Sharing the Pain

Troupers they are--yes, first-rate actors. And, respecting the code of the theater, they see that their show goes on even under discouraging conditions. And if they have their own troubles--which they do--they keep their sorrow tightly locked within.--The Sunday Oregonian on local wrestling, 1936

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Ed “Moondog” Moretti enters the ring wearing a spiked dog collar around his fat throat. A balding, middle-aged veteran of the Portland wrestling scene, he flaunts the bravado of 28 years on the mat. And on this Saturday night in the Oregon National Guard’s Kliever Armory, in front of a crowd of 300-plus, he displays his own knockout touch: Leaning over the ropes, he blows a wide spray of snot from each nostril at Dollie Gronewold, an 80-year-old lady with a cane who is sitting in the front row. The fans gasp, shout, laugh. They love to hate this heel.

Not only is Dollie the biggest wrestling fan in Portland, a regular at shows since 1956, but Moondog blew just as baby-faced wrestler Scotty Mac was giving her a T-shirt signed by Roddy Piper and local grapplers in honor of her return after hip-replacement surgery. The last time Scotty tried, another heel tore the shirt in half.

“I never did like Moondog,” Dollie says later. “But you know what he did?” she asks, still amazed. She’s thinking about the accident that put Jarrod Miller’s wife and daughter in the hospital--everyone in local wrestling knows Jarrod, who’s almost as big a fan as Dollie. “He went up to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and gave Jarrod’s little girl the biggest stuffed dog you’ve ever seen. I guess he is a good guy--when he’s not in the ring.”

Portland wrestling may have seen better days in its 70-odd years of professional promotions, but the fans have never been more devoted. The stars have been bigger and better paid, but never more passionate about their craft. A common sense of purpose among audience, wrestlers and promoters is evident at any show: They love the fun of it; they’re in it together; attention is paid. The fans yell, the wrestlers yell back (though their language is surprisingly clean), and on at least one occasion they all went to Hooters afterward.

And if one of them gets hurt, in or outside the ring, everyone shares the pain.

Jarrod Miller, his wife, Nancy Miller-Erwin, their daughter Breanna and son Brandon found out the hard way just how good the bad guys of the ring can be. The family, living on Jarrod’s salary as a nursing assistant to an autistic man and Nancy’s Army disability pay, had managed to save $250 to go to the county fair, a big deal, where the highlight would be watching World Wrestling Entertainment star Raven in a match, Jarrod recounts. He’s a big guy with a dark goatee, expressive hands, an intermittent stutter and, he jokes, a broken tooth that makes him the cliche of a wrestling fan. Sitting under carvings of flying geese in his living room in Salem, an hour south of Portland, he takes a deep breath for the rewind through the last difficult months. Nancy, half his size, sits in a wheelchair in an attractive plum-colored sweat suit, her delicate face made up for a visitor but set against constant pain.

The accident happened, Nancy remembers, as she and 8-year-old Breanna were enjoying a mother-daughter day of school shopping, “holding hands and having a good time.” Their Ford Taurus was doing 55 when a car turned in front of them, across their lane. Although Breanna was belted into a booster seat, both of her legs were broken, as well as her right shoulder. Her spleen was damaged and her head badly cut. Nancy had already had three operations on her knee, injured while she was stationed in South Korea. Now her leg was shattered and would have to be operated on again.

Jarrod sent an e-mail from the hospital to his friend Mike Wambold, “the Coca-Cola Kid,” who runs a fan website, Pacific Northwest Wrestling’s Bottom Line: “Please ask everyone to Pray for my wife and Breanna. They were in a car Wreck today....” The response was swift. In 30-odd posts by the end of that day, fans, brawlers and promoters offered phone cards, places to stay and good wishes. In the weeks to come, small amounts of money arrived as well as toys and clothes; wrestlers sent signed photos, made calls and visited, even presenting two championship wrestling belts to Breanna. And Raven, along with the other wrestlers at the county fair, signed a replica belt for the family.

“I wasn’t expecting any of this,” Jarrod says, shaking his head. “The cool thing was that everybody helped,” including competing promoters and the wrestlers loyal to them. “It shows me that there’s still somebody good in the world.”

Wambold, like many a local wrestling fan, grew up on it and still can’t get enough. He put up the fan site in 2001, when Portland wrestling started to regain its entertainment foothold, and it has since become a gathering place for news, chat and notices. Such as Wambold’s post in late September to the biggest heel in town: “Mr. and Mrs. Moondog, You brother are a class act all the way....Your visit meant so much to both of them.... And the Wink ya gave Breanna while the big mean moondog was walking to the ring that only a few people saw you give was to cool. By the way, they dug the loogies!!”

In Portland the past eight months ... the lighter middleweights of the Herb Owen galaxy have averaged close to $750. That means a yearly gross of approximately $125,000 for the grapplers. And, as the touts say around the race tracks, “Brother, that ain’t hay.” --The Sunday Oregonian, 1936

Portland, a jewel set amid glittering rivers and mountain vistas, a forward-thinking city of half a million-plus with a world-class zoo, highly efficient public transportation and thriving arts scenes, has also been a crucible for punk rock, skinheads and the eco-fringe. Street kids and panhandlers abound. “Keep Portland Weird” is the latest hip bumper sticker, a response to encroaching gentrification. And the city has fostered professional wrestling for as long as the sport has existed.

The glory days were when Herb Owen and his son Don staked the whole territory of Oregon, Washington and Vancouver, Canada, with their Pacific Northwest Wrestling promotion. Those days lasted from the mid-1920s, when Herb started a boxing promotion, to 1992, when Don retired at age 80. Beginning in 1948 the shows were televised live, and in the ‘60s attendance at the Portland Sports Arena grew to about 2,000. At wrestling’s height in the ‘70s, a dozen or so full-time brawlers worked a circuit through the territory, one night in each town. As with an old-time movie serial, the fans could follow their favorites week after week in story lines concocted to keep them tuning in, and in their own hometowns they could view the feuds between “heels” (bad guys) and “faces” (good guys) up close. Most national wrestling stars left a footprint here, including Jesse Ventura, Playboy Buddy Rose, Roddy Piper, Gorgeous George, Lonnie Mayne, Ric Flair and Dutch Savage.

Playboy Buddy Rose, a veteran of WrestleMania I, now runs a wrestling school in Portland. Figuring he’s worked more than 5,000 matches in the 31 years of his career, he looks to the ‘70s and ‘80s as a time “when everybody could make a living.” Big-name brawlers like himself stayed around Portland because “you could make good money and still be home every night.”

And then good money became hay became chicken feed.

Portland wrestling nearly died from a series of crippling pile drivers. In 1987 the Oregon Boxing and Wrestling Commission set rules and regulations for both promoters and wrestlers that put a headlock on the fun. What was essentially a stage show was treated the same as professional boxing--wrestlers had to be licensed, which meant passing a physical exam and an HIV test, and promoters were required to place barriers and mats outside the ring, among other safety precautions, distancing the audience from the action. Simultaneously, a local recession in logging slammed the mill towns--the circuit’s fan base--reducing gate receipts. In 1991, just before Don Owen retired, the long run of commercially televised local wrestling was canceled. Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation had not only lured away local stars but also bought local airtime, and reigned on pay TV and cable--yet no live WWF show came to Portland between 1993 and 2003.

Never mind that the state Legislature rescinded the commission’s rules several years ago. The big days of local big-time wrestling are down for the count.

And when one of the fraternity is hurt, the brothers chip in and provide for his every want. That goes for hospital care, his family and immediate needs. It is their unwritten law--and I might say a splendid law in any language or any business on this earth. --The Sunday Oregonian, 1936

On a chilly sunday afternoon in a large old house in the tree-lined Hawthorne neighborhood, Johnny Kappes, a.k.a. “Critter,” is getting ready for tonight’s match, to be held at an Elks Lodge just out of town. An appliance mover by trade, he’s refrigerator-big himself, a solid slab of don’t-mess-with-me. Mild blue eyes and a voice that rarely rises from its steady, quiet tone hardly befit his criminal ring persona. Critter, after all, is from San Quentin, a tough con with a shaved head and goatee, wearing an orange jumpsuit with cut-off sleeves; he has no problem tossing the burliest wrestler over the ropes. “People are really afraid to wrestle me,” he says with made-for-TV braggadocio, but he’s hard to doubt. “I made one guy’s girlfriend cry--I just beat the hell out of him.”

Critter says he once had a chance to sign a semi-pro football contract, but he chose wrestling instead. On a good night he might make $75, but tonight none of the 15 wrestlers will get paid. “Some people do make it,” he says. “But it’s not like it was back in the day.”

He and his wife, Jody, are in the process of moving from this house, which belongs to her ailing grandmother. Nearly empty now, it’s a strange mix of Craftsman details and walls paneled in fake stone and wood grain, leftovers from long ago. As a cat chases its tail at Critter’s feet, 5-year-old Jaiden enters, huge-eyed and elfin, flipping her long, wet hair toward him and toting a hairbrush. “Daddy, can you brush my hair?” she peals. She shrieks when he brushes too hard, then drapes herself over his massive shoulder to eye a stranger.

Jody, six months pregnant, follows 2-year-old Jayley in and sits heavily under photo portraits of her dad and uncles as boys, all in cowboy hats. A round-faced blond with large blue eyes, she looks a little tired, what with getting the kids ready for the evening out. “I’ve never liked wrestling,” Jody says with a laugh. “I used to call my brother a ‘mat fag’ for watching wrestling.” As long as it makes Critter happy, though, she’s fine with it. “I used to worry, but now it’s ‘whatever.’ If he gets hurt, it’s his own fault.”

Jaiden shows off her Pretty Princess coloring book, flipping each wildly scribbled page till she gets to her favorite: the one the wrestlers autographed, their names scrawled across the face of cartoon royalty.

On request, Critter shows his tattoos, baring massive arms to reveal the names of his daughters and his wife, and a large cross. Around his right wrist are three more children’s names. On each of his shoulder blades is a set of baby footprints: Jaiden’s and Jayley’s. And in between, arrayed close to a pair of angel wings, are three tinier sets: the triplets--Jackson, Jewel and Jordan--born prematurely, at 22 weeks, a year ago. The couple were at a house on the Oregon coast when the first one arrived suddenly. Critter held the second one inside his wife as they were rushed to the hospital, where the last two babies were born. They died shortly after birth. “I never realized how many people will get behind you,” he says, with barely a trace of emotion. “I never saw that side of wrestling till that tragedy happened.”

Jody and Critter didn’t hesitate to take a package of gifts to the hospital when they saw the website notice about Jarrod Miller’s family. Included was an orange “prison” T-shirt that Breanna began wearing to all of Critter’s matches.

Three promoters run regular shows in the area now: Sandy Barr, the veteran wrestler and referee who bought Don Owen’s territory and kept the attraction limping along for a time; Frank Culbertson, with a background in events management; and Mark Dykstra, a beauty salon owner. With long blond hair reminiscent of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s” Riff Raff, he’s hardly the guy you’d expect to find in charge tonight at the Elks Club.

An hour before show time, a blue and silver Mylar banner with PNPW centered on it flutters across the stage as a slim gal with cherries tattooed on her neck arranges chairs ringside. Inside the ropes, a dozen guys practice moves. Against this backdrop of flips and leaps, Dykstra explains that his promotion--Pacific Northwest Professional Wrestling--is only a hobby, an expensive one that’s cost him $5,000, he guesses, in the last year and a half. Hair World, his four-station salon in Longview, Wash., an hour north of Portland, has been his livelihood for 26 years.

Suddenly, he’s angry. Wrestling’s got to change, he says, lambasting his competitors. His beef is that because of the fractured “mini-promotions,” there isn’t a sole wrestling star to draw the crowds like there was in the old days. And Culbertson’s Portland Wrestling, he believes, is the biggest heel in the three-ring show. Unlike PNPW and Barr’s International Grapplers Assn., both seen only on public access, Portland Wrestling airs weekly on Comcast’s fledgling sports network, CNW 14. Culbertson has a promotion agreement and sells ads around his shows. And he makes a living doing it, as well as paying all his wrestlers and crew. Dykstra pays only when he can.

Still, Dykstra insists, Culbertson has made local wrestling “a farce.” Because the promoter tapes four shows in a single night--such as the night Moondog Moretti demonstrated his snot-blowing ability--story lines aren’t built up over time, and a wrestler who gets pounded in the first match might reappear in the fourth fully healed and whole again, ruining the illusion of actual damage. “It’s just sickening that they’ve turned it into this,” he says.

Culbertson himself responds that for TV he adds both pre- and post-show interviews to make the stories clear, and “this is not a small-time operation” but rather a high-quality digital four-camera setup. As for those in attendance, he says, “your hard-core wrestling fans just go to have a good time.”

At the Elks Club, the fans file in, lots of them families with kids. A notable number are mentally or physically challenged, some in wheelchairs. No one looks twice. They’re a regular part of every show, though often given extra attention by the wrestlers--an autograph, a kiss, a high five.

“The PNPW tag-team championships have been vacated,” the announcer booms through the public address system. The previous belt holders have suddenly moved back to Mexico, as Dykstra’s story line goes, leaving two unclaimed championships that the Battle Royal, now starting, will decide. As wrestlers of all physiques, ages and talents pile into the ring, it’s a 15-man slugfest, the ropes bulging with brawlers.

“Let’s go, Critter!” Jaiden cheers as her dad smacks a guy. The wrestlers go down one by one, the ref counting them out until only two remain: It’s Critter and Tony Terrific, the new PNPW tag-team champs! A member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and an ex-poker dealer who teaches Head Start classes for toddlers when he’s not wrestling, Tony “Terrific” Blomstrom plays a wholesome Captain America type. In his red, white and blue spandex, flashing a wide smile, he’s a favorite with the kids, who cheer as he and Critter hoist the belt.

Mark Dykstra is one of Dollie Gronewold’s favorite people. “When I was in the hospital, Mark came and sat by me and held my hand,” she says wistfully in a pronounced North Carolina accent. The 80-year-old is lively and youthful, with an open, expressive face, soft gray curls and a ready smile. At the kitchen counter of her tidy trailer, she fans a handful of Polaroids. “Look at that fat hog!” she brays, pointing to a photo of several gals at a recent wrestling show. “I hate her guts! I’d love to punch her out good!” A collection of wind chimes tinkles on her porch.

Dollie has lived in Vancouver, Wash., a small town across the Columbia River from Portland, since 1966, when she chose the avocado green hi-lo nylon pile over shag. In the living room, two huge orange glass lamps flank a floral velveteen couch. An Elvis plaque was given to her by a daughter, who also “made that thing hanging there by it.” (The thing is a Christmasy bough decorated with ribbons and gold grapes.) Dozens of pictures of her three daughters, grandkids and late husband, Harold, line the hallway and top a bookshelf filled with figurines, small clocks and more photos.

She shows her guest a cut in the neck of the T-shirt that was torn in half when Scotty Mac tried to present it to her. “It was planned!” she says with utter disgust. After all, the shirt was a gift to her, and even though she got the new one the next week, she’s going to sew up this one.

If the wrestlers are nice to her, she’s nicer. “I love to do things for ‘em,” she says. She took six loaves of homemade zucchini bread to a recent show, she says, demonstrating how hard it was to mix. It bothers her now that she got only a few thanks in return--and that the lid to her cookie tin was used in the ring that night to bop someone over the head. She’s ever giving, though. When Breanna Miller was in the accident, Dollie gave her a Care Bear.

And for Dykstra, she makes jam. Lots of it. “Mark lives on my jam. He loves my jam.” Her wide eyes shine. “I’d like to give him something else, though!” She laughs wildly, an octogenarian flirt.

Belittle the men of the mat, if you will, they go right along making money--one big happy family. That their matches are exhibitions, they seldom deny. They please and entertain, which is the main thing in serving an amusement-loving public.--The Sunday Oregonian, 1936

The blue-collar lifestyle doesn’t get much bluer than on a cold Tuesday night at Sandy Barr’s Flea-Mart, a weekly wrestling show in an unheated warehouse in a rundown north Portland neighborhood. On this bitter January night, the piles of mattresses, couches and tables of the daytime flea market have been shoved aside and a wrestling ring erected. To an audience of maybe 50, wrapped in coats on rump-chilling metal folding chairs, Lil Nasty Boy (Danny Campbell) enters, “the world’s strongest midget,” a tough-looking little man dancing in a purple feather boa and red tights. His opponent, Hoquiam Man (Nicolas Marll), a caveman-themed fellow with pierced nipples, doesn’t have a chance, at least style-wise. After much grimacing and arm twisting, Lil Nasty Boy picks up the big lug and spins him, airplane-style. Lil Nasty Boy’s 9-year-old son, Kristopher, taunts from the audience, “Kill him! Kill him!”--and his dad yells back, “Shut up, ya little brat!” The row of kids hollers and shrieks.

Critter, in his orange prison jumpsuit, wrestles Psydsho Phreek (Chris Raney), “the clown killer from the dark side of the tent,” a big guy fit for a horror movie, with exaggerated clown makeup and a curly mohawk. Their match involves lots of growling and stomping, but the “bumps,” whether preplanned or not, are real, as evidenced by Critter’s fingers squeezing Psydsho’s flesh white. A year ago, Psydsho accidentally separated Critter’s sternum with a leap that didn’t land quite right, and Critter has dislocated Psydsho’s jaw twice. “We both know it’s a risky business,” Psydsho says, “but I’d wrestle Critter any day. I know that I’m gonna be sore afterward, but it’s worth it. We really get the crowd going.” Outside the ring, Critter’s kids call Psydsho “uncle.”

Settled in a smoke-filled office at the back of the flea mart the following Friday night with Critter and Lil Nasty Boy, the phone ringing and a snowy television flickering in the corner, Sandy Barr might be Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” counterpart. The compact 67-year-old with steel-dark hair was 11 when he saw his first match, back in Idaho Falls in 1949, and he can still tick off the names of those wrestlers. He started wrestling and promoting in the late 1950s, and despite his age, a fierce undertone to his voice tells you that this ring veteran could body-slam any man today. Mark Dykstra, he spits, “couldn’t wrestle his way out of a paper sack.”

“He’s old-school,” a wrestler will say of him, always with respect. Barr knows the ropes by heart and by trade. In 1994 he lost a 28-year-old son, Art, a wrestler renowned for both his ring achievements and a controversial sexual assault conviction. Three other sons, JR, Jesse and Sean, still wrestle.

Tough he is, but callous he is not. About a young official who works his shows--a man with crippled hands--he says, “I was mad that [a wrestling school] took his money, but he had a lot of heart so I made a referee out of him.” His wrestlers are trained for free.

Critter was one of Barr’s students, and he remains loyal.

Months after the accident, the Miller family deals with the insurance companies, lawyers and $370,000 worth of debt. “It’s such a mess,” Jarrod says tiredly.

Breanna has healed physically but still suffers nightmares and flashbacks. She sleeps every night with the big yellow dog that Moondog Moretti gave her.

More than a dozen surgeries have left Nancy’s leg a Frankensteinian patchwork, discolored and deeply scarred. “I cry a lot,” she says without self-pity. She’s devoted herself to gardening, planting roses.

“I’m still stuck in September,” Jarrod muses, “before the accident”--still surprised by the horror and the fear, all the work of taking care of a disabled wife and daughter, all their pain. When he needs to get away, Jarrod goes fishing. Or he goes online to chat with other wrestling fans. Or he goes to a match to be with his friends and “forget about everything for a while, live the magic, have fun.” He may have to drive two hours and spend his last 10 bucks, but he’ll be there.