Wrestling Hillary Clinton: Part II

Partin Reign May be Short-Lived

Edward G. Partin, start witness in the trial of Jimmy Hoffa, is now reigning supreme over the Teamsters in central Louisiana.

‘I’m not going to have Partin and a bunch of hoodlums running this state,’ Gov. McKeithen told us. ‘We have no problems with law-abiding labor. But when gangsters raid a construction project and shoot men up at work I’m going to do something about it.’

‘Partin has two Justice Department guards with him for fear Hoffa will retaliate against him,’ Gov. McKeithen said, ‘This gives him immunity.’

The governor referred to an incident in Plaquemine when 45 to 50 men shot up 30 workers of the W.O. Bergeron Construction Co.

‘Baton Rouge has never has such a siege of labor violence as it’s seen since Partin came back from the Chattanooga trial with two Justice Department guards to protect him.’

New Orleans State Times, 27 January 1968

Coach didn’t know it, but when he lent me his keys to Belaire’s gymnasium and offices I made copies. He lent them to me so I could wheel the massive television and VCR machine from the shared coach’s office and use it to play Vision Quest for new wrestlers at the first day of practice. He wanted to watch it first, and told me he’d meet me after school. I used that time to jog over to Little Saigon and make copies.

Like Baton Rouge, Southern Vietnam was a hot and humid seafood-producing region and had been a French colony. When Saigon fell in 1975, hundreds of Vietnamese families fled and settled in, of all places, Belaire subdivision. They worked in our seafood industry and to set up shops in strip malls along Florida Boulevard, fare enough from wealthier subdivisions that rent was cheap and regulations were lax. Their shops were known to sell practically anything. They were industrious, classic examples of what Americans touted as hard working, but they weren’t accepted by the working class families around Belaire back then; it was probably too soon after the Vietnam conflict.

One Halloween, a local Vietnam conflict veteran with PTSD shot a Vietnamese kid who knocked on his door and was, ironically, trying to blend in by dressing as a GI Joe soldier and trick-or treating; several other shootings made national news. For whatever reason, white families blamed the Vietnamese for violence around Belaire and had begun moving away; houses became cheaper, and more ethnicities moved in. Though few of us of any race interacted with the Vietnamese community we all shopped there, and we especially liked the Bon Migh sandwhiches made with French baguettes and were advertised with a big sign that said: “Bon Migh (a Vietnamese Po’Boy)”

In their shops, besides Vietnamese Po’Boys, teenagers could buy cigarettes and bootleg cassette tapes, rent porn, and have keys copied despite “do not copy” being engraved on the original. Ironically, they also sold t-shirts and hats that catered to American veterans and teenagers who looked up to them, shirts with skulls wearing Airborne berets that said, “Death from above,” or with an M16 riffle and “Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.” During the daytime on almost any weekday, you’d see bearded veterans wearing faded green army fatigue jackets and smoking cigarettes outside of the windowless bar of Little Saigon’s strip mall.

Like a lot of Belaire kids, I used to sneak out of school and go there to smoke cigarettes with the vets and listen to their stories, not because I was interested, but because they usually bought us beer. But I didn’t linger that time; I jogged back to Belaire, and Coach and I watched a bootleg copy of Vision Quest together.

Vision Quest was barely known outside of wrestlers. It paled in comparison to the success of similar movies at the time, like The Karate Kid, Rocky, and of course Star Wars, all versions of the heroes journey that dominated films after 1979’s Star Wars. The formula was obvious: an orphan or kid with a struggling parent stumbled upon a mentor, overcame a stronger opponent, and returned to help others do the same; but, Vision Quest was different because the protagonist lacked a mentor and was self-motivated.

Vision Quest was quickly forgotten in the wake of other films, but its saving grace was that it stared Madona before anyone knew who she was. When she became famous, Vision Quest was rereleased and advertised as a movie staring Madona, which is probably why Coach wanted to watch it before letting me show it to the freshmen. She only has a small, quick scene where she’s a bar singer and sings a slow song for the wrestler and his older girlfriend (an analogy to Lea I had already noticed). Soon after that song, they drove off and fooled around in a discrete scene; the sex was downplayed because the wrestler emphasized having burned 150 calories and said it was a great way to cut weight; and, as I noticed when I first watched it as a 13 year old, when she said she liked strong hands he subtly kept showing his disproportionately large hands to her every time he gestured.

The film was based on a book written by a wrestler, one that the author and USA Wrestling Hall of Fame wrestler John Irving called “the best book about wrestling ever written.” All of Irving’s books had wrestlers, and Robin Williams portrayed one in the film version of The World According to Garp, but Coach didn’t just accept that it was a respectable movie. He was a hands-on experiential learner, and we watched Vision Quest together in the time slot that would take up a day’s wrestling practice starting a week later.

Coach and I watched the whole film. It took about an hour and a half, the time we were about to both start staying after school for practice, anyway. In that brief time, we saw a condensed version Lauden’s senior year and all of the lessons he learned, like how to stop a nosebleed, counter a chicken-wing, and how to cut unhealthy amounts of weight in a short time. And because Lauden was studying for medical school and talking about what was happening with his weight loss and sexual urges, we learned a bit of biology, too.

After Coach watched it, he nodded and said it would be fine and lent me his keys without further questions or qualifiers, and he never mentioned Vision Quest again.

We wheeled the massive television back into the coach’s shared office. He reached up and rested his hand on my shoulder and began walking towards the football team’s weight cage. Coach’s grip was like a vice clamped on my shoulder, and I followed him without much choice.

“Listen,” he said when we reached the cage. It shared a gym with the basketball and wrestling teams, and Belaire’s faded blue mat was in three sections and rolled up against the wall so basketball players could use the full court. The cage was locked during school so no one would use it unsupervised.

He opened the padlock with his keys, swung the gate open, and locked the gate against the cage so it couldn’t accidentally swing shut. He put his left hand on my shoulder again, raised his stubby right forefinger and looked up into my eyes.

He had soft grey eyes that matched his whispy hair, and I saw a tiny bald spot forming atop a head so flat you could rest a can of beer on it. His finger was about a foot from my face, and his stubby arm bulged with muscles like Popeye’s. He stood silently for a few seconds, then said, “If you’re going to be co-captain, I’d like you to earn a B average.”

I nodded and said I’d try my best. Coach nodded back and released his hand. We never spoke of it again.

State law required varsity athletes to maintain a C average, and most star athletes I knew were given grades to keep them playing. I had failed about a third of my classes in ninth grade and a few in 10th, around the time my dad and I were hauled out of his cabin by armed deputies, and why I couldn’t wrestle that year. I barely earned a C average my junior year, and that was with repeating classes I already taken but failed in 9th and 10th grades. I never saw the point of school. Both of my parents had dropped out in 11th grade, and my grandfather never obtained any degree yet was the most powerful man in Louisiana. None of the Vietnamese shop owners and seafood packers had American diplomas, and most barely spoke English yet were doing better financially than the unemployed white people around Belaire who complained that their jobs were being taken by people willing to work harder. Had it not been for wrestling, I would have used my emancipation to drop out of school.

We made sure the weight cages had towels and disinfectant spray and clasp ed the padlock on our way out; he never mentioned my grades again, and I committed to being the best co-captain I could be; that’s exactly how I phrased it to myself, not with determination but with a smirk directed at that army slogan. I already felt accomplished by having been voted co-captain, and I viewed my team’s opinion higher than anything the army could ever offer.

Coach had never seen a wrestling co-captain before, and he was as surprised as I was when it happened. To put that in perspective, a tribute to Coach in USA Wrestling Magazine when he was named wrestler of the year, said:

“Coach Dale Ketelsen has forgotten more about wrestling than any of us will ever know.”

That sentence about forgetting was written before anyone knew he would pass from Alzheimer’s in 2014; it was meant as a compliment, a way of saying he was a legend with a wealth of knowledge, and no one would argue that.

Like John Irving, Coach was in the USA Wrestling Hall of Fame. Unlike Irving, who admitted that he’s in it because of his fame and consistent dedicated to the sport, not his talent, just like Vice President Dick Cheney and a lot of other famous people who happened to have wrestled, Coach was a dedicated wrestler and revered nationally. He was the real deal. He grew up in a family of Iowa wrestlers and surrounded by legends like Iowa and olympic Coach Dan Gable, and yet the only other time he would hear of a co-captain was LSU’s revitalized team in the mid-1990’s, which used the same voting system as Coach.

Most teams elect their captains. To facilitate the process, Coach used a ranked voting system similar to the Most Valuable Player award for team sports and the Outstanding Wrestler award for wresters who stand out in a tournament. Every voter ranks their top five or so choices, and no one seems upset when the winner is announced. Ranked voting has been touted as a more democratic system than a two-party, winner-take-all system that seems to frustrate and alienate 49% of voters every four years, and currently Maine and Oregon are testing if ranked voting could replace their older methods. 

Almost inevitably, teams elected their best or most winning wrestler as captain, and the Belarie Bengals captain for two seasons was Jeremy Gann, who, like Hillary, was a terse but talented wrestler. His working class family had moved to Louisiana from a wrestling hub in Pennsylvania, and they settled in Belaire subdivision and Jeremy stepped into a team with a few years of experience and was captain for the 1988-1989 season.

Jeremy won second in state at 135 pounds in 1989, and two other Belaire wrestlers placed in city and state, twins named Andy and Timmy, but they were graduating and voting was for the next season. There were other, better wrestlers than I was, but the team voted for me just as much as for Jeremy, but even that shouldn’t have resulted in co-captains. It turns out that everyone ranked either Jeremy or me first or second, but Jeremy only voted for himself and I ranked Jeremy first and didn’t include myself in my choices. Coach checked the math twice, and Belaire ended up with co-captains for the 1989-1990 season, one of them the team’s most talented wrestler and me, probably the most average of the dozen or so wrestlers who returned after summer and the few new freshmen who wanted to see if wrestling was for them; it was for those freshmen that I borrowed Coach’s VCR to watch Vision Quest.

Because Coach was a man of so few words, I listened to everything he said and ruminated over its implications for the type of person I wanted to become. I wasn’t sure what that person would be like yet, but I hoped it would be a taller version of Coach. Though he didn’t say much, he was an exceptional teacher. It was because of Coach that I grew to have the strongest cradle in all of Southern Louisiana, and it began the summer I was emancipated.

When Uncle Bob got sick and Auntie Lo was too sloshed by 3pm every day to drive me to and from practice at the downtown summer wrestling camp, Coach picked me up from the Belaire parking lot in his old brown Ford 150 pickup truck that he used to shuttle rolled up wrestling between schools for tournaments during season. In summer, he filled the truck with mops, 5 gallon buckets of fungicide, and bags of off-white headgear that he bought in bulk and dropped off at schools with even less of a wrestling budget than Belaire, mostly smaller rural schools along the 80 mile  River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He’d stop at Region I schools like Brusly and Clinton and chat with their coaches, who were often former high school wrestlers or simply adults who signed up for the job, and chat with them and make sure they had fungicide and mops and spare headgear for wrestlers who may be too embarassed to admit they couldn’t afford it.

“I started a company,” he once told me on the drive. The windows were down despite the muggy air blowing on our faces, but the noise was negligible because Coach rarely approached the speed limit when driving, and the speed limit was a paltry 45 along most of the narrow and winding River Road.

“A small company,” he said. He pushed the turn signal lever up and slowed down and got into the turning lane that would take us to Clinton. He stopped, turned, and continued.

“It let’s me buy equipment at wholesale prices,” he said. “They only sell to companies.”

He kept both hands on the wheel and shrugged and said, “I figured, with a company, I could buy more with the same amount of money.”

“That way,” he said, “I could give more schools what they need.”

We pulled into Clinton’s parking lot and he lowered the gear lever into park, turned off the truck, looked at me, and said, “Rising waters raise all ships.”

Growing up in a port town, that was probably the first metaphor that made sense to me; sayings like “raining cats and dogs” was too fantastic, and bromides like “work smarter, not harder,” were useless. But everyone rising simultaneously was clear; the Plaquemine docks raised and lowered the water, and all ships rose equally.

Coach opened his door and slid onto the parking lot pavement. I climbed out and helped him carry a bucket of fungicide into Clinton’s gym, and climbed back in to work our way to the next school.

About two and a half hours to three hours after leaving Belaire, we reached New Orleans stopped at St. Paul’s in Covington, a relatively wealthy suburb of New Orleans. Coach would almost always stop there to visit with his son, Coach Craig Ketelsen, who was head coach of St. Paul’s and on a few state athletic committees. Craig towered over Coach like my family towered over me, but he had a broad smile and was always happy to see his dad and say hello to me. They’d chat about the state’s athletics and Coach would, when asked, offer his thoughts. St. Pauls never needed supplies and we never lingered; they’d shake hello and chat quickly and wave goodbye, and Coach would take me over to Jesuit High School, home of the Bluejays.

Jesuit was a massive and ornate Catholic school with three tiers of wrestling teams. There varsity team was away competing in and winning a few national freestyle tournaments, but their second and third string teams were training all summer in one of their gymnasiums, a wrestling-only room that could have swallowed any one of the Region I schools along the River Road. They had two new Bluejay blue mats permanently laid out, and the ceiling rafters were decorated with rows of state championship titles dating back to practically when Louisiana was still a French colony. 

Their coach, Coach Sam, was as diminutive as Coach but had been a nationally ranked collegiate athlete and still competed in masters-level judo tournaments. He was half Japanese and a bit younger than Coach, and from a distance they were the same height and had a similar stance, relaxed but centered and able to move in any direction at any moment. I never heard what they chatted about, because I was too busy getting beaten by the second-string Bluejays.

I could hold my own on with their third string, but the second string would throw me around with moves that seemed more like judo than wrestling. I learned to turn face down in midair instead of being pinned, and they punished me for that by slipping half nelsons on me and pushing my face across the mat until it was rubbed raw and as bright red as the pimples I kept hidden under my t-shirt. I learned to fight the half-nelson with pure perseverance, and I quickly learned that whatever brand of fungicide Jesuit could afford, it didn’t sting mat-burn like whatever Coach’s company bought and gave away.

My only strength remained a strong crossface and long legs that I’d sprawl all the way back to Clinton high school whenever a Bluejay tried to shoot on me; I’d crossface them and spin behind them and wrap my long arms in a cradle around their neck and one leg. I’d clasp my hands and, like most inexperienced wrestlers, try to control them by muscling my arms together. It sometimes worked against third string wrestlers, but invariably a second string wrestler would break my grip and escape.  

On the drive back one day, Coach moved his right hand off the steering wheel and held it up, not like a handshake, but with his thump pressed against the side. The windows were up because we were driving around 55 miles an hour along I-10 to get home, so it was easy to hear him even though he only glanced at me to see if I were looking before looking back at the road and speaking into the windshield.

“A wrestler looses 15% of their strength with their thumb out,” he said.

He moved his thumb out to emphasize the point, then moved it back to along the side of his hand.

“To have a stronger grip,” he said, glancing at me, “keep your thumb in.”

He replaced his hand on the steering wheel and stared at the road and hummed softly. I practiced clasping my hands with thumbs by the sides and trying to yank my hands apart by thrusting my elbows away from each other. My grip was noticeably stronger the first time I tried it, a rare instance of instant gratification that’s fun to show freshmen just starting out in wrestling or judo; you can try it right now faster than it took to explain it.

On our next trip, I was holding a Bluejay in the cradle as he kicked and kicked, but I was unable to roll him to his back and pin him. I was still squeezing and trying to use muscle I didn’t have. Coach appeared and asked us to hold still.

“Put your left knee here,” he said, pointing to the Bluejay’s lower back.

I did that.

“And plant your foot there,” he said, pointing to a spot on the mat across from my opponent.

“Now push with your foot and pull your hands towards your chest,” he said.

I did, and the Bluejay pivoted on my knee and rolled onto his back; he laughed at how he couldn’t stop it in the way someone laughs on a roller coaster because they feel out of control but safe.

Coach pointed to my clasped hands. “Now move that,” he said, then moved his finger to an empty spot in the air about a foot and a half from my chest, “here.”

I did, and the Bluejay’s knee and nose were brought together with no noticeable effort from my arms. His laugh was muffled by his knee pressed against his face.

I kept getting drug across the mat by Bluejays that summer, but whenever I clasped the cradle I usually got them to their backs and often pinned them. They learned to avoid the cradle and I got better at it and at countering throws. By mid summer, our ships were floating higher.

Uncle Bob passed away and I was emancipated but I didn’t tell Coach; as I mentioned, I was unsure if it would affect my eligibility. On our last drive along I-10 before school began that fall, I was crumpling a sheet of newspapers in each hand. The floorboard of Coach’s passenger seat was piled with tightly compressed wads somewhere between the size of a baseball and a golfball. Coach had told me that was a way he and other athletes developed grip strength back in Iowa. The main way was farm work, grasping and tossing bails of hay or shoveling pig slop all day, but whenever they had down time they exercised whatever they could.  I started crumpling newspapers that day. Monday to Sunday wasn’t too challenging, but the thick Sunday paper led my forearms to tremble by the end.

My family had been in the news weekly for a while; he was released from prison early because of declining health – diabetes and an ambiguous heart condition – and Uncle Doug was now president of the Teamsters and Uncle Keith was a senior labor official who Doug said would take his place. The articles all mentioned Big Daddy being an all-American hero, and on days where I saw that I crumpled the wads extra tightly and yet my forearms didn’t seem to tremble.

I saw Big Daddy’s smiling face on the politics section, where the reporter quoted something that a former Louisiana attorney general said that made the news a lot when I was growing up, saying Ed Partin would have been governor had he had a college diploma. The article went on to describe how he helped bring the petrochemical industry to Baton Rouge and influenced I-110 being built so Teamsters could ship plastics and petroleumn products to and from Louisiana along I-10, which stretched from the coast of Florida, through New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and terminating at the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles. And it reminded everyone of how Bobby Kennedy, who had been assassinated in 1968, had championed Big Daddy and how his federal protection had allowed Big Daddy to practically run the state for decades.

The advocated quoted Governor McKeithen: “I’m not going to let Edward Partin and his gangstar, hoodlum Teamsters run this state!” In the terse humor of journalism, the reporter said that Big Daddy didn’t endorse McKeithen and McKeithen lost his reelection but the Teamsters kept voting Big Daddy back into power; even during his first year in a Texas prison, he ran the Louisiana Teamsters like Hoffa had run the international Teamsters during his first year in a New Jersey prison.

“Coach,” I began, timidly.

“Yes?” he replied, not taking his eyes off the interstate. He flipped his turn signal and we exited Oneal Lane.

“Why didn’t you try out for the olympics again?” I asked. “I mean, the guy who barely beat you was the greatest. You could have gotten a gold.”

Coach was barely defeated in olympic trial semifinals by Doug Blubaugh, a gold-medal winner in the 1960 Rome olympics who pinned all four opponents in record time, yet he only defeated Coach 4 to 3 in sudden death overtime. Had it been anyone other than Doug Blubaugh, Coach probably would have won trials and earned a gold medal in Rome when he was still a young man. He had never mentioned his background, but I had overheard other coaches talking about him that summer. Most coaches quoted the same stories, and they all spoke of Iowa with reverence and how Dan Gable had come down to wrestling camps in Baton Rouge in he 70’s, when most of them were high school wrestlers and would have learned the same techniques as Coach. It was only that summer that I realized Coach was an olympian and almost as much of a legend as Dan Gable. I had asked him  timidly because I assumed, deep down, either without realizing it or articulating it as a thought, that most people didn’t want to be questioned about their personal lives.

We approached Florida Buelevard and Coach stopped at the red light. He looked at me and said, “Well, by that time I was married.”

He took a hand off the steering wheel and looked at me and shrugged as if it held explained everything, and his palm was facing up as if it held his mind at the time. I looked, but I still didn’t understand. The light turned green and he replaced his hand and turned left onto Florida Buelevard. We got up to around 45 miles an hour and he shrugged again and said, “I had done my best at wrestling and now I wanted to do my best as a husband.”

He flicked on the turn signal and eased into the right side turning lane across from the Little Saigon.

“And a father. Craig was born by then.”

He glanced at me and shrugged. He looked back at the road and said, “I was a PE teacher. They don’t make much money. With a master’s degree I’d earn $1,400 more a year, so I started taking night classes and earned a master’s in education.”

We stopped at a stop sign and Coach looked at me and smiled and shrugged and said, “And here we are.”

He turned left and pulled into Belaire’s parking lot and didn’t say anything more about college or how he got to Belaire, and I didn’t ask.

Season began and I grew a reputation as having a deadly cradle. Teammates said I had a kung-fu grip, and they kept calling either me or my grip tenacious. I was still loosing once or twice a tournament and never reaching above third place. Hillary was undefeated again that year, thrashing even Jesuit’s 145 pounder.

I used my emancipation paperwork to get my driver’s license, but then I made the worse mistake of my life up to that point and broke up with Lea because of some ill-conceived belief that I wanted to be morally superior and avoid anyone who indulged in cigarettes, booze, or sex, probably sparked by Rocky’s cranky old coach who told him ‘Dames make legs weak.” We remained friends, and her dad helped me find, buy, and repair a 500cc Honda Ascot motorcycle, one with a shaft drive that wouldn’t need maintenance and got around 55 miles to the gallon so I could drive the 20 or so miles to the downtown training camp for about 25 cents each way.

I left the Abrams house because their dad developed an aggressive cancer, just like Uncle Bob had, and was dying and the Abrams wanted private time with just family; I took the hint, and instantly I viewed the Belaire Bengals as my family. Lea started college at Souteastern in Hammond and evolved into something like an older sister. I still visited the Abrams and helped move their dad around, just like I had moved Uncle Bob around to clean his backside and to prevent bed sores, but I saw myself as a visitor and friend of the family, the same way I was a guest at Jesuit and not on their team.

I moved back with my mom, who was back with her boyfriend and out of her depression and lived about five miles away in a newer subdivision that was still in Belaire’s district. But we rarely saw each other. I was spending most of my time at either Belaire or downtown, running up and down the state capital steps, and we rarely saw each other. I’d let myself in late at night after practice and studying with a few wrestlers who lived in Belaire subdivision, and I’d be up and running before dawn.

I won my first and only gold medal at the Belaire Christmas tournament, a tiny and barely attended event that was an Iowa tradition geared towards kids who viewed their teams of family. It felt good, and I leaned into my role as co-captain.

After we cleaned our mat and rolled it back up and everyone went home to their families, I snuck back to school and used my key to open the gym and partially unroll one of the mat segments. School and the camp were on a two week break, which gave me two weeks of uninterrupted practice. We had a throw dummy that weighted around 75 pounds, and I practiced throwing it again and again, then I practiced shooting on it again and again, dropping my hips below its center of gravity, planting a foot on the mat so I could lift with my strong quads, and staring towards the sky so my back would be straight and I could will my entire body straight up and lift the dummy off the ground.

“The Russians believed that if you took a man off his feet,” Coach told us once. “You controlled him.”

He shrugged because that was obvious, and in a way it is. As usual, there was more to that story. The idea of taking an opponent off their feet was analogous to something I heard in literature class about Hercules wrestling ????, the son of Mother Earth, who won by lifting ??? off his feet and breaking contact with his source of strength.  In the 1950’s the Soviet Union dominated international wrestling tournaments, and they focused on deep doubles so they could lift an opponent instead of fighting on the ground with a low single. That was the height of the cold war. The 1960 Rome olympics were only a year before Barbed Wire Day trapped people in East Germany and the Soviets began building the Berlin Wall, the same year Kennedy launched the Bay of Pigs fiasco in an attempt to stop communist influence in Cuba, and two years before the world watched the Cuban missel crisis with fear, expecting the Soviets and the United States to erupt into nuclear war; it was the opposite of rising waters raising all ships, because the two Titans would bring everyone on Earth down with them. The olympics aimed to rise above politics, and Coach and his teammates trained with anyone from any country willing to improve and challenge each other, just like the Baton Rouge all-city camp did.

The dummy only weighted 75 pounds, but after an hour of taking it off its feet again and again I was drenched in sweat and panting. I decided it was time to quit. I dropped face down and did a few sets of pushups, resting only when my arms were wobbly. I probably did around 100 total. We didn’t lift weights during summer to reduce the likelihood of injuries and to not gain any weight, even if it was muscle; instead, we focused on low-weight, high-repetition exercises like pushups.

I rolled over and did around fifty crunches with my legs atop the dummy, then rotated around and used the dummy as a backrest while I sat and let my breath calm down. I, like most wresters doing well that year, was in remarkable physical condition. A few months later, I’d view the army’s basic training, advanced infantry school, and Airborne school as trivial by comparison to wrestling camp, a sentiment shared by practically every wrestler I met in service. When you’re in good shape, your breath quickly returns to normal, and a few minutes after plopping down on the dummy, I grabbed a mop and bucket of fungicide and wiped my sweat off the mat and used a towel to wipe off the dummy.

I rolled up the partially-unrolled mat back up against the other two sections and walked to the office shared by football coaches. I used my keys to open it and go inside, took a shower and changed into dry clothes. I weighed myself on the scale, nudging the balances until the needle centered. I was 144.5 pounds at the end of a long and sweaty day, so even with the two pound allocation I would still have to diet the next three months and probably fast the day before weigh in. I gulped water from the fountain and plopped down in Coach’s chair with a satisfied sigh.

Coach’s desk was littered with USA Wrestling magazines, pamphelts from national teams on the science behind training methods, and framed black and white photos of famous olympians from Coach’s era; one is still famous among wrestlers, and you can search the internet to see the world’s heaviest heavyweight, a 450 pound Russian, with his feet high in the air and being thrown in a perfect 360 degree arc by the world’s lightest heavyweight, a 195 pound midwesterner Coach knew. You see the little guy’s face under the big guys, and his eyes are a unique combination of determination, commitment, and “Oh, no… this is going to hurt.”

He won the match, but was so badly injured that international laws changed to limit heavyweights to what is now 275 pounds. A few other photos were framed here and there, including one with Coach and his Iowa teammates.

I picked it up and looked at a young version of Coach. He hadn’t changed. His head had always shaped like an acorn, flat on top and rounded around the cheeks, and his countenance always radiated calmness. He looked happy, and always had. I put the photo back and opened one of the USA Wrestling magazines talking about new rules, like the one about the relatively new policy of adding two pounds after Christmas so growing kids didn’t have to starve themselves to stay in the same weight class. It made sense, but most things do in hindsight. It had only been a few years since matches were stopped for bleeding; before that, which was before the Regan administration admitted there was a thing called Aides and HIV, or that anyone other than a gay person or drug addict could get it, wresters would wallow around in the blood of a broken nose until someone won; now, a match was stopped at the first sign of a nosebleed. Like a lot of things in hindsight, it made sense and I wondered how people ever thought differently.

I flipped through a few magazines but was still too riled up to read. I rotated around in Coach’s chair and flipped on the television. There were only three televsion stations and one public station back then, and I knew the old black and white school television only picked up two stations, but one of them was bound to have a Christmas special like Rudolf or Frosty. Instead, I turned on the television and was greated by the 82nd Airborne.

The 82nd was and is America’s Guard of Honor, the president’s quick-reaction force and on call 24 hours a day to begin leaving within two hours of being summoned to duty. On ????, President George Bush Senior, the vice president under Ronald Reagan, a decorated combat pilot and former director of the CIA director, continued Reagan’s war on drugs by calling the 82nd Airborne to parachute into Panama and overthrow President Noriega, who Bush said was funneling drugs into America. A few hours later, a fleet of C-141 Starlifters, C-130 Hercules, and C-5 Galaxies left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and flew almost 18 hours to Panama. Thousands of paratroopers jumped from the sky into 3am darkness from a mere 600 feet in the air, being shot at as they fell but hitting the ground and overtaking Panama’s air force base within a few hours. A coalition of forces followed and landed at the airport, including Special Forces from the Kennedy Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, navy SEALS from San Diego, and a few Delta Force anti-terrorism commandos, a unit that was rumored to exist after Chuck Norris made a cheesy movie about them called The Delta Force and really did exist in the shadows of Fort Bragg. Worldwide news teams followed, and every television station was focused on President Noriega’s compound and the army of 82nd paratroopers surrounding him and his presidential guard soldiers.

I became riveted, and for the next two weeks I alternated tossing around the dummy and watching news. The 82nd’s goal was to capture Noriega alive, and they were trying to to that by keeping him in his compound and depriving him and his guards of sleep; they did that by flying in giant speakers like you’d see at a rock concert and blaring heavy metal music at the compound 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The soldiers, most of whom were barely adults and would have been unable to buy beer in any state other than Louisiana, chose the tapes, and that’s how I knew I was destined to join the 82nd; they were funny about it, and the two songs reporters kept showing were also the songs played the most, Van Halen’s “Jump!” and “Panama” from their 1985 album aptly titled “1985.”

For 24 hours a day, Noriega had 120 decibels of David Lee Roth’s voice singing Jump! and Panama, louder than a Van Halen concert and like trying to sleep under the roaring engine of a C-141.

In about six months, I’d learn from some of the guys I saw on television that though the news didn’t know it, when the twin doors at the rear of their plane opened and the muggy jungle air wooshed inside, the air force pilot turned on the speakers and began blaring Guns and Rose’s “Welcome to the Jungle” and those guys could hear Axl Rose’s voice over the sound of their team shouting, “One thousand, Two thousand, Three Thousand, Four…” before being yanked by their opening parachute, a habit we use on jumps because if your ‘chute doesn’t open in four seconds it failed and you should activate your reserve before you splat on the ground in another few seconds. Of course I didn’t know any of that yet. All I knew was that I was scheduled to join the 82nd and that I liked their taste in music.

I began pondering my contract. I was on track to graduate, and had even earned all A’s and one B on my midterm report card. But I had broken a few laws. I stole a few snack bars from convenience stores, an old habit I had from when I first started practicing sleight of hand and was making friends by being able to easily steal things no matter how closely convenience store attendants watched. But that was a mindless habit, not really intending to be malicious, unlike when I stole a motorcycle headlight just before season began.

It was an impulse. I had laid down my Ascot in the Little Saigon parking lot, a common accident for new riders who don’t realize that without momentum it’s easy to lay a bike down going slowly and trying to turn too sharply. I picked up the small bike as effortlessly as rolling someone over in the cradle and saw that the light was cracked and the bulb broken, which meant I wouldn’t be able to ride back from wrestling camp at night.

It would have taken me too long to seek and find magic shows, especially now that school was in session for everyone. I remembered seeing an Ascot like mine in the Abrams’s neighborhood, and I made my way there, not planning anything but mindless and wondering what to do about mine. As if preordained, the motorcycle was in their driveway and partially disassembled. Without thinking, I disconnected the light assembly and rode off with it in my lap.

The owner saw my license plate as I drove off, and later that evening police showed up at my mom’s house. I returned the light and the owner chose not to press charges; had he not shown mercy, I would have been charged as an adult and probably gone to jail. Judge Bob had warned me about that, saying that if I did anything like my grandfather or father I’d be tried as an adult, and not even he could help me from his perch in family court. My mom didn’t say much about the police showing up, but she bought me a new headlight and I went back to my routines without thinking much about what happened.

It all came back to me while I was sitting in Coach’s chair over Christmas, watching the 82nd on that old TV. I had almost thrown away my future. But what bothered me the most was not almost going to jail, it was that I’d make the newspaper as a thief who was Belaire’s co-captain. Seeing the 82nd guys interviewed on television sparked that, because they weren’t cited by name they were cited as representatives of The United States armed forces. I thought about how I foolishly broke up with Lea for imagined moral reasons, ostensibly for the sake of wrestling just like I was motivated to steal the headlight to drive to and from wrestling camp, and I saw myself as a hypocrite; of all things bad in this world, Uncle Bob had said on his deathbed, the worse is a hypocrite. I thought about how ashamed I felt about being a Partin when my father went to prison and when Big Daddy went to prison, and the first hints of empathy for others crept into my young mind: the Belaire Bengals would have seen their co-captain arrested for stealing. I vowed to better than that hooky army slogan, I vowed to be the type of person who would never embarass Coach or my team. 

But I didn’t start right away. I had already copied his key and broken into the school, and as Coach would say, the horse was already out of the barn. I finished watching the news and came back the next day and the next.

The saga in Panama was covered on both channels daily, interrupting popular shows whenever something remarkable happened. Two Delta Force commandoes and a few SEALS died; the international community commented, some supporting and others condemning; the 82nd kept blaring Van Halen; legal experts argued that the U.S. constitution forbade targeting one person; politicians said the horse was already out of the barn so Noriega should surrender; more legal experts pointed out that the president could only order soldiers away for 30 days without congressional approval; and so on.

At the beginning of 1990 and near the end of 30 days without congressional approval, Noriega finally surrendered and the 82nd returned to Fort Bragg, home of the Airborne and Special Forces command. I quipped to friends that Noriega was probably the only person who knew the lyrics to Panama better than me and David Lee Roth, but none of them got the joke. Most teenagers were aware of what was happening in the news, but no one I knew watched the news every day over Christas break or had committed to joining the 82nd after high school; it was my first introduction to seeing the world differently than my peers based on our plans for the future and what we watched on television.

School began a few days after New Years, and I bent my copies of Coach’s keys with a pair of needle nose pliers, crumbled a few sheets of newspaper around them, and threw the camouflaged keys into a trash can.

I showed up at the first day of practice after the break and helped my team unroll the mat segments. Three of us grabbed an end and rippled the mat to get air underneath and slid it across the floor to near one of the basketball goals. Three other guys brought a segment and laid it beside ours, and another three brought the final segment. Jeremy pulled out a role of clear tape to join the edges, and we all lined up along opposite sides of the edges, planted our feet, clasped hands, and leaned back as hard as we could to bring the edges close together, like how you’d clamp wood together before gluing it. Jeremey crawled between us, laying down tape, and someone grabbed a mop and bucket and wiped fungicide across the mat.

We waited a few minutes for the mat to dry and chatted and laughed and caught up about the holidays; as usual, I avoided personal updates and made jokes instead. We warmed up and I led the team in drills. Usually Jeremy did that, but he was surprised that my throw and double leg had improved so much since the Christmas tournament that I took him down three times in a row, something I had never done before. Everyone wanted to practice, and I walked around the small groups and gave tips. In my mind, I saw the dummy leaning against the football cage, and I thought he was happy to finally have a break.

Coach walked in after his coach’s meeting, saw what was happening, and smiled and told us to keep doing what we were doing. He walked around and gave tips when appropriate. From that point on, Jeremy and I started practice and Coach was more like a facilitator who gently steered rather than strongly directed the team.

Two months later, I stepped on the mat to face Hillary Clinton.

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