Just One of the Guys

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I thought it was the end of the world as I knew it.

When John Lennon was murdered, I walked around for two weeks and felt, on an emotional level, as though I had blown a tire.

When Lou Albano died, I thought: well, there goes another one.

Of the three, Albano was the only one I had shared some space under a ceiling with and on more than one occasion.

The room was Sunnyside Garden, that glorious, smoke-filled arena of my youth, on Queens Boulevard at 45th Street. Like countless other things in New York City that I thought would last forever -- or, at least, outlive me -- it's gone, so gone that you could drive past the spot now and not glimpse a hint that it ever existed. Like a story that's meant to be funny but has a conditional punchline, you had to be there.

From the age of 10 and for several years thereafter, I was there more often than not, starting with that night in 1959 when my grandfather took me to see the wrestling matches. The very first bout was the much-ballyhooed "dark match" --- unlike the rest of the card, it wouldn't be on TV, meaning you couldn't get it for free. Back then, TV and free were synonymous.

The only way to see Johnny Valentine vs. Bearcat Wright was to be there. We were and with that, I was hooked. The match ended in a draw, but that night, Johnny Valentine began the long line of bad guy wrestlers that I'd root for over the next few years.

Besides Valentine, the group included "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers and the Graham Bros. -- Dr. Jerry, purported to have a Ph.D in hypnotism, and younger brother Eddie -- who weren't related in the real world. Then there was Chet Wallach, who looked mean enough to rip your head off, but silently autographed my program after I'd shown more courage than in my previous 10 years on Earth by asking him.

I cheered, clapped and craved to see those wrestlers who strutted into the ring with their blond hair (rarely the color they came into the world with), greased into a duck's-ass style, either oblivious to the resounding boos or invigorated by them. Those were my guys.

They weren't the only villains, of course, and that's where Lou Albano comes in. Today, he is recalled by most as "Captain Lou," a wild and crazy cartoon character in Hawaiian shirts who pierced his bearded face with dangling rubber bands and talked like there was no tomorrow when he was being interviewed.

The Captain managed wrestlers (including Johnny Valentine's son, Greg) and was more colorful than any of them. That's how he really made his mark on popular culture, long before he played Cyndi Lauper's dad on her music video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and went on to some other things that had nothing to do with the ring. He managed the rock band NRBQ, who wrote a song about him, and even showed up on TV's "Miami Vice" and "Hollywood Squares."

But there was a time when Lou Albano was a wrestler himself, a notch or two below the Johnny Valentines in likelihood to leave the ring with a victory, as part of the bad guy bunch -- Tony Altamore, Tiger Jack Vanski and Angelo Savoldi belonged to this same fraternity -- who served as foils for the likes of Antonino Rocca, Eduardo Carpentier and Haystacks Calhoun.

Back then, there were no rubber bands, no scraggly beard and no interviews for him; he simply played his part, gave the good guy all he could handle and usually lost, as I recall.

In reading this past week of Lou Albano's death at age 76, I was surprised but pleased to learn that he and Tony Altamore had been the tag team champs in 1967. I vaguely remember them teamed as The Sicilians, but didn't know about their holding any title.

By then, my interest in wrestling and Sunnyside Garden had left the building, having moved on to chasing females and singing in a rock band. But I do remember a time when watching wrestlers was my game.

They're gone now --- Johnny Valentine, Buddy Rogers, the Grahams and the one who started the whole thing, my grandfather. Sunnyside Garden became a Wendy's hamburger joint. I don't know about Chet Wallach; he may still be around. The autographed program got separated from me somewhere along the way, but at least I can remember my one night of courage in getting it.

If the songs we sang, played on a jukebox or simply waited to hear on the radio are the soundtrack for the times of our lives, then I guess the celebrities of any given period -- the ones who made some kind of impression -- are faces to go with the music.

Lou Albano didn't have that greased-blond D.A. look; as a wrestler, his hair was dark and short-cropped. But he was one of my guys, even if I didn't know it at the time.

Here's to you, Lou.