Bob Boulton
Back in the day, Sundays were as tricky as a figure-four leg lock.
If I scooted home from church and no relatives were coming for Sunday dinner, I could make it just in time for Wrestling from Chicago, and there see Gorgeous George, the Human Orchid, toss Georgie Pins into a booing crowd.
Thursdays were Motor City Wrestling time, hosted by Lord Athol Layton, who, I later discovered, had lived in our own Toronto neighbourhood. My wife was, and remains, singularly unimpressed.
Saturday afternoons brought Big Time Wrestling, often with Leaping Larry Chene — the master of the flying head-scissors. Chene would somersault through the air, wrap his legs around an opponent’s neck and flip him to the mat for the count.
Was there ever anything so beautiful and so dangerous?
But it was Wednesdays, right here in Sarnia, at Kenwick Terrace, that were especially special.
One week, The Sarnia Observer announced a lineup that featured Sarnia’s own Tuffy Truesdale, the dastardly Sheik and — one could hardly absorb the news — Leaping Larry Chene in battle with Percival E. Pringle.
Hands on hips, the swaggering, bleach-blond Percival E. Pringle was a villain through and through, from his black shoes to his withered soul.
And I would be there to see it:
It was a Wednesday night in April
A hot and humid Sarnia spring
There were planets in alignment
Shooting stars and everything.
Us, downtown there on Christina,
There was Dad and Wayne and me
In the Kenwick Terrace dance hall
Up above the A&P.
Dad dealt us out our tickets
Hope jabbered in my brain
That night when Percival E Pringle
Would wrestle Leaping Larry Chene.
Righteousness was, oh, so simple
Chene was good, Pringle was bad
No uncertain moral indecision stood
In line with me. And Wayne. And Dad.
Our seats were cold metal chairs
We didn’t bother to complain
For that night Percival E Pringle
Would wrestle Leaping Larry Chene.
First Sarnia’s Tuffy Truesdale
In an inter-species round
Fought his stalwart black bear Victor
Who threw Tuffy to the ground.
The Sheik then ‘camel clutched’ some good guy
Then roared “Ah-oo Ah-oo” at Wayne
Who had yelled just once too often
That we wanted to see Chene!
There was glory, now forgotten
There was greatness, grit and pain
The night that Percival E Pringle
Wrestled Leaping Larry Chene.
No victory for our Larry that night
Pringle punched him, pulled his hair
Did the ref not see the cheating?
Did the ref not even care?
We left, stung, sore and disheartened
The thumping heartbreaks still remain
The night that Percival E Pringle
Defeated Leaping Larry Chene
Bob Boulton is a Sarnia writer and the creator of a blog for new and renewing writers, bobswritefromthestart.blogspot.com
