Friday, January 28, 2011

Flash bulb memories

I mentioned in my last post that I wish I had taken some indoor pictures at Grandma's house.  I don't know why I never thought of it, because such pictures would be real treasures now.  The only one I have that was inside her house is a picture of my sister and her family.  It shows nothing of the interior of Grandma's house except  for the stovepipe running from the heat stove in her living room to a wall, behind my sister's family.  
I wish I had a picture of me and the cousins sitting at Grandma's kitchen table drinking Kool Aid and eating good garden vegetables, and a photo of the the extra bedroom where I used to sleep when I spent nights there.  (Remember when Kool Aid was in a brown envelope placed inside of the outer envelope?) 
The Oregon Guy talked about old cameras in his post today, and mentioned flash bulbs.  That brought back a memory that you may find hard to believe.  
I once did a blog entry telling about how my mom and I got caught up in attending professional wrestling matches.  It all started when Daddy was laid up for a long time due to an injury at work; he was the real wrestling fan in the family at that time.  We all three started going to the wrestling matches in St. Joseph on Friday nights.  Daddy went back to work, but Mother and I kept on going; we were hooked.  We bought seats ahead of time so we could sit on, or near, the front row.    Before long we were going to the weekly wrestling events in Kansas City, Kansas, on Thursday nights.  So we were going to see wrestling twice a week.  Every week.  
Once in a blue moon, the really big-time wrestlers came to Municipal Auditorium in downtown Kansas City.  I think those were held on Wednesday nights.  
I always took my brownie camera with its flash attachement along.  I took pictures of all the wrestlers and got autographs from the nice ones, and some from the bad guys too.  I had quite a scrapbook back then.  Now, I refused to admit to myself that the whole wrestling thing was a big show, a fake.  So the "bad guys" usually weren't bad outside the ring, and most of them would give an autograph if asked.  However, I once saw a boy around ten years old hold out his autograph book to Dick the Bruiser, and the Bruiser tore it in half.  I couldn't see the sense in it, since it happened out in the corridor and I was the only witness.  
Now, back to the flash bulbs.  


Antonino Rocca


Dick the Bruiser
Mother and I were at Municipal Auditorium watching Dick the Bruiser from our front-row seats (I think he was wrestling Antonino Rocca, I'm not sure); I'd take a picture of the action, remove the flash bulb, and put it under my chair out of the way.  As often happened, the wrestlers ended up outside the ring on the floor and continued their combat.  They worked their way around to our side of the ring; Dick the Bruiser paused, looked my way, and headed straight toward me.  He bent over, reached between my feet, and grabbed a used flash bulb.  
Now just imagine what was going through my head during this time.  Yeah.  I figured I was going to die at the hands of this madman.  
Dick busted the flash bulb on some part of the wrestling ring and bloodied up his opponent's face with it; I'm assuming that was all faked, but who knows how far those guys would go to put on a convincing act?  Back then I believed every bit of it.  
Thanks for the memory, Guy.

1 comment:

  1. I remember flash bulbs and I also remember my grandfather's big hand held lights at Christmas. They were enormous.

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