THE STONE COLD TRUTH (4 page)

You’d do whatever you had to do. If you didn’t, you’d get your ass whupped. At the same time, you weren’t going to smart off to your mom or dad, and you weren’t gonna cuss. No cussin’ and no sassin’ mom or dad!

When I was five years old we went to Port O’Connor, Texas, a fishing place we had been going to forever. We rented this bay house and were fishing off the pier when we noticed that all the shrimp boats and fishing boats were coming in. We figured we’d go down there and talk to the fishermen and see what all they caught.

We were walking across this grassy field and stepped into some real-life quicksand. I don’t know how prevalent quicksand is in Texas or any other place, to be honest, but this was just like in the movies!

Me and Scott walked right in the middle of this damn quicksand and we were sinking and, damn, I was up to my chest in the stuff. I don’t remember freaking out, but Scott had evidently called for Kevin to come bring his fishing pole. So little four-year-old Kevin saved Scott’s life and mine by pulling us out.

I guarantee that if he hadn’t pulled us out, we would both have been dead. We could not have gotten out of that quicksand without that fishing pole.

I remember when we got back to the house we were renting, Mom and Dad whipped our asses because we were so dirty and muddy! When we finally told them we were stuck in quicksand and almost died, they thought we were BSing them. But it was the real deal—we would have died. Me at five, Scott at seven.

We had another real-life adventure when we were swimming at my Uncle Donnie’s house. I looked around and noticed that Kevin had been
down at the bottom of the pool for what seemed like a pretty good while.

My Aunt Pam swam down there, and I jumped in and helped pull him up. An adult there thumped on him and slapped him on the back and revived him, with Kev choking and spitting out all the damn water he had swallowed. He couldn’t talk for a day because his vocal cords were all screwed up from swallowing all that water. I don’t know how the little SOB made it. I asked him if he had learned how to breathe water. ’Course it was nice to not have him talk for a day.

My folks decided that Kevin needed to see a doctor to make sure he was okay. So we all piled in my mom’s Suburban and went with Kevin and everyone to the doctor’s office. After looking down his throat and whatever other tests he did, the doctor pronounced Kevin just fine and gave him a sucker. I was POed that I didn’t get one! Equal rights! I was part of the damn rescue team and should have got a sucker too!

And it never ended. My brothers and I used to play “prisoner” on these two columns that were out front of our house. One day I was playing around with one of those bicycle security chains with a combination lock on it. I wrapped the chain around myself and one of the columns, and then locked the chain around my stomach. The chain and lock were new, and it sounded like fun at the time.

All of a sudden this big damn bumblebee starts flying around my face and I’m trying to freeze, be still and avoid it. I finally flinched too much and the damn thing stung me right on my eyeball!

Man, I’m squalling as loud as I can squall and I can’t get the damn combination lock off because I can’t remember the stupid combination. Finally Scott comes out and takes the chain off me, and of course my eye swells completely shut and gets to be the size of a golf ball.

I remember my mom had a big cookie jar on top of the refrigerator, an owl with one eye closed. One of my aunts commented after I got stung, “Look, Steve. You look just like that owl.” I don’t remember laughing.

Eventually, Jeff joined our brotherly crew. My mother said we were the “neighborhood marauders.”

When we moved to Edna my mom had the idea that we should go
around the neighborhood, knock on everybody’s doors and see if they had any kids to play with. It worked out pretty good, as we made some good friends from that. But that really was my mom’s gimmick for getting our asses out of the house for a few hours—and maybe warning the neighborhood that the “Williams Gang” had moved to town.

The “Williams Gang” Easter ′74, (top row, left-right) Kevin, Scott, me, (bottom row, left-right) Jeff, Jenny.

Well, we hadn’t been in Edna long before we got in trouble. We were going out and ringing doorbells to see where all the kids lived and we came to this one house where nobody was home. But they had a bunch of real nice clay pots with plants in them all across the front of the house. Well, we broke every one of them, every pot they had, and it was a bunch of them—forty or fifty. Damn, we were stupid!

Then I said, “Kevin, look at this.” I pointed to a built-in intercom system by the front door. That was a new deal to me, but I knew what it was. Kevin suggested we come back the next day with a hammer and break it. That must have been when Scott figured we went too far and he snitched on us to the folks.

It was Jeff’s birthday, but Kevin, Scott and I had to stay in our room and we got no cake. That was the lightest part of the sentence, as we got our butts whipped as well! Plus, with us being new in town, my poor dad had to go over when the neighbors came back, introduce himself and cut them a check to pay for all the damages. That just goes to show that my dad is a hell of a man. He made no excuses.

He was firm, but fair. One time we were out on the cattle ranch shredding the hay and I uncovered a huge hornets’ nest and thousands
of hornets were chasing me and stung me all over. I went home and said, “I quit.” Yeah, right. I didn’t have no “ball to take home.” My resignation lasted only a few hours.

When I was ten or so, it had been raining a whole bunch and we noticed that our neighbors were out of town. We went over to their house and their yard had turned into a field of mud clots. We started picking them up and ended up covering the whole house with mud!

Again, it seemed like a good idea at the time. When it came to getting into trouble, if I didn’t think of it first, one of my brothers would. It was kind of neat the way the mud kept sticking, piling up and piling up. Really, we completely trashed the house. The people got home and they put two and two together with some investigation, and they called my father. We got torched on that deal pretty swift. We had to clean their whole house off, apologize and then get punished too. I mean we got our asses whipped! And we deserved it.

Growing up in Victoria, Scott and I were always up to something. One day we got the bright idea of going door to door to see if anybody wanted to buy some cold water. We’d fill up Ziploc bags and put them in the refrigerator and then take them around trying to sell them.

We also set up a stand in the driveway. I remember Scott putting a sandwich board on his back telling people to follow him for a nice cold drink of water—“10 cents.” I remember some little girl followed him all over town until she got to our yard and we went ahead and gave her some water for free. We didn’t make too much on that venture, but hell, it was my first marketing deal. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

We’d ride our bikes around town and see all these new housing developments they were building, then go back at night and throw rocks through the windows or knock holes in the Sheetrock and, I guess, just mess around and act stupid. That’s being malicious though, and I don’t endorse it. We never got caught on that one. We would have got our butts blistered.

When you were about to be punished, either you’d have to go out and pick your own switch or my dad would break out his belt. He’d grab your left arm and then he’d proceed to whip the hell out of you. I’d be running circles around him, trying to stay away from the blows, but he
wasn’t letting go. He could swing that belt and he’d bust your ass, but it was never child abuse.

I endorse the practice of cutting a switch. We always deserved it, it seemed. We love our dad very much, and know it was all to teach us something. It wasn’t anything wrong and I believe in how he raised me. Spare the rod, spoil the child—and we sure as hell weren’t spoiled.

My mother is a saint for all the troubles and worries we put her through. Don’t get me wrong—she would whip our butts, but we sure made things interesting.

She’s a strong, strong lady. I love my mom to death. She can do no wrong in my eyes. Oh, and later in life I learned that my mom went to high school with Virgil Runnels, who would become a professional wrestler—Dusty Rhodes, “The American Dream.” He was a few grades ahead of her, but she says he was a good football player and didn’t weigh as much as he would later on, “if you will.”

My brothers and I would cuss to one another and our friends, but never in front of our parents. In fact, I can remember the exact moment that I first cussed in front of my father.

When I was twelve or so, we were pulling stored hay bales down from the second floor of the barn to where we’d have access to them. Earlier in the day my father had spotted a rattlesnake sneaking in, so he had been on the lookout for it all day. I was up on the second level throwing bales over the side into a truck.

I was moving pretty fast and as I stuck my damn arm in there to grab the next bale I saw that my arm was just inches away from one of the biggest rattlesnakes I’d ever seen. I could see my life flashing before my eyes and had to decide what to do fast!

I yelled, “Oh, shit!” and threw myself out the open second-story bay door to the ground below. My father went inside and got his gun and went looking for the snake.

I was upset about being so damn close to a rattlesnake and almost getting bit. They always scared me and that’s one of the reasons I decided to utilize that fear of rattlesnakes and add them to the Stone Cold wrestling character.

Anyway, that was the first time that I had ever cussed in front
of my father. I was really worried about it too—but he never mentioned it.

Recently, I reminded my father of that day. He said that although he remembers the rattlesnake incident like it happened yesterday, he does not recall that I cussed. I guess the situation justified it. Either that or he was so shocked by me jumping out the second story of the barn yelling “snake!” that he was thinking the same thing himself!

My dad always expected us to learn as we go, because sometimes he’d just tell us to do things he thought we should already know
how
to do. One time when I was ten or eleven, my brothers and I were working out at my Uncle Norman’s cattle ranch. Our job was to round up the cattle and get them in the pen. When we got them to the gate, they spread out and went everywhere but in the pen. My dad said, “Boys, I said to round ’em up, not to scare ’em the hell off!”

Dad expected us to be these accomplished cowhands. We were on horses, but we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. To expect us to be able to round up cattle on horseback at ten or eleven years old or whatever we were … man, we were pretty green.

There were only a few things my dad didn’t have patience for, and messing up was one of them. But he was usually right when it came down to it.

In this case, he figured we would learn. The cattle were spread all over and wandering off. Dad got on a horse, ran it back and forth in front of the cattle and got ’em to turn around. Then he showed us how to wrangle them to where we wanted ’em to go.

That was so cool. He had to go get a few strays, but we were okay. And we learned.

One thing I could do real well was what they call “throwing the calves.” Basically, that meant getting them in a pen and flipping them over so we could give them their shots, mark their ears and so on.

When it was castration time, Kevin would do the smaller ones and I’d handle the bigger calves. We did all that real well, overpowering the cattle, and I think that’s where I got a lot of my upper-body strength.

Nowadays, they’ve got elevated chutes that make it easy. We did it
in a small pen and had to wrestle these strong calves over and hold them down. When we were done with our chores, sometimes Dad would let us ride the calves. It was fun trying to stay on and that’s where I probably took my first bumps!

The fact that all the Williams boys are still here is pretty amazing. As a matter of fact, it’s a damn miracle!

One time I thought I heard a burglar in our house. I got Scott and we grabbed our shotguns and crept our way into the hall. My dad had given us twenty-gauge pumps for Christmas, so we were ready.

My brother was about ten or fifteen feet in front of me and we heard a noise, so we figured we’d better load up our shotguns and get ready for the showdown with “the burglar.” I’d always been extremely safe with a gun, but I was an idiot that night and tested to see if the safety was on—by pulling the stupid damned trigger!
BLAM!!
I had just fired my twenty-gauge shotgun in the house!

Fortunately I had the gun raised to the ceiling, because otherwise I would have shot my brother right in the back. That isn’t funny and it’s always scared the hell out of me. I was a dumb-ass, but at least I pointed the gun up when I tested to see if the safety was on.

I blew a hole through the ceiling and the roof, and of course everyone jumped like crazy. Kevin woke up and Scott yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” I damn near crapped in my pants, and of course I took a pretty good ass-beating on that one too.