Wraslin’ gators

The sight of my first alligator whenever I vacation in the South always brings back the memory of my brother John’s sensational career as the one and only child alligator wrestler.

Our father moved us to Florida when I was ten or eleven, John was eight. Dad had spent four years in the South Pacific during the war. He actually liked the heat. And he guessed right that Florida was going to grow like crazy. They would be building houses by the thousands which is what he did being a carpenter and all.

Our Irish mother hated every minute of it. She hated the bugs, the heat, the small house, the bugs. She continued to prepare roasts with potatoes each evening for supper despite the heat. She sweat profusely all day, turning red in the face before the sun set. Her old mother, grandma Callery, did the rosary twelve times a day, begging God to let her go home to die.

We lived in a tiny place on stilts so the breeze could blow under the house to cool it. This was before air conditioning was available in most homes. We lived across the street from Momma Bouk. She was very old and famous for at least two things. She had invented, so she claimed, the see-ment lawn. All around her little house on stilts was cement painted green. No maintenance, no water wasted. The other thing, of course, was her alligator wrestling arena.

When folks paid their two dollars to take an air boat ride in the swamp at her place they could also attend a show in the arena behind her house while they waited for available space in one of the air boats.

Momma was married to or at least lived with a big, old guy named Mr. Hicks. He did most of the air boat driving. Two younger guys did most of the alligator wrestling.

My younger brother John and I ran across the busy two lane State Highway as often as we could and not get caught by our mother. John was fascinated by the alligators but even more so by Momma Bouk. He followed her around like a toddler.

We quickly learned that all that splashing in the pool in the arena, all the struggling to control these wild prehistoric beasts, was pretty much phony baloney. Momma fed each gator in turn before his show with frozen chickens. They were so full of chicken and so cold to boot they were not at all inclined to eat either of the two younger fellows. In fact, the real struggle was to keep them from falling asleep!

John kept saying that he could do that. He had magic in his hands. It was funny hearing something that outrageous from the skinniest, smallest 8 year old in America. His mistake was telling Momma Bouk one day that he thought he could wrestle gators. She looked at him in an odd way, no doubt calculating the possibilities of this little kid in the ring, and said, “Let’s see”!

I was torn. I was older and this sounded like the kind of thing an older brother should actually tell his mother. Instead I told John to forget it, I was going home. He just said, “See you later, alligator”. Smartass.

John stripped to his undershorts while Momma went to look for the smallest of her current crop of alligators. John was jumping around in the muck in the pool with his skinny arms raised over his head when Mr. Hicks walked in.

He was holding a big stick and for a second I thought he was going to use it on us. Instead he got in the pool with John and began explaining what was required for a good alligator show. I sat down on the wooden bench and listened. How often does some old buck tell you how to properly rub an alligator’s belly and how to keep the big mouth shut, just in case.

Momma reappeared and opened the reed gate from the pens. An alligator, slightly bigger than John was tall, swam slowly into the pool. Mr. Hicks got out. John jumped on the damn thing before I could even shout, “Get out”! There was splashing, John was up, then he was down, the gator was up, John was actually rubbing its’ belly, now they are both under water!

There was a very loud scream from the fenced in entrance. Followed immediately after by another even louder and we all froze still, John, dripping wet, the alligator in his hands, Mr. Hicks, Momma Bouk and me as our mother fainted dead away.

That night was the one and only time I saw my father drink hard liquor. He drank steadily as my mother continued to yell at him without stop. She had crossed the road to get Mr. Hicks to catch a black scorpion that was in the living room, under the couch. She had seen it cross the floor while she was ironing our school uniforms. She was horrified and afraid. And then she had walked in on John’s one and only alligator wrestling performance.

Once Momma had brought mother around with a cold cloth and unsweetened ice tea, Mr. Hicks went across the street to calm grandma, hiding in the bathroom with the housekeeping spider and catch the scorpion in an old coffee can. My mother asked him to put a rock on the can and when dad came home she threw it at him!

We were banished to a cool bath tub to wash the muck and alligator smell off of us until all the packing was finished and we could get in the car for the long, long drive north.

The shame of it all was – Momma, Mr. Hicks and I all realized the boy was a natural, probably the best Momma had ever seen she told him. Who would have guessed?