Iceman (3 page)

I'
M NAMED AFTER MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES LIDDELL
(most of my family still calls me Charlie). Pops was a first-generation American whose parents came over from Ireland during the great migration in the early 1900s and settled in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. In those days gangs were everywhere, and Lucky Luciano was running the harbor that bordered Red Hook. My grandpa liked to say that only three types of people came out of Red Hook: cops, hoods, and priests. At the time, he didn't see himself becoming a priest and he didn't like the cops. But the life of a hood, that was something he could get used to. When he was just a kid, during Prohibition, he helped roll barrels of liquor for Lucky's guys.

His family lived near the harbor, and most of the people they knew worked on the docks, loading and unloading the ships. When the market crashed and the Depression hit in 1929, my grandpa was fourteen years old. He was never the kind who sat in the front of the class, so he didn't need an excuse like the Depression to get him out of school and onto the docks earning a living.

Then, when he was in his early twenties, a couple of his buddies were arrested. Another was killed. He understood he was an Irish guy working for an Italian gang. He'd never become a made man, and the life he was leading became less appealing, less glamorous. He realized he would have little chance to see old age if he didn't find a way out of Red Hook. So, at the end of the 1930s, when it looked as if there was no way to avoid a war with Hitler, he joined the military and was sent to California for training.

Pops was in one of the first units shipped to the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. When he came home, he wasn't interested in going back to his life in Red Hook. Instead he settled near where he'd trained, in Santa Barbara, and decided he wanted to be, of all things, a cop. But it wasn't that easy. He was so broke while waiting for the sheriff's department to accept him that he had to drive a beer truck to support his family. The only place he could afford to put them up was in an army barracks. They were poor and had plenty of meals consisting of nothing but a plate of beans.

My grandpa was also proud. He made $25 a month driving the beer truck, which was $3 less a month than he would have made from the government after getting out of the war. But he didn't want the handout. And when he finally joined the sheriff's department, he assumed everyone else—especially the prisoners—had the same sense of pride. Whenever he was working with criminals, he would think back to his days in Red Hook and say, “There but for the grace of God.” He decided early on that everyone deserved to be treated with respect and common decency, until they proved they didn't deserve it anymore. Of course, he was a tough guy—around six-one, two hundred pounds, with a high-and-tight buzz cut that he'd picked up in the army—so people didn't often challenge him.

He used to drive around town picking the drunks up off the street. He'd put them in a hotel for the night and give them some meal money. One guy he met was in his early twenties and already had most of his front teeth knocked out. Every few weeks he'd see the guy in prison. He finally asked him, “How come you're in here so often?” The guy told him that he was always getting in fights because people were making fun of his teeth. So my grandpa gave him some money to get his teeth fixed. He didn't see the guy again for about three years. And then one day he showed up with a wife, a kid, and a job working for the county. He just wanted to tell Pops thanks for helping him turn his life around.

It was easy for Pops to show his soft side, maybe because he had spent so much time causing trouble when he was younger. Plus, it's always easier to be nice if you know how mean you can be. My family is Irish, which means we've all got tempers. And my grandpa learned early on that if you're going to fight, the only way to win is to know what you're doing. That meant understanding how to throw punches that actually hurt someone. It also meant recognizing that being out of control—of your body and of your emotions—did you more harm than good. My grandpa always used to say that if you get mad, then you lose your edge and you can't think clearly. You need to think to be a winner when you're fighting.

He gave his two daughters—my mom and my aunt—boxing lessons when they were young. He didn't care that they were girls. He knew they were Liddells and, on some days, their tempers were going to get the best of them. But it was about more than that, too. Once he was older, my grandpa wasn't the type to start fights. My mom isn't the type to start fights. And I'm not the type to start fights either. But you better believe that knowing how to fight, knowing if it comes down to it we can handle ourselves, makes us a lot more likely to stand up for ourselves, and anyone else we see in trouble, for that matter. I'm not just talking about going toe-to-toe with some guy in an alley. My mom was able to raise four kids on her own, without any financial support from my dad, because she wasn't afraid to stand up for herself. Everyone has a fight-or-flight instinct. The Liddells' instinct is to fight. And my grandfather tried to nurture that.

Pops was my biggest supporter. He taught me everything I know about loyalty and honor.

Me, my brothers, and my sister got boxing lessons when we were young, too. They started when we'd all fight over each other's toys. My mom knew right away we had all inherited the Liddell temper, and she was going to have to find a way to get us to control it. Or at least harness it. So we learned that we should not wrap our fingers around our thumb when we threw a punch, because our thumb would break if we actually connected. We learned how to duck out of the way of punches. My mom and my grandpa would get on their knees, hold out their hands like stop signs, and let us whale away on their palms for practice. We learned how to turn our bodies and lean into a punch, getting power from our legs and waist so we didn't just swing limply with our arms. We learned how to throw straight, tight punches that had more of a chance of connecting, rather than the wild swings most kids make that never hit anything. (Ironic since I'm known for throwing roundhouses now.) When we'd get too rambunctious, my grandpa would build a ring in the backyard and let us go at it until we all calmed down. We weren't a family of thugs. But my grandpa grew up in Brooklyn working for Lucky Luciano, went to war, and became a cop. My mom had been through a nasty divorce. They knew firsthand that life was full of confrontations, that not everyone you met always played nice. When you're faced with those kinds of challenges, you can either run away and start over somewhere else, or you can stay and fight. So if fighting was going to be a part of life, we might as well be really good at it.

Of course, my mom the modified hippie didn't want us to be bullies. And to be honest, my grandfather didn't love the idea of a Liddell gang roaming the streets of Santa Barbara, picking fights. They knew what they were teaching us could be dangerous, and they both preached that before ever throwing a punch, we should apply the talk-and-walk method: Talk your way out of it. Walk away from it. Only when those two things didn't work did they want us defending ourselves. It was a lot for us, as young kids, to wrap our heads around.

But we tried. At least I did. And until I was five years old, what I took away from the lessons was that I shouldn't be getting into fights—at all. Then, after a tough week at day care, I learned what it truly means to listen to your mother.

Where I lived and went to day care, being a small, shy white kid put me in the minority, and that made me a target. Not because the kids I went to school with were prejudiced, but kids pick on kids who look different. And for a while, I was getting my butt handed to me. The teachers were always coming to my rescue—I wouldn't fight back—and after a week, they finally asked me, “Why don't you try to defend yourself?” I answered, “Because my mom told me she doesn't want me to fight.”

I was never afraid to get a little roughed up.

That day my mom was called into day care, and the teachers told her what was happening. They explained that when they came to break things up, they'd see that I was standing there with my fists clenched at my sides, but I would never throw a punch. Then they mentioned that I wasn't defending myself because my mom told me not to fight.

That night at home we had a chat. She said she was proud of me for not hurting anyone and for not starting something with anyone. But she didn't want me to stand around and get beat up without standing up for myself. That wasn't what she and my grandpa had been trying to teach me. Basically she let me loose. And the next time I was picked on at day care, I didn't need the teachers to come and break it up. I ended it myself.

Sean, me, and Laura. The three of us were always getting into trouble.

S
ANTA BARBARA IS NOT EXACTLY FILLED WITH
ghettos, but if there was a poor part of town, we were living in it. At the time the five of us—my mom and her four kids—were living in a three-bedroom town house that cost $400 a month. But my mom made so little money that she qualified for the government's assisted-living program, so she got help paying the rent. Even then, after all the expenses were paid, we usually had less than $100 a month to feed a family of five. My mom could make it stretch, though. She shopped at the day-old-bread store, where she would get two loaves for fifteen cents. And we got lucky, too. One time, when we were out of cash and my mom's payday was still four days away, she won a raffle during parents' day at my school. The prize: two bags of groceries.

When I turned eight, the cost of living in Santa Barbara had become too high for my mom, even with the help from the government. The five of us had to move in with my grandparents, who lived a few blocks away. It hurt my mom's pride, but all us kids were thrilled. My grandparents lived closer to the beach than we did, had a bigger yard, and were across the street from a school, where Laura and I played one-on-one tackle football. It was an all-or-nothing game—you either scored, or you got slammed. By now Dan, who was three but big for his age, followed me, Laura, and Sean everywhere we went. Half the time he'd end up running back inside and crying to Mom because he'd been hurt. She'd tell him what she had told the rest of us growing up: He had two choices, play inside by himself or play outside with the kids. Either way, she didn't want to hear him whining.

The house was crowded. It was three bedrooms, with a small guesthouse in the backyard. My great-grandma lived back there for a while—which meant seven of us were splitting those three bedrooms. When she passed away, my grandparents moved into the guesthouse, basically giving us five the run of their house. They were just incredibly generous. We never wanted for cleats or equipment or support at our games because they were always helping out. People who don't know me, who try to tell my story, like to think that I fight because of some deeply hidden anger because my father wasn't around. Sorry to disappoint, but that's not the case, although he gave me—and my family—plenty of reasons to be mad. One time when I was two and he was still living with us, my mom came home to find me in a room by myself eating an onion that my sister had given me. I was starving and my father didn't want to get off the couch to feed me. Another time, when I was eight, Pops, a guy everyone called Smiley because he never got mad at anyone or swore around us, came running into the house muttering, “I saw him, I swear to God I saw that fucker and I'm going to kill him.” It didn't take us long to realize he was talking about my dad—the guy I would eventually just refer to as the sperm donor. Pops ran out of the house with his handgun and his billy club looking to take the man out. I grew up occasionally hearing my mom cry herself to sleep because she was so sad. And I saw her work three jobs at a time—for the county, as a salesperson at a knife store, in security—sometimes up to ninety hours a week, so we could get Christmas presents.

It was crowded in our house, but I always loved having Grandma and Pops around.

But, as I said, I wasn't mad. I've always been glad he wasn't around. If he had stayed, I'd be a much different person. I'd probably be seriously messed up because I would have been raised in such a bad environment. Instead, I turned out remarkably well-adjusted. Seriously. In college I once kicked down a door that was stuck, and immediately the school put me into anger management (and made me pay $240 to fix the door). I spent one session with the counselor and explained that I just wanted to get on the other side of the door. After talking with me he told me not to come back. He didn't think I had an anger problem. I still don't. I'm not holding in any “Where's Daddy?” demons. I never step into the cage angry, trying to turn my opponent into my long-lost father. You can't win if you can't control your emotions, that's what my grandpa taught all of us when we were young. And he was my father figure, doing all the things that every dad does for his kids, and because of that, it's never occurred to me that I should be pissed my dad wasn't around.

We all benefited from living with our grandparents, and not just because they helped put food on the table, kept a roof over our head, and bought us equipment. They had already been parents and were more tolerant—and had a better sense of humor—when we kids made mistakes. When I was two, I watched Pops using a hammer to fix something outside the house. He turned his back for a second and I picked up the hammer, went over to the sliding glass door, and banged on it, the way he had been doing. The door shattered. And once everyone knew I was okay, his response was to laugh and say, “Well, he just wanted to get in the house.”

He helped my mom relax, too. She was a single parent trying to raise four kids. It's hard enough for two parents to be sure of the decisions they make for their children. It's even more difficult when you're making all the parenting calls by yourself. My mom still admits she was harder on us at times than she would have liked because she was on her own. But when she was done doling out punishments or giving us a tongue-lashing, my grandfather would pull her aside and settle her down, asking her if she was being too harsh. He always respected her position, never challenged her in front of us, but most single mothers didn't have this kind of support and sounding board.

But plenty of times my grandfather did help raise the decibel level in the house, too. As you might have guessed by now, fighting, arguing, debating, cajoling, prodding, and any other form of confrontation was entertainment in our house. That's just another way we were a traditional Irish household: If something was bothering us, we didn't hold it in. And if we disagreed with someone, we were encouraged to share that with the family, too. My mom, especially, challenged us on everything. She'd use words we didn't know in the middle of a sentence and make us tell her what they meant by figuring out the context in which they were used. When she and my grandparents talked about politics at the table, she wanted to hear our opinions. The more we disagreed with her, the happier she seemed to be. No one considered it disrespectful to talk back to our elders when we were having this kind of discussion, which often escalated into an argument. A loud argument. My mom was teaching us a lesson: You had to know your stuff, because if you accepted what your teachers or your parents or your grandparents or the newspapers were saying without thinking for yourself, you were going to have problems.

And we all had plenty of those already.