Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (3 page)

On school days my dad made a big pot of oatmeal for everyone. On weekends it was up to us to feed ourselves. I learned early on to stand on a chair, light the stove with a match, boil eggs, make toast and cut cheese and fruit with a ridiculously large butcher knife; it was that or go hungry.

As far back as I can remember I was called on to defend the family honor. At three or four years old, I was coached by my brothers in what must have been my first match. I took on one of the Tag Team Champion Scott brothers’ kids, who happened to be the same age as I was. Down by the pasture gate where Daphne grazed we rolled around on top of prickles and cow pies. I lost a close one.

Dean and I collected glossy photos of all the top wrestlers of the time. I was fascinated by the toothless behemoth Antonio the Great, with his long, mangy hair and scraggly beard. But I really loved the masked wrestlers, Dr. Death, Mr. X, The Destroyer and my favorite, The Zebra Kid, with his black and white striped mask. My dad’s championship belts were made of gold and silver, with real gemstones on them; my brothers and I made our own belts of gold and silver Christmas wrapping paper, with pieces of broken bottle glass as gems.

One day Dean and I were playing in the barn behind the house. He was pulling me up to the roof on a bale of hay attached to a pulley. As I neared the roof, the rope broke and I came crashing down, whacking my head on the brick floor. I lay there groaning and dazed as a huge bump began to grow on my forehead. A tearful Dean promised to give me a picture of Antonio the Great if I promised not to tell, so we made up a story about how I’d tripped and hit my head on a rock. Dean was good at making up stories. My parents were worried when they saw the purple-blue goose egg, and they fussed over me for several days, but they didn’t take me to the doctor. My reward for silence was the prized photo of Antonio the Great pulling a big bus on a chain.

A lot of the time it was like a scene from Lord of the Flies around my house, and we were left to our own devices. We were so unruly that the neighbors—and at that time there were only two families living close to us in Patterson Heights—rarely allowed their kids to play with us. One of the good things about being from a big family was that there were always enough players for baseball and football games. Now and then my dad would come out and punt a football over the trees and into the neighbor’s yard.

Smith and Bruce were like pintsized mobsters, usually up to no good. They seemed to have it in for Keith and Wayne. Stocky Keith had no problem standing up for himself, but Wayne, who was small, was usually made into the fall guy.

We all wrestled one another often, and I can remember times when Smith or Bruce inadvertently knocked the wind out of me. Stu would storm in demanding to know, “Who did it?” but I never wanted to see Stu get mad at anyone. I’d be bawling my eyes out while trying very hard not to. Then I’d hesitate to answer out of pure fear, and he’d get angrier. Smith would position himself directly behind Stu, glaring at me while hoisting up a closed fist. He’d point across the room at Wayne, mouthing, “Say Wayne did it.” Wayne would be playing with his Dinky toys, minding his own business. Caught between Dad and Smith, I had no choice but to finger Wayne, who’d look up just in time to see Stu stomping over to throttle him. Smith and often Bruce would both promise me total protection from a seething Wayne. Sooner rather than later Wayne would beat me up, and as punishment they’d beat up Wayne. This was routine life at Hart house.

If Wayne was overlooked, he wasn’t the only one. Alison, who was the easiest of the Hart kids to get along with, never got anywhere near the love heaped on her two older sisters. Like me, she just seemed to operate better by herself.

I recall one time being cuffed by Stu and then being yelled at by both him and my mom for something I hadn’t done. I decided to punish them by running away. I planned everything out. I lopped off a piece of cheddar cheese, gathered up some apples in a bag and left home around noon, heading west past CFCN hill, hiking all the way up to Mr. Ferguson’s house. He was the school-bus driver, and his big yellow buses reminded me of my block of yellow cheese, so I stopped there, stretching out on the dry grass, taking in blue skies and white clouds. I daydreamed, picturing my mom crying and asking my dad, “What have we done?” I imagined my dad, with a grim expression, talking to two policemen, one of them scribbling on a pad while the other talked about using dogs to pick up my scent.

I wanted them to suffer for being so tough on me, but then I had a change of heart. I thought about Stu’s annoyed expression in the daydream, and I knew I was in heaps of trouble. On top of everything else, cheese and apples weren’t enough to sustain me. It was a long way back, but I double-timed it, only slowing down when I drew close enough to see that there weren’t any police cars or bloodhounds waiting for me.

I braced myself as I entered the kitchen. My mom and dad were reading the paper, and the TV was on with the sound low. The table was the usual mess of dirty dishes, except for one giant plate of spaghetti. My mom said, “Hello, dawling”—her New York accent was distinct—but Stu didn’t look up. Nobody had even noticed that I was gone. I sat down and ate my cold spaghetti and never thought about running away again.

I always looked forward to Sundays. That’s when my parents cooked the biggest dinner of the week.

After dinner my dad would take us boys down to the basement and let us wrestle one another, teaching us the basics. Then he would get us to run around in a circle on the mat and, in a strange version of dodge ball, try to knock our feet out from under us using one of his heavy leather medicine balls. I used to love this game and was often the last one standing.

Then it was time to hit the shower. Dean and I usually ended up crying because Smith and Bruce would pee in our mouths or blast us right in the eyes, which burned. The best we could manage was peeing on their legs. There was no point telling on them because in the Hart house you were only guilty of something if you got caught.

Afterwards, we’d all put on our pajamas and watch Bonanza, which came on at nine o’clock. I liked to imagine we Harts were like the Cartwrights.

I was four years old when my brothers succeeded in talking my mom into letting me go with them to the Calgary matches, reassuring her that they’d all watch over me. Only the boys were allowed to go.

On Friday nights we’d zoom down to what was then called the Victoria Pavilion with my dad in his long black Chrysler transport limo, which had four rows of seats, four doors on each side and a big luggage rack on top. He’d give us the wrestling programs wrapped in brown paper, and in the limo we’d all clamber to tear the bundle open. I still recall the smell of fresh ink and the feel of the smooth paper. The older boys would sell the programs, but my first job was pulling lucky numbers out of a big steel box during intermission. That job was short-lived; soon, I was replaced by cute, curly-haired Inky. After that I earned a few bucks a week selling programs. That’s how I learned how to count, but more importantly that’s how I learned that if I really hustled, I could earn enough money to buy toy soldiers or cowboys and Indians.

During the winter it was tough work standing in the bitter cold. And as soon as Ross grew old enough to start selling programs, he cut into my market because the fans liked to buy from the smallest Hart kid.

I met all kinds of crazy characters: real cowboys and real Indians; big, fat, friendly older women; and a few younger ones who smoked cigarettes and were dolled up in red lipstick, cheap perfume and high hairdos, squeezed into short dresses and fishnet stockings like cut-rate versions of Marilyn Monroe. Then there were even younger ones who my dad referred to contemptuously as arena rats, but I kept my thoughts to myself, remembering a saying Bruce taught me: “All the world loves a lover and that’s why the world loves me.” I thought, Yeah, that’ll be me some day!

During the matches, Dean and Ross and I would sit at the timekeeper’s table at ringside. Sometimes my dad had really interesting attractions. I recall Cowboy Carlson climbing up and down a ladder with a horse slung over his shoulder. At least once a year, Terrible Ted The Wrestling Bear came to town for a couple of months. Terrible Ted lived in a mesh cage under our back porch. Dean, Ellie, Georgia and I would dangle our bare feet through the slats in the porch steps and drip Fudgesicles on our toes for Ted to lick.

Once I was invited to a neighboring kid’s birthday party. His parents took us just up the hill to the CFCN TV studio to attend a live kids’ program called The Head-hunter Show. Out came Ted, playfully wrestling with Gene Dubois, his handler, to help publicize that week’s wrestling show. After Ted had been led away, Headhunter came around asking all the kids questions. Strangely enough, he asked me whether I wished I had a bear like that in my backyard. Of course he had a great laugh when I insisted that, in fact, I did have exactly that bear living under my back porch. He kept winking at the camera until I actually got annoyed with him. My mom gave me the biggest, sweetest hug when I got home. She’d seen the whole thing. “You were so right, dawling. At least you tried, and you never backed down.”

When Dean and I got bored at the matches, we’d go out to the front of the pavilion, where there were always lots of kids from the nearby neighborhood of Victoria Park. The kids were as poor as we were, so we blended right in. We’d wrestle them on a small patch of grass, and Dean was always quick to boast that we were Stu Hart’s kids, but no one would believe him. We’d take our shirts off and an hour or so later we’d be drenched in sweat, having taken on all comers, one after another. I never lost one of those matches, and neither did Dean. It’s as beautiful a memory as wrestling ever gave me.

When the show was over, my dad would bring the car around front and honk the horn, and we would scramble to get in. The Victoria Park kids would look on in wonder. “Wow, they really are Stu Hart’s kids.” On the drive home I looked forward to the Jell-O or chocolate pudding that my mom, Ellie and Georgia always had waiting for us. Sometimes on the way home, my dad would slow down and point at a giant chandelier hanging in the window of a lighting store on Eleventh Avenue, saying how he wanted to buy it. I think everyone in the car was dreaming about what they wanted in life. I was happy on these drives simply because my dad was happy.

Being a middle kid was like being stuck in nowhere land. Smith was a bully who didn’t want to grow up—much as my parents tried to mold him into being our leader. I could never figure Smith out, and only in the last couple of years did one of my mother’s sisters fill me in on what had happened to Smith before my parents moved to Calgary. When Stu and my mom had that near-fatal car accident, Gah-Gah took Smith so that my mom would have time to recuperate. But then she wouldn’t give him back; she and Mom’s four sisters doted on him and spoiled him until he was four years old.

When they were about to move to Calgary, Stu decided that enough was enough and demanded that Gah-Gah give Smith back, but she still refused. Stu had to drive all the way to New York to get him. That would have been an abrupt change in Smith’s life, going from being doted on by five loving women to living in Stu’s world of discipline, with two little brothers and another sibling on the way.

When we were kids, all we knew was that for some reason, we weren’t likely to see Gah-Gah or our aunts. Our only contact with them was the family Christmas card, including a photo, that my mom sent back east each year.

Bruce, on the other hand, was sometimes too clever for his own good. He was a tremendous influence on me, teaching me all about sports, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas and Gordie Howe. He also taught me the Lord’s Prayer and added to my sense of what God was—and then balanced it out by also teaching me all about girls. At night I’d go through his yearbook with him and pick out the prettiest ones. I wasn’t fussy. I loved blondes, brunettes and redheads too.

Dean had a vivid imagination and was fascinated by cars and by characters from the Old West, especially Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, General Custer and Wild Bill Hickock. He encouraged me to be charming to girls and taught me to kiss, using our pillows as imaginary girlfriends. One day he was playing up on the abandoned, closed-off top floor of the house with a toy campfire set he’d been given for his birthday. It came with plastic frying pans, plastic logs and a fake fire. Around three in the morning, my mom woke us up one by one and calmly told us not to panic and to follow her outside because the house was on fire.

We walked behind her in a line, with blankets wrapped around us. Looking up I could see a smoldering red square on the ceiling. Dean had started a real fire up there and, unable to put it out, he’d pushed a big old mattress over it thinking that would smother it. In the frigid January night, we all stood huddled with my mom, watching the growling red fire trucks and the firemen hosing down the roof. Stu was out of town but due back in the morning, and every one of us knew there was going to be hell to pay.

As soon as he walked through the front door, Stu ordered everyone upstairs to the attic and angrily told us the dangers of what might have happened. Then he grabbed Dean by the hair and hurled him head-first down the stairs. I was terrified. Then, because he’d caught Bruce and Wayne playing with matches only days before, he snatched both of them and threw them down the stairs for good measure. As they tumbled, I prayed I wouldn’t be next.

Eventually Smith, Bruce, Keith and Wayne were all moved out of the boys’ room and up to the attic after it had been repaired, to prevent them from poisoning the minds of their little brothers, but by then it was already too late.

Every year back then my dad would close down the wrestling circuit for the summer in mid-July. At the time, the annual Calgary Stampede was called the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, and each July people from all over the world flocked to the fairgrounds. There were cowboy hats everywhere, Ferris wheels and roller coasters, the smell of cotton candy mixed with the stink of manure. While the rodeo kicked off next door, my dad ran his biggest show of the year, a supercard on par with the biggest midway attractions. In 1964, he brought in the newly crowned World Wide Wrestling Federation World Champion Bruno Sammartino, who’d only just defeated the great Nature Boy Buddy Rogers, rated by many as the best wrestler of all time. Stu also brought in the undefeated boxing champion Rocky Marciano to be the special guest referee for the main event. After the Stampede parade, all of us Hart kids were posing alongside the big, long transport limo with Marciano when a tiff broke out between Dean and Ellie. Stu cracked Dean hard on the ear just seconds before the photo was taken, yet we all look happy in that picture, even Dean.