Dusty: Reflections of Wrestling's American Dream (3 page)

Larry and I were close as kids. We had a Chinaberry tree in the backyard and sometimes we used to have fights with homemade slingshots. Well, one year Larry hit me in the eye and blinded me. I couldn’t see at all and the doctors bandaged both eyes. They thought I might never see again.

“The thing I remember the most about that was how Dusty relieved me of feeling guilty. He never blamed me. He was laid up in bed from it for some time, and I felt horrible.”

—L
ARRY
R
UNNELS
, B
ROTHER

I used to lie in bed and try to peek out from under the bandages. One day I was finally able to see … but I didn’t tell anyone because everybody used to wait on me hand and foot to do everything for me. They’d serve me in bed, read to me, you name it. I eventually ‘fessed up, though.

My sister, Connie Jones, born Constance Nevada Runnels, was named after my Aunt Vada, who was a huge woman, easily over 300 pounds. Anyway, Connie was like my dad as she was the spitting image of him in a woman’s outfit, if you can imagine that. Growing up she was so much like Virgil she should have been the junior instead of me. She’s got this wonderful thing about her, in that she’s got a huge heart where she would do anything for anybody, and although she’s pretty mean too, underneath it all she’s the
sweetest of us all. Connie was strong enough and built enough to kick a man’s ass, and I’ve actually seen her do it. She also had my dad’s mouth, as every word she spoke was preceded by a cuss word—I guess I was more like my mom. My brother was caught somewhere in between. Anyway, as Connie got older, she became more refined and today is a very successful real estate broker in Panama City Beach, Florida.

“When I was a child, I thought being Dusty’s sister was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Whatever was going on, the whole family would pile into the car and see Dusty playing football, Dusty playing baseball, Dusty playing basketball, it was always Dusty, Dusty, Dusty. So, I felt like I was a little stepchild pushed off into a back corner for so many years.”

—C
ONNIE
J
ONES, SISTER

As the years pass I realize just how much I really love my sister and brother. Connie took over as my biggest fan after my mom passed away … but maybe Connie was always one of my biggest fans.

For as long as I can remember, my nickname was Dusty. I remember my dad naming me that because of the streets where we lived. In Austin, if you crossed under the I-35 overpass—even before I-35 was built—you went into East Austin and you can very well picture in your mind how it was; I believe I was in my late teens when they finally paved the road. Anyway, I would walk with my dad nearly every day to the corner store where we would go to get an RC Cola, a Moon Pie, and a Dixie Cup ice-cream, the kind you used the little wooden spoon with.

We grew up Southern Baptist, but I’d hardly say we were religious. One time the preacher asked my dad to come to church, and I remember him saying, “Every morning at work, seeing the sun, hearing the birds sing, being able to smell the outdoors, that’s my church. I sure don’t need a building to go to when I have the outdoors!” Well, whatever that meant, it sounded good to me.

I remember very vividly growing up in that neighborhood. I remember the violence of the neighborhood, too, and I remember the good parts of the neighborhood where you could walk the streets at night until 10, 11, or midnight to visit your neighbor. And I still remember that music. One of the things that I grew up to love about the Mexican American people and their
Latino heritage was their music. If I could not be in this free and wonderful country—I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else mind you—Mexico is where I would live. I love Mexico and I love the Mexican people. And I love the music because whenever I hear it, all I have to do is close my eyes and it draws me back to 1619 Willow Street on the east side of Austin.

Dad coached Little League and did the things that dads do, but he worked hard, and like I said before, he could be violent. Even when he was coaching Little League, he got thrown out for hitting an umpire. Now that I think back in the years after his death, I try to visualize the things he did and why he did them. Back then it wasn’t like we’re going to take your allowance away or cut off your cell phone. I mean when you got punished, you got the belt or you would walk out into the backyard and cut a switch off the tree and he would whup your ass … and I mean literally whup your ass. The only one who didn’t get the switch was my sister, Connie. She always says he had an inner peace to him, something she claims I don’t have. But I think Dad just kind of favored her a little bit.

From all I could make out being around him, Dad was the best plumber in the world. Like I said before, Virgil Sr. was paid by the hour and he worked sun up to sun down.

The heat and humidity in Texas during the summer were unreal. For a boy almost nine years old, I was about to learn just how hot Texas could really get. Dad put me to work.

The first real summer I can remember working with my dad was when I had just came off my bout with osteomyelitis, the same bone infection that plagued baseball’s Mickey Mantle when he was young. I not only beat the odds of getting off those crutches that I used for two years, but I actually started working that summer. Little League baseball was finishing up, and I still didn’t feel right to play. Not bad for a kid who wasn’t ever expected to walk again.

Osteomyelitis is an acute or chronic infection in the bones. Often, the original site of infection is elsewhere in the body, and spreads to the bone by the blood. Bacteria or fungus may sometimes be responsible for osteomyelitis.

—N
ATIONAL
I
NSTITUTE OF
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH
M
EDICAL
E
NCYCLOPEDIA

School was out for the summer, and I remember Dad getting me up around 5:30 in the morning; he was going to work and I was going with him. Since Dad usually brought the plumbing truck home with him, we took it to the shop where he worked at that time, Middleton Plumbing in Austin.

Across the street from the shop was a 7-11—nowadays there’s a Quick Trip at that location—and I remember that on my first day of the job it was already 190,000 degrees and it wasn’t even 6:30 yet. I had to go across the street when the store opened up to get a block of ice. I carried the ice back across the street and I put it in one of those old aluminum water coolers that was mounted up on the plumbing truck. I climbed up there and got an ice pick and chopped it all up and then ran fresh water in it right out of the tap … and buddy, let me tell you … at around 9:30 or 10 in the morning when the sun is beating down and you drank water out of that thing, man it was like the nectar of God … it was unbelievable.

T.C. Lee was a black man who worked with my dad for years at Middleton Plumbing. He was ditch digger and became my friend. My job was simple; all day long I would help T.C. dig ditches. I helped dig ditches, get the pipes and other equipment off the truck, and basically was a gofer, running around and doing whatever I could. So I wasn’t really a plumber. I did this as a teen, too, and even remember hitting the jackhammer with T.C. Our break came at lunch, and I couldn’t wait because that’s when we’d try to find the shade. He once told me, “Dusty, there’s a dream out there … you oughta get out of this ditch and live it.”

I guess you could say it was my first time working on the road. We would go all over town, all over Austin to see the new houses and all these great places and that’s where I’d watch my dad take care of business … and I did what I could. I never learned a lot about plumbing, but I learned a lot about ditch digging, and I learned a lot about common labor. I could probably put in a bathroom if I had to, but I know that it was a rough, rough summer … that first summer working.

It’s not like I didn’t have fun, too. I did play some baseball and I was always out of the house on the weekends playing with the kids from the neighborhood. But above anything else, I remember that the one thing that was really cool was that Friday night was a big night for my dad and the family.

He would get paid, and we’d go to Archie’s Café for dinner, which was right down First Street from where we lived on the east side. Because I was really a little too heavy for Little League baseball, instead of going to the ball field, we would go to the city coliseum, where low and behold pro wrestling was held.

Once I was exposed to it, I was hooked from day one, and it was like a magnet that drew me to the characters like the people and the athletes in this industry.

I remember watching my dad at these things and I remember him screaming so loud. He was a tough son of a bitch, buddy, let me tell you, and he had that Indian heritage in him boy, so he could hoot and holler and he’d get madder than shit!

One of the regrettable things in my life is that my dad was not around to see my stardom, to see me wrestle, or to see what I achieved for the dream I had at an early age, influenced by where he would like to go.

So at the coliseum we would see the stars coming in and he would yell and scream and man he was crazy … he always wanted to fight somebody there. But they were fun times and that was my exposure to pro wrestling, because that’s all we did as a family. He worked hard and screamed hard. He always said that during the week he worked for a guy, and he did his work as he was told. While he was his own man and he lived by that code, Friday night was the night we’d go out to wrestling so he could yell and scream and take out all of that emotion he had bottled up inside of him.

Of course on Saturday night, it was much of the same. Whether it was going to San Antonio, which was 75 miles away, or Oak Hill down in Austin, we went to the jalopy races, the stock car races, or the dirt track. I remember those times, boy, and they were some great times. I remember that my dad and mom, whether the kids liked it or not, took us on outings. We didn’t have money, but we went places like camping. And not camping like you might think of how it is today, I’m talking about a park with a built-in place to put your barbeque and shit.

Dad built a slab in the backyard when I started junior high school, and sometimes he would throw parties for all of my school friends. He always entertained them, whether he would dress up or do a funny dance —he loved to entertain—and I guess I got my entertaining from him. And he could do this even though he was a tremendously violent man, a tremendously angered man, a man who I’ve seen knock out motherfuckers
colder than a wedge who interfered with him, and who when we did something wrong, would take his belt off or get a switch off a tree and whup our ass. It was just that simple. That’s the way you were brought up, and that’s the way it was. Period.

Every day there were ongoing non-stop arguments; yelling, screaming, and cursing between my mom and dad. I never saw him lay a hand on her, but I know it was verbally unbearable for her sometimes, especially considering we grew up in a small poor-ass looking house.

It’s not that we were poverty stricken, it’s just how it was; it was a pretty small dwelling, and Grandpa Sanders—my mom’s dad—lived in the house with us for many years. Now Grandpa Sanders was cool. He was into politics, living and dying with Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, and he played dominoes down on Sixth Street almost every day. He also gave me a dollar for every home run I hit when I was in Little League.

Dad did a lot of extra plumbing to put an additional room on the house for my brother and me to have a real place to sleep. When the little room was complete, we finally had our own beds. Before that, we either slept on the couch or on rollaway beds.

I’m not saying I regret the way we lived, because that would be bullshit. Just like in the wrestling industry where the code is “business is business,” well, “family is family.” We all lived together, and as kids they were great times, especially when it was a clear Texas night and you could see all the colors in the sky… man, it was beautiful. We might have been poor, but we were rich in that each day brought hope for a new adventure, fame, fortune, and a love for life.

I’ve talked about the violence and all, and aside from us getting the belt, by now you must be wondering how violent could it have really been?

There was a family that lived down on the corner. They were a little bit older than us, and there was one kid my age and he had an older brother. Now when you talk about rednecks, this family was the deal, the kind you see in the movies. They were just trailer trash. But they were violent and we were violent. There was always something going on down around their place and something going on around our place. When I was real young, the two brothers caught me in an alley and put the boots to me. My dad came home and saw me with the old black eye, and asked me what happened. Well, I said so and so did this—I don’t want to name names because it’s not that important, and they probably own banks in Europe today or something—
and he just took the belt to me and gave me a whupping. I was crying, kicking, screaming, and coughing, and then he took a switch to me and kept it on me all the way down the block to that house. We passed houses that were pink, orange, blue … if you can imagine what old Mexico looked like back in that era, then you can picture my neighborhood.

So we went down to that house, and my dad went up and beat on the screen door. Their mom was there, and the kids were hiding inside because they were afraid of him. Meanwhile, a big group of kids from the neighborhood followed us there. So, I was standing on their front porch crying from the spanking my dad had just given me, and he was yelling through the screen door, “Well, get so and so out here, ‘cause Dusty is going to kick his ass. And get the other boy out here ‘cause I’m going to kick his ass and then I’m going to kick his daddy’s ass, and my wife gets off work in a minute and she’s going to be down here and she’s going to kick your ass … let’s get it on.”