[WWW] Bret Hart column - Bret Big backfire

Bret Big backfire 

By BRET HART -- For SLAM! Wrestling

  I hear a lot of talk around town about haunted houses. Let me tell
you the most legendary and infamous house of horrors was most
certainly Hart House.

I remember waking up and going down to the dark, dingy dungeon where
numerous brutes awaited their turns to have a romp with my dad. Stu
would eventually enter, wearing his baby blue wool tights, licking his
lips with his eyes ablaze and looking very much like a crafty old
daddy-longlegs spider.

My dad made a point of never chasing any of the boys out of the
dungeon because he considered this to be highly educational. Most of
the big brutes tried to make out to me they would take it easy on my
dad. So easy, in fact, before long Stu would have them tied up in
knots with screams so loud and bloodcurdling my mom would call from
upstairs for them to quiet down.

Sometimes when it got crazy enough, they'd seize the moment and jump
up to make their escape. The only trace they'd been there at all were
footprints in the snow.

Hart House was always an interesting place. 

Like under the porch, where Terrible Ted, the wrestling bear, lived
for a time. He was in a little cage and he seemed to love my dad's
home-made beer -- usually slipped through the bars by sweaty brutes
when my dad got done with them.

I found it more enjoyable to grab myself a Revel out of the fridge on
the porch, hang my feet down, drip ice cream on my toes and let
Terrible Ted lick it off. I still have all my toes, so I guess Ted
wasn't really all that terrible after all.

Generally on Halloween night, most diehard trick-or-treaters wisely
chose to drive past Hart House, which sits at the very edge of town.
But every once in a while, some unknowing ghouls and goblins would rap
on the kitchen door hoping for a treat.

Candy was never an available commodity and I can remember some kids
waiting at the door while my dad went digging through the kitchen
drawers and cupboards and came back with a fist full of chestnuts that
had probably been left there since the First World War.

One Halloween, when I was nine, my older brother Dean concocted a
crazy scheme to play hooky from school so we could prepare for a night
of trick-or-treating.

My brother Bruce typed out a note for the teacher and forged my mom's
name on it perfectly. It all should have gone smoothly. But as you may
have figured out, Calgary weather can change pretty quick and our
plans of drinking cream sodas and gorging on popcorn twists didn't
quite pan out.

A foot of snow greeted us that morning. 

When my dad dropped us off at lunch time, we made like we were walking
in just long enough to see my dad drive off. We made our getaway.

We walked through Edworthy Park and climbed up a tall spruce tree that
was just close enough to be a lookout post. The cream sodas were
frozen, the bottles exploded and our little holiday was turning into a
nightmare.

My feet were frozen and I talked Dean into sneaking around the back
way behind Dad's house where we had hopes of scurrying to safety in,
of all places, the dungeon.

After hiking through knee-high snow, we got to a telephone pole on
which a sign read, 'Watch out for children.' Well, that's what Dad
must have been doing.

We only had to run a short jaunt of 20 ft. and we figured the chance
my dad would be looking out the kitchen window at that very moment was
close to impossible.

Shivering from the cold, I glanced behind me only to see Dad coming
towards me looking a lot like J.R. Chicken Hawk.

I frantically tugged at Dean's coat. I was so scared I couldn't talk
and Dean was getting mad at me for all that tugging. He turned just in
time for Stu to collar us both.

"What are you two doing home from school so early?" my dad asked in a
booming voice.

Well, Dean usually had an answer for everything. Not this time. 

Confined to our bedroom that Halloween night, we could only listen to
the few brave little souls who came out in the cold hoping for candy
-- but got only chestnuts.

But they still had a better day than us.