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Street, where you had to parallel park. Brody used to be the champion of running cars. He would take off running at full speed.
    Now he was a big-ass bastard, so when he got going, he’d jump and land one foot on the trunk, next foot on the roof, next foot on the trunk of the next parked car, and so on. That was the deal—you had to see how many cars you could do, and Brody was so damn big, he could do that for a whole block.
    Brody was always tall, but he got huge after he discovered desiccated liver after college, and he lived on it. This was before steroids or anything else. When he left school, he weighed 240, and not long after, I saw this enormous guy walking down the street and damned if it wasn’t Frank Goodish! That desiccated liver had made him huge, but it also gave him the worst-smelling farts of anyone I’ve ever known.
    He was working as a sports writer for the Odessa American newspaper. When he did get into wrestling, I gave him his initial ring name: Frank “The Hammer” Goodish.
    We had goal-line scrimmage the last five minutes of practice. Brody would play on third team, and everyone else was just practicing, but he’d go ahead and pump up the goddamned defense so much that we’d have be out there until the goddamned sun was going down.
    Another West Texas player who became a great pro wrestler (and who became very close to Bruiser Brody) was Stan Hansen. He came to the school a couple of years after Brody. Stan is the greatest guy in the world and was a very talented wrestler. Like a select few others, Stan Hansen got his start in wrestling through the Funks.
    Stan came to me one day in 1972 and asked, “Would you talk to your dad about me wrestling?”
    I said I’d talk to my father. Stan, at six-foot-three and 280 pounds, was driving a Ford Pinto and was coaching high school football in New Mexico.
    I told my father I thought Stan could be a good wrestler, and I set up a meeting between my father and Stan at my house. My father told Stan about all the training he’d have to do and how he’d have to learn some amateur wrestling. That was something that was important to my father, as he was breaking guys in. He also showed them that they could be beaten in an actual wrestling contest.
    At the end of their meeting Stan asked my father, “So how much do you think I can make wrestling?”
    My dad said, “Well, I think you can make $250 or $300. And that’s just starting, Stan. I’ll see that you make more than that before long.”
    Stan said, “Well, I don’t think I can do that. I’m making $550 now, teaching.”
    My dad said, “A week?”
    Stan’s eyes got wide, and he said, “A week? GODDAMN! It’s $550 a month I’m making now!”
    Stan always talked loud because he was half-deaf. He’d use that as an excuse, too—”Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
    Four of Stan’s favorite words were, “I didn’t mean to,” as in, “I didn’t mean to take your head off clotheslining you.”
    Stan was smart, though, because he always saved every dollar he ever made from wrestling. Hansen wore tennis shoes all the time. For four years, he wore the ones they had issued him at West Texas State for nothing, until they had holes in them and were the most godawful-smelling things you ever smelled in your life!
    Virgil Runnels was another West Texas boy who became a big name in wrestling as Dusty Rhodes. I met Virgil playing football. Virgil was a good linebacker, about 220 pounds at that time. He could move, too. That son of a bitch could play ball.
    Truth is he was a better baseball player than anything else, but he was an all-around great athlete.
    There was only one problem—he couldn’t talk. I thwear, you jutht couldn’t underthtand a wuhd he thed.
    My future father-in-law had a filling station in town, and he had this idiot working for him—Virgil. One day, Dusty was working there, and I drove up in my 1965 Galaxy, the first new car I’d ever bought. I’d spent $3,200 on it.
    As he