,” I said, “what does he do? Give people sugar pills? I bet your daddy gives them sugar pills. He’s not a real doctor.”

Sometimes, that kind of response was sufficient. If it wasn’t, we’d get down to business.

But I’m very glad it was presented to me that way. It made me respect my profession much more. It made me have a lot of admiration for the guys who were in it, and it impressed on me that it was not easy. It never has been easy, and I kept that with me. Over my career, there was just a handful who I smartened up to the business. Once you enter into the profession, you’re in the fraternity.

When I was 14 or 15 years old, my father smartened me up. I don’t think believing in it for so long did me any psychological damage. I think his waiting so long to smarten me up helped me to appreciate what a special thing it was to be smartened up in that day and age.

After he told me what the truth was, I continued to defend it as a shoot, because I understood it was necessary to present it as a shoot, especially in this area and at that time, because of the small populations of the areas and the number of performances they had to do. If it wasn’t looked at as a shoot, they wouldn’t be doing much business. Wrestling wasn’t the circus coming to town—it was a weekly pastime.

I first saw how seriously my dad took protecting the business when I was five years old. We were on our way home from the matches and stopped off at Joe Bernarski’s, a steakhouse in Amarillo belonging to and named after an old-time wrestler. I was sitting at one of the tables with my brother, who was nine. My parents were at another table, sitting and talking to some other people.

This man came over from another table and sat down next to me. “So,” he said, “you’re Dory Funk’s son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then he started asking me questions about wrestling—questions he really shouldn’t have been asking me. He should’ve been asking my father.

Finally, he said, “Come on, you can tell me about this wrestling and how it all works. It must be all fake, right?”

My brother got up, got my father and told him what this guy was saying, and that was one of the first times I remember seeing someone truly get the shit beaten out of them.

A few years later, we owned a public swimming pool called Gem Lake Swimming Pool, and my father had mats on the roof so some of the guys could work out up there. One day, my father and Bob Geigel (a tough wrestler from Kansas City) were working out up there, and I mean truly working out, truly wrestling. While they were up there, this guy came onto the roof with them and said, “Hey, I think I can do that! Isn’t all this wrestling phony?”

My dad said, “Is that right?”

My dad untangled himself from Geigel and beat the shit out of the guy. The guy took off running and jumped off the roof. He was trying to catch onto a tree that was about 20 feet from the building, but he missed. I think he ended up OK, but he spent a little time in the hospital.

When I got into wrestling years later, I took very seriously the idea of protecting the business, and I had a number of confrontations over that very thing. None of these confrontations ever started with me deciding I just wanted to punch someone out. Someone would tell me how phony my business was, and my answer was always, “Well, I’ll show you it’s not.”

And I did just like my dad did. A lot of times, it was just easier to just shoot in on a guy, take him down and make him look like an ass.

One night, I was in a bar in Amarillo, talking with my wife, Vicki. A man came up to the table where we were sitting and asked her to dance.

I said, “Sir, would you mind waiting a little bit? I’m talking to her right now.”

He said, “Terry Funk!”

I said I was, and he put out his hand. I put my hand out to shake, but he grabbed my hand and started squeezing as hard as he could.

He was about 300 pounds, not the most solid guy in the world, not a monster with muscles, but he was big.

I was trying not to register it, but his squeezing was hurting like hell. I rared back with my left hand and slapped the shit out of him.

A diamond ring I had just bought (and was really proud of) flew off my hand, and he went down to the floor. Now, this bar’s tables were made of iron, including the one where we were sitting. They were very heavy, and after the big man fell to the floor, he grabbed one of the tables with both arms. I reached down to pick him up by his pants, and as I tried to lift him, his pants ripped right off of him and his underwear, too! I was looking down at his bare, fat ass!

I thought, “Shit, I might as well,” and so I dove down and bit a chunk out of his ass, and that was the end of that.

Until the next day, when he sued me. I ended up settling out of court for $750. It was the most expensive piece of ass I ever had.

As I said, my father was violent at times, but other times, he was the softest person in the world. Laura Fishbacher was a girl from Umbarger, Texas, who had leukemia. She was 11 years old, and she was going to die. My father wasn’t a rich man at this time, or ever, for that matter, but he took $1,000 of his own money and put it into a checking account in her name to let her buy anything she wanted to for herself. She wasn’t related to us. That was just the kind of guy he was.

It was nice to stay put, not to have to go somewhere else and start anew. As I’d said, though, my brother Dory was the one who endured switching schools so many times. I started first grade at the Boys’ Ranch where my father worked as superintendent. I would like to add that I received an award that year for being the best speller in the class. Of course, I was the only first-grader at Boys’ Ranch, and they had a rule that each class got at least one award.

My dad didn’t show any favoritism to me, even though I was his son. The first fight I ever got into there was when I was six, and I got into it with a kid named Dickie Harp, who was two or three years older than me. He was a tough kid, but when I got up from my seat at the mess hall during lunch one day, I came back, and he was in my seat, so I snuck up behind him and put the first illegal hold I guess I ever used on him—I grabbed him from behind, put both fingers in his mouth and pulled back as hard as I could. Come to think of it, I guess I invented the dastardly “fish hook.”