Readin’, Ridin’ Still a Passion for Bills’ Parker

No man is an island, but an injured offensive lineman during a Super Bowl media session comes close. Knowing this, Glenn Parker came prepared for his hour out of the spotlight Wednesday, arriving at the table that bore his name tag with a book, “Keep The Change,” by Thomas McGuane.

McGuane never had a chance. Of all things, a reporter wanted to talk to Parker. “So how’s the knee, Glenn?” And then another. And another.

Parker assured each of them that the knee felt fine but he wouldn’t know until later in the week if he would be able to play. Simple enough, right? Sorry, the damn writers wouldn’t leave. They wanted to know more.

For instance, about that book Parker was reading . . .

“Thomas McGuane,” Parker said, displaying the cover. “He’s a contemporary western writer . . . A friend of mine gave it to me for Christmas. He knows I like Larry McMurtry, especially his earlier stuff, which is all contemporary western, and he said, ‘Well, you’re going to like McGuane.’ I just started reading it yesterday. It’s really good so far.”

A book-reading Buffalo Bill? An endangered species, indeed, since McGuane doesn’t come with pictures, cartoons or Ford Bronco ads.

Sensing a literary find, the reporters pushed onward.

“Who else do you like to read?”

Kurt Vonnegut, Parker said. Hunter Thompson. Raymond Chandler. He reads them, he quotes them. “Red Wind,” a Chandler short story, “describes Southern California and the Santa Ana winds to a T,” Parker said. “The opening paragraph has become a classic, I don’t remember it verbatim, but it goes, ‘It’s the type of day where people sweat and housewives tickle the blades of their butcher knives while eyeing the backs of their husbands’ necks and things like that.”

Glancing at the down jackets and woolen overcoats filling the banquet room, Parker laughed. “I would kill to be in a Santa Ana right now,” he said.

Parker knows the condition. He was born in Westminster and attended Edison High School, where he distinguished himself by not playing any sport that required time away from his beloved Huntington Beach Pier. Parker played his first organized football at the age of 20, for Golden West College. Before that, “I just felt like I had better things to do. I just hung out at the beach, read a lot of books and tried to miss as many classes as I could. I always liked to enjoy myself a little more than working.”

Parker rode motorcycles. Reading and riding were always the passions in his life. He saw a little part of the world, traveling to Mexico, to England and taking “lost weekends in the car, driving all over the United States.”

For two years after high school graduation, this was his lifestyle. A pretty good one at that--”until,” he said, “my parents said, ‘Go to college or find a job.’ College seemed a whole lot easier.”

A threat was what caused him to enroll at Golden West. A dare got him to try out for the football team. “I’d play basketball with some of my friends at high school, and they’d say, ‘You’re a good athlete, you should’ve played football.’ And I’d tell them, ‘I can play here. I know it. I don’t have to prove it.’ And people would say to me, ‘You didn’t play then, you can’t play now. Who are you trying to fool?’ ”

Parker went out for the team, sat on the bench the first year and dominated the next. He was a quick study, true, but it’s difficult to teach somebody to stand 6 feet 5 or weigh 301 pounds, his tale of the tape today.

From there, his travels resumed. On to the University of Arizona. On to the All-Pacific 10 first team. On to the third round of the 1990 NFL draft. On to Buffalo. On to back-to-back Super Bowls--and a potential start in this one, knee willing.

Parker still feels as if he’s catching up, catching his breath. “I was a 24-year-old rookie. Most guys are 20, 21,” he said. “I’m still learning. I’m at a point in my career where I feel like a sophomore in college. Most of the guys have been doing it for 15 years.”

Yet, in a broader sense, Parker considers himself ahead of the game. “When I got to college, I was with kids right out of high school, and all they’d ever seen were the weight room and the rest of the athletic facilities,” he said. “I’d done a lot more as far as seeing the world and knowing myself.”

At 25, the work-in-progress is an engaging mass of contradictions: A tattooed, leather-clad Harley rider who listens to Bach. A self-proclaimed “right-wing radical” who reads Hunter Thompson. A “firm believer in the NRA” and an admirer of Pat Buchanan who believes the conservatives in this country need to lighten up and get a sense of humor.

A public radio station in Buffalo has tapped into this skewered world view this week, employing Parker as an on-site commentator on the Super Week wackiness.

Seen any fear and loathing yet?

“I think it was Howard Hawks, the director, who said, ‘You give me the characters, and I’ll build the plot,’ ” Parker said. “Well, there are so many characters here, you can go crazy. You’d go out of your mind.”

Mitch Frerotte is one. Frerotte is Parker’s offensive linemate and Harley Davidson mate. They ride together--”one-day biker episodes,” Parker calls the excursions. Frerotte, you might remember, is the Bill who painted his face with eye black and called himself Dr. Death before the slugs in the No Fun League home office outlawed it.

“He’s fun to be with, but our views on everything are a little different,” Parker said. “I guess he’s going to be a professional wrestler. That’ll be perfect for him. He’s got that berserk personality that would really play to the audience.”

No Book of the Month Club discussions over espresso with Mitch, we can assume?

“We talk about Easy Rider magazine,” Parker said with a smile. “It’s not literature, but it is the written word.”

Is there a book in Parker somewhere, someday? Yes, he contends, and, no, it will not be your $16.95 jock-with-a championship-ring, cash-in autobiography. “I see it as kind of a Vonnegut meets Hunter S. Thompson meets the Wild West-type thing,” he said. “Something bizarre, probably hard to sell. But you don’t write for others, you write for yourself.”

A few minutes later, an NFL official grabbed a microphone and brought the Bills’ media hour to a close. Immediately, Parker leaped from his seat and headed for the exit.

“That’s all, boys,” he said. “We’re out of here.”

He and Thomas McGuane had some catching up to do.