Email
Print
Scott Hollifield: Wrestling with the past can get a little strange
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: July 16, 2009
The author Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again, but what he really meant was you can't buy a vintage pro wrestling magazine from the 1970s at a comic book convention in an attempt to recapture memories from your childhood without being stunned and more than a little creeped out by what you find within its pages.
Wolfe scholars will back me up on that.
Come with me now in my time machine - it's a GM model I bought with stimulus money - as we travel to a simpler era. There's a young, fresh-faced Scott in bell-bottomed, red-clay-stained husky jeans growing up at the end of a gravel road in the shadows of pine trees and high-voltage electric towers. The console TV brings in one channel clearly, and it blathers on and on about moon landings, napalm and Watergate - except on Saturdays when the real action occurs: That's when modern-day gladiators use their finely honed athletic skills and superhuman strength to beat each other senseless.
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, young Scott believes, is the finest thing to ever flicker across the screen. It has action, drama, pathos and blood. It's educational, teaching our young protagonist to count to three, the difference between the figure-four and the Indian-death lock, and to distrust most foreigners, especially bald ones. He learns that referees have the poorest observational skills on the planet, and a mask and a leisure suit are the perfect attire for any occasion.
His parents encourage Scott's interest in the arts - they would actually just like him to shut up for a few minutes - by buying him wrestling magazines, blood-soaked journals of his heroes' struggles, a chronicle of their lives in and out of the ring. This top-notch battlefield journalism teaches him the wrestling world extends beyond the Carolinas, that Texas cowboys, noble Native Americans, mad Russians and masked men from parts unknown do battle around the globe, mostly in National Guard armories and high school gyms.
All right, let's get back in the time machine. It seems to have cooled down. Glad I've got a warranty.
Thirty-plus years later, Scott is older, wiser, yet still plagued by those attention-deficit problems everyone thought he would grow out of and, for some reason, still referring to himself in the third person. He's at a comic book convention - purely for research purposes - when he spies a vendor selling vintage wrestling magazines. He buys three - the August 1972 "Inside Wrestling," the August 1975 "America's Wrestling Guide" and the Fall 1978 "Wrestling's Greatest Battles."
He is - wait, let's get back to first person here - I am, as I said, stunned and more than a little creeped out by what I read as a kid. The wrestling parts are fine - orchestrated carnage and purple prose, bloody foreheads and beer bellies. It's the ads that make me wonder what the magazine publishers, my parents and young Scott were thinking. Had I stuck a fistful of cash in an envelope, I could have gotten:
-- A Doberman pinscher.
-- A switchblade guaranteed for 10 years.
-- A replica .22-caliber "undercover" automatic pistol with snap-on silencer.
-- A brass knuckle "belt buckle."
-- A Kiyoga self-defense baton that causes "UNBEARABLE PAIN."
-- A police badge.
-- An $8.95 manual that "guarantees you will pick up a girl in 3 weeks."
-- An inflatable woman.
Most disturbing was the "wonderful world of pen pals" section where 32 kids ranging in age from 9 to 18 submitted photos, personal information and, in some instances, street addresses, perhaps expecting the Masked Superstar to stop by for dinner.
More likely, it would be a guy in a van with a Doberman pinscher, a switchblade, a replica .22, brass knuckles, a baton and a police badge.
Scary.
Yes, the author and part-time wrestler Thomas "Big Bad" Wolfe was right. You can't go home again, and you certainly can't buy a vintage pro wrestling magazine from the 1970s at a comic book convention in an attempt to recapture memories from your childhood without being stunned and more than a little creeped out by what you find within its pages.
And, yes, I'm still hoping the Masked Superstar will stop by for dinner.
Email
Print
