Ken Norton Robert Wren and Brooklyn

..Funny how one event triggers a memory of other events and times. In my case right now,it is the passing of boxer Ken Norton that brings back certain memories of a particular era,that of Brooklyn New York in the late 70's.
Before I get to that however,let me provide some background. Muhammad Ali first turned me on to Boxing.It wasn't that I enjoyed seeing guys pounding each other that drew me to the sport,but rather the persona of Ali,and his willingness to go against the grain. If someone like that was a boxer,then maybe,I thought,boxing was worth following.

I saw the first Ali-Norton fight on TV. It was apparent early that it wasn't Ali's best fight,but as an Ali fan I continued to hope that somehow he would pull off the decision. That didn't happen. Ken Norton beat Ali and from that day on,I knew I'd never become a Norton fan.

I moved to Brooklyn from Palmer Alaska in September of 1976. Sometimes I feel like I still reel from the culture shock of that move! Within those first few weeks in Brooklyn,I had been nearly killed by merely crossing the street,was the cause of a theft at house I lived in for failing to lock the door,and had the car I was responsible for stolen. Welcome to New York.

Ken Norton was to fight Ali again in September of '76. This time at Yankee Stadium. Ali won a close decision,but as big a story that day was the muggings and robbings that took place outside of Yankee Stadium after the fight. New York City Police,preparing to go on strike,for the most part stood by as it all was happening. Welcome to New York.

 When living in Brooklyn,I was part of a group called Gospel Outreach. G.O. as we called it was an outgrowth of the "Jesus Movement" of the late 60's and early 70's. It was a group mostly populated by countercultural types,and it brought a countercultural touch to Evangelical Christianity. G.O. was founded in Northern California,and one of the things it was noted for was its communal homes. Now in Northern California,Oregon,Washington State or even Alaska where I first encountered G.O.,communal living was not going to seem all that much out of the ordinary,after all during that time period,that's what a lot of "hippies" did.  Brooklyn was not Northern Cali however,and Brooklyn was not the small town or rural community that G.O. tended to be located.

G.O. had 2 houses in Brooklyn, both in the Park Slope neighborhood.One we called "The Shepherds House" the other "Sterling House". I started my life in Brooklyn at the Shepherds House,but most of my time there was spent at the Sterling House.

Park Slope in the 70's was not the gentrified neighborhood that it is today. It was part of the 'hood. Never saw what the cashier at the corner store looked like. Across the street from the Sterling House was an apartment building where one would be greeted upon entering with the aroma of piss in the hallways and where it was best for many reasons not to use the elevator. People would hang out in front of their brownstone buildings in Spike Lee "Do the Right Thing" fashion,and if you were walking down Sterling Place,one might never know that a service,complete with acoustic guitars and the like was taking place inside the Sterling House,because it was likely being drowned out by large speakers as "Disco Wars" were commonplace in the day.

Up till around 1978, television was not allowed in G.O. communal houses. In Alaska,my buddy Richard Twiss and I would arrange to be in Anchorage so we could watch Muhammad Ali fight at the Downtown J.C. Penney store.
Sometime in 1977,a man named Robert Wren came to live with us at the Sterling House. How he came to live there I do not recall. Like most of the rest of us living in the communal homes, he was not from New York. Robert Wren was not some ex-hippie. Robert Wren came from Oklahoma where he had been a biker and had previously been in a motorcycle gang. He was one big dude. Highly opinionated,and one not afraid to voice his opinions in a setting where voicing one's opinions was not particularly valued. One thing was for certain,even in the 'hood,someone was going to need to think twice before messing with Robert Wren.
Robert and I came from completely different backgrounds,but perhaps because of that inner rebel spirit,we became fast friends.
September 1977 Muhammad Ali was to fight Earnie Shavers in a bout that was to be nationally televised. TV's were still not allowed at the Sterling House,but there were few worries about missing the fight. Muhammad Ali fights were by then cultural events and one just had to walk the streets of Park Slope to get a glimpse of the fight from some TV or hear the cheers for Ali. Doing the same thing though we didn't do it together was Robert Wren.
By 1978,TV's were allowed in the G.O. Houses but what was watched and how much time spent in front of the television was tightly monitored.
Robert Wren would like to think it was his voicing of opinion that got it done,and who knows? maybe there was a fear of God involved in saying no to Robert,but of my fondest memories of Robert and of the Sterling House was that of myself,my other buddy Keith Marquette,houseleader Gary Crouthamel and Robert Wren watching the Ken Norton-Larry Holmes championship fight in the basement of the Sterling House.
To this day,the Norton-Holmes fight is considered to be one of the most exciting fights ever..
R.I.P. Ken Norton,and Robert Wren? I hope you are well wherever you are
 

Revenge on the Yankees

Folks that know me know that while I do gloat upon any misfortune that may fall upon the Minnesota Vikings or the Oakland Raiders,the bulk of my sports venom is directed towards the New York Yankees. Unfortunately through the years,I haven't had much opportunity to gloat in Yankee misfortune. I still have fond memories of the 1966 Yankees however..the first Yankee team to finish in last place since 1912. Horace Clarke anyone?

The mid to late 1970's were a tough time if you hated the Yankees. It was the heyday of the Steinbrenner run teams..The Bronx Zoo,Billy Martin,Reggie Jackson,Thurman Munson,Bucky Dent. High Drama and pennants.You couldn't even go into a store without seeing the Reggie Bar on display. A Reggie Bar was a Snickers type candy bar named after Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson.

What made things even worse was that I was living in New York City during this era. Some of the time was spent in Brooklyn,I also lived in Queens for a time.  I moved to New York from Alaska in October of 1976.  The first baseball game I saw as a resident of New York was within weeks of moving to New York. I saw  Game 4 of the '76 Series between the Yankees and the Cincinnati (Big Red Machine) Reds.

I wasn't going to turn down a chance to go to a World Series game,but being the Yankee hater I am,it's hard to acknowledge that my first World Series game involved the Yankees.
Yankees lost and got swept in that Series,but to openly gloat over Yankee misfortune at Yankee Stadium would be akin to asking for a bloody face. I also knew within a month of living in the Big Apple that I was going to hate it.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that my favorite baseball team,the New York Mets, were in the midst of the worst era in the history of the franchise. Most of the heroes of the 1969 "Miracle Mets" or the '73 "You Gotta Believe" team were either gone or past their prime. M. Donald Grant was the worst GM in Mets history,and was the architect of what was known as the "Saturday Night Massacre" when the Mets in one day traded the cornerstone of the franchise Tom Seaver,and slugger Dave Kingman.

Yankee fans are among the most arrogant in sports and to be in the midst of them was almost unbearable. There wasn't much a Mets fan could do in the midst of it..or was there??

In New York in the seventies,I worked at a place called New Life Vinyl Repair. We would go to various car dealerships in Manhattan,Brooklyn,Queens,and Long Island to repair torn vinyl and leather in cars.
This was not a job for me.I had the amazing knack of taking what should have a simple repair and turning it into a major operation. I often created more damage than what I started out with. Dealerships would often call the New Life office telling the office manager to never send me to that dealership again. New York car dealers are not nice when they're pissed. I dreaded and hated virtually every day at work.

Under most circumstances,I would have been fired or allowed to quit,however New Life was not some normal job. It was owned and operated by the church group I belonged to called Gospel Outreach Ministries. Gospel Outreach Ministries was part of the "Jesus Movement" which sprouted up in the 1970's amongst the counterculture set. Gospel Outreach at its inception preached "discipleship" Its definition being giving up your old friends,in some cases your family,and material possessions to live communally,place one's life under the "authority" of church "elders" who by in large were pretty young (mid 20's and 30's) and to work for the church owned businesses.
Instead of being fired or allowed to quit,being incompetent on the job was viewed as a church matter,and the managers of New Life Vinyl Repair happened to be the church elders. Instead of being fired,facing failure every day was supposed to be looked upon as either some sort of character building exercise or as a means of rooting out sin. Failures on the job gave the church leaders an opportunity to "minister" to me. One elder told me that working for New Life was "saving me from a life as a Bohemian writer,who would hang at coffeeshops listening to poetry."

The ministering wasn't working though and with more and more dealerships complaining,something was going to have to happen and soon..

What was decided was I was to be teamed up with another who was undergoing the same struggles and we were going to either sink or swim.  I was teamed up with a guy named Michael Lanzillotta from Long Island. Michael was a talented pianist and songwriter. Repairing car seats was not anymore his thing than it was mine,but in Michael's case,the chemicals we used for repair would create rashes on his hands.

For awhile the experiment worked.We were getting the work done,and there were no complaints. Michael and I enjoyed working together as for us part of the workday would include listening to "forbidden"music,doing Bee Gees impersonations as well as working out various acting routines.

Then came the big test.We were being sent to a Mercedes dealership in Manhattan to repair a leather seat. Leather was much tougher to repair than vinyl,and generally New Life would only send its best repairmen to a Mercedes dealer.

The seat had a tiny scratch on it.Supposedly,this was the type of repair that should have taken no longer than a half hour to do. Started out as if was going to be a quick and easy repair,Michael and I would have proven ourselves and we could maybe be like the rest of the repairmen..Then problems arose..The paint we had sprayed over the repair didn't quite match the seat. With an old used car, we would have been close enough to let it go,but this was a new Mercedes and things had to be exact. We had to strip off the paint. Leather seats tended to be very sensitive to the chemicals we'd use,and now a larger part of the seat is beginning to peel. In attempting to straighten out that mess,some of the chemicals splashed onto the plastic rear windows many Mercedes had back then.

I cant remember if it was the rubbing alcohol or the methyl ethel ketone we applied to the window to clean it up,but whatever it was,we placed a permanent fog on the window and ruined it. We didn't do much better with the car seat either.

The next day Michael and I heard about of the thousands of dollars worth of damage we did to the Mercedes. We heard about the yelling our manager received from the dealership. Like I said before..a pissed off New York car dealer is not very nice. As it turned out the dealership had to make a few maneuvers in order to keep Yankee outfielder Reggie Jackson from learning his Mercedes had been ruined. I think the dealership manager was a Yankees fan too. And we had just destroyed the car of the one,who according to his own words was the "straw that stirred the drink" of those Yankee teams.

I guess on one level Michael and I were lucky that the damages didn't come out of our pockets,but I look at it this way. We were taught that good things can come out of disasters and if I was going to wreck a car,what car was going to be better to wreck than one of a New York Yankee! Praise the Lord!
Next: the story of how Bucky Dent's homer in 1978 got me in big trouble.