Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (17 page)

It was beyond satisfying to simply be working hard and providing for my boy. It was like that saying, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I had found a perfect fit in life.

During this time I bought my first car, a 1979 Ford Thunderbird. It was nothing special. Yeah, it was old and the paint was faded, but after Lash checked it out mechanically and gave it the thumbs-up, that T-Bird was all mine for fifteen hundred dollars. That car was all I needed to get from point A to point B and finally give the bus the big middle finger. Now there was no schedule to chase after like a dog, and I could take Brandon to school and go to work, the gym, and the grocery store on my own time.

It was great for my son and me and way overdue. This was what both of us had deserved since day one, and it was better to have it a little late than never.

My job at American Mini Storage was working out very well. Lash had shared his philosophy with me: “No matter what you do, make sure it’s done to the best of your ability.” I kept that ideal clear in my mind in my new role.

After putting in a relatively short amount of time, I had a handle on everything and was proud of my job. Instead of doing manual labor as I had at Wendy’s, Pack 2, and the apartments, now I was relying on my mind, people skills, and computer skills. I worked in the air-conditioned office filling out contracts and helping customers with all their basic needs. There were only two of us working at American, covering twelve-hour shifts each. Even though the days were long, it was worth every minute.

Then a little side job was offered to me. For whatever reason, even though Lash was not working security at Pier Club, he took it upon himself to moonlight on his own as a vigilante enforcer on the grounds late at night. He and his big friend Tony Norris, future WWF Superstar Ahmed Johnson, strolled around at night with their eyes peeled, just hoping to find strange things afoot so they could spring into action like superheroes. Lash asked me if I would think about coming along. When I considered all the help he had given me, of course I said yes. It was not one of my greatest decisions.

A week or so later, Lash came banging on my door at about one in the morning. “Junior,” he said, huffing and puffing, “Tony and I have been watching these suspicious dudes for a while, and we know they’re running a drug operation on the premises. We’re gonna bust it up. Come on!”

I thought they were out of their minds, but I agreed anyway and got dressed. Outside, Lash and Tony were waiting.

My brother was right in my face, gassed up with excitement. “Are you ready, man?”

Still rubbing my eyes, I answered with slightly less enthusiasm. “I guess. What is it exactly you’re doing again?”

Lash explained that he had been watching the comings and goings of these guys living in one of the apartments. He was convinced there was a drug operation going on, and he and Tony wanted to bust it up and turn the dudes over to the cops. For whatever reason, apparently my brother had a huge vendetta against drug dealers and made it his mission to seek them out whenever possible and wreck their operations.

I shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s do this.”

Then he reached into his bag and handed me an UZI. I swear to God my own brother, who was fully aware of everything I had been through with the streets, Wendy’s, and prison, handed me a fully automatic gun straight out of a Rambo movie. For a split second, I looked around in the bushes for hidden cameras, expecting Allen Funt from
Candid Camera
to come busting out to reveal that it was all a gag.

“Jesus Christ! What the fuck do you want me to do with this thing, man?” I still could not believe Lash, the same guy who always preached about doing the right thing and working hard, was now pushing for me to invade some apartment with him as if we were the damn police.

I finally learned some local cops had encouraged Lash and Tony to do this kind of crap. The two of them had been responsible for many busts, allowing those policemen to get all the credit at the station. Man, they probably made detective rank for the work Tony and my brother had put in. But handing me this gun indicated they were getting a little power drunk.

“You stay right here while Tony and I run in. Anyone comes around this corner, you do what you have to, okay?”

There I was, a recently released ex-con busted for armed robbery, standing on a dimly lit sidewalk after one in the morning, holding an automatic firearm. If ever I had a true
What the fuck am I doing?
moment in my life, this was it.

While I tried to wrap my mind around the situation, Tony and Lash went smashing through somebody’s front door like madmen, screaming at the top of their lungs, “Freeze!”

I was startled pretty good by the whole scene and was having Wendy’s Bandits flashbacks. Even with the cops in on this deal, I still did not understand why my brother had me out here risking my life and freedom for the sake of his ego.

All of a sudden, a guy ran from behind the apartment and kicked open the gate heading my way.

Adrenaline kicked my senses into overdrive. I started shaking, the UZI teetering. I was terrified but somehow managed to utter a pretty unconvincing, “Hey, man, freeze,” almost with a “please?”

It was a huge bluff just like the one I had used on Vernon in Pack 2, but in this case the stakes were higher.

After seeing the gun, the guy stopped dead in his tracks and immediately cowered. “What, man? What do you want me to do?”

I was still in shock and paranoid as hell that he might have a gun of his own.

Fortunately, he had nothing.

“Turn around and keep walking,” I said and marched him to Lash and Tony.

They could not believe what I had for them.

Lash was beside himself. “Holy shit, Junior. Look what you got.”

I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible and put this nightmare back to bed.

While they rejoiced and added my catch to the peanut gallery of handcuffed and jail-bound fools, I gave Lash the gun. I was about to make a quick exit when out of nowhere my brother punched one of the cuffed guys in the stomach as hard as he could with a sickening thud.

The guy fell over and curled into a fetal position, coughing and gurgling.

That was it for me. It was not just Lash’s display of brutality but the idea that one of those dudes might get out and come looking for payback. I knew I’d have more than one sleepless night thinking about it. It was totally unsettling and made my skin crawl.

After somehow managing a little sleep that night, I woke up at daybreak, thankful to resume a more conventional role at American Mini Storage. I thought I could rest easy for a while, but I was wrong.

As it happened, this attractive black woman came in to rent a storage unit. It was obvious she had just been crying. I stayed professional and minded my own business while trying to help her with the paperwork. When I led her out to the unit, she inspected the space quickly.

“I’ll be right back with my stuff,” she said.

I returned to the office to follow up on some other things. Within minutes, a commotion was coming from outside. The girl faced some black dude, presumably her ex-boyfriend, who was yelling at her.

I tried to remain calm, collected, and courteous. “Excuse me, but if you don’t have a storage unit here or any other business you need assistance with, you’ll have to leave. This is private property, and I can’t have this here.” I made a little motion to suggest he escort himself out of there.

The guy did not even make eye contact as he shoved me. “Man, get the fuck out of my face. This ain’t any of your goddamn business.” Then out of nowhere, he took a swing at me.

I saw it coming and moved my head back just in time to avoid an arching fist to the jaw. I just rolled my eyes and thought,
Oh boy, here we go.
I saw red and reacted. I took the guy down with a trip and a two-handed push slam, then bounced his head off the pavement like a basketball a couple of times.

I had to tell myself to stop or it might have gone too far, and it was enough as it was. I even had the wherewithal to go inside and call the cops on him because he could have had a gun in the car or something.

Making a proactive decision like that not only protected me physically but neutralized his chances of trying to call them first and claim I had attacked him out of nowhere.

When the police arrived, I recognized them as the guys from my old security job at the apartments. They took both sides of the story, and when they asked the girl for a third perspective, she told them I was a Good Samaritan who had come to her rescue.

The cops smiled and pulled me aside to congratulate me for my good work. They arrested that guy for assault even after he had taken a good ass-kicking. Not only that, but the girl gave me her number, telling me I should call sometime.

It was a validating scenario that added a little more swagger to my step. I was finally on the right side of the law. The invisible bonds I had felt for the last three years since being paroled from Pack 2 were broken for good.

I probably would have settled in for a life of contentment with my job at American. It was easy to envision working up the ladder, getting set up with a management position, and kicking back in my role. It was not the most thrilling and fulfilling thing to imagine doing, though, and I did daydream all the time of finding a little excitement.

Wouldn’t you know it? Lash approached me one day, a determined look on his face, and said, “Let’s start rasslin’.”

It was surprising as hell, to say the least. “What do you mean?”

He tapped my chest. “Man, we’ve been fans for so long, and we both need something more in our lives. We both have size, we’re athletic, and we’ve got personality off the fuckin’ charts.”

I stared, rubbing my chin. “How do we do it?”

“Brother, I’ve already got it all planned out. I found this school that’ll teach us everything and even set us up in matches and shit. I’m telling you, Junior, we can do this. And we can make it.”

Man, Lash was dead serious, and I was excited to go to this place, get into the ring, and see what it was all about. I mean, seriously, what did we have to lose?

I asked Lash all kinds of questions about the training school, and he told me the place was run by the famous wrestler “Polish Power” Ivan Putski. Putski was a legend, especially with WWF back in the day. Apparently not long after I had been released from prison, Lash had run into Ivan, who had invited him to check out the facility. The idea had been in Lash’s mind ever since.

The only other detail I needed to know was the cost.

“Man, it’s not that much. It’s only three thousand dollars for the eight-week class.”

Three thousand?
Man, it might as well have been three million. Although I did have five hundred saved up that could go toward the fee, I had no idea where the rest would come from. Lash told me that if I could put about half down, Putski would let a guy finance the rest in monthly installments. Still, I wondered how I would come up with that additional thousand.

A couple of days later, I was at American working as usual when Bruce walked in. We got to talking, and when I mentioned the wrestling school, he lit right up.

“Booker, that sounds like a great idea. I could see you going all the way. There’s no doubt about it.” Bruce told me he was a big wrestling fan, which I hadn’t had a clue about. He wanted to hear more.

I explained how Lash had met Ivan Putski a few years back and told him all about it. Then I got to the part about my financial dilemma.

“How much more do you need?” he said. “A thousand? That’s nothing. Tell you what. You’ve been doing such a great job for me, maybe it’s about time for a bonus. What do you think?”

I didn’t know what to say, but a smile came over my face. “Umm. A bonus?”

“Yeah, I was thinking around a thousand-dollar bonus so you can go to that school. Just go and do me proud, okay? What do you think?”

It was unbelievable. I shook his hand. “Deal.”

Then I called Lash to tell him the good news.

After Bruce left the office, I sat in awe of his selflessness. He truly was a great guy with a golden heart along with a bank account large enough to assist in changing people’s lives if and when he saw fit. I did not know why he had chosen me, especially with my criminal background, but I was sure glad he had.

With the fifteen hundred dollars in my pocket, I went with Lash down to South Dairy Ashford Street, where the school was located. When we pulled up to the building, the place was not at all what we’d expected. Instead of being some run-down dump in the basement of a church or some crummy warehouse with a beat-up ring and a leaky ceiling, Putski’s wrestling school was a polished facility.

The school, known as Western Wrestling Alliance (WWA), was one of the most advanced operations you could imagine. It was like stepping into an actual WWF pay-per-view or something. There were two brand-new rings, a weight room area, practice mats, and TV cameras covering all angles so we could even watch our matches. It was so professional it felt like we had already made it in the wrestling business the second we walked in.

It was evident that a lot of investor money had been solicited to make the WWA concept a reality and that there was more behind it than just a wrestling school. During the late sixties through the eighties, a promoter named Paul Boesch was responsible for the hugely popular
Houston Wrestling
television show on local KHTV channel 39. We had grown up watching it, but the promotion had faded away. Boesch, like so many other regional promoters, was forced to fold after the WWF and WCW dominated the scene with national TV and big-money contracts for all the best wrestlers in the country. Now, Ivan Putski and his investors felt they could capitalize on the void in Houston with the WWA. They helped finance the project by charging the very wrestlers in training they would feature at their shows.

The wrestling school program itself ran five days per week for eight weeks. About twenty of us were in the class. We were told that at the conclusion of our eight weeks, we’d be featured on
Houston Wrestling.
This was the real deal, and the whole thing was a little intimidating.