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let him use his name.
    They borrowed a house trailer from my Aunt Dorothy and enough money for a used Oldsmobile. The Funk family was ready for the road.
    I never really thought about us being nomads. It was just a way of life, traveling around and living in the trailer parks.
    At the time, that old trailer didn’t seem small to me. Heck, even the back window of our Oldsmobile seemed big. I remember crawling up in the space between the rear window and the back seat and riding for hours down the road. I always liked it best when we were traveling at night. Mom would make Dory Jr. a bed on the back seat with blankets and a pillow, and then fix me up a bed in that little rear-window nook.
    We would listen to the radio for hours as we drove across the country. I loved “The Life of Riley,” but “The Shadow” scared the devil out of me.
    Wrestlers in the late 1940s were like a bunch of gypsies—roving vagabonds traveling throughout the country. We stayed at a trailer park in towns that were centrally located to the towns the promoter ran, as did a lot of other wrestlers’ families, and we bonded with a lot of them. It was immediate acceptance with the other wrestlers’ families. The kids stuck together, and the families did, too. It was much more of a circus atmosphere than what you might imagine—not as far as how they earned their money, but in the way of life. It was close to what the circus or carny’s way of life was. You’d go into a territory, stay three or four months, or as long as you could, and then move on to your next territory.
    In those trailer courts, we were all part of a big, extended family. I believe a lot of it was that we had common enemies. We might fight with each other, but we could come together against the people who called wrestling “fake” or “phony.”
    On weekends they would have get-togethers with plenty of beer and all the food everyone could eat. I never knew a wrestler or a wrestler’s wife who couldn’t make one hell of a meal!
    Looking back, I guess that 30-foot trailer was a little small for a family of four, but it was home. My mother decorated the room Dory and I shared with paper stars that glowed in the dark. At night we said our prayers, and she kissed us good night. Then she turned off the lights, and the moment she did, the stars would glow. We were among the heavens, or at least we thought we were. You talk about neat!
    For years, it seemed like the Trudells were always in the same territory as us. Benny and his wife, Lil, had four children, three beautiful girls and a boy. After seeing all of them packed into their trailer, I realized ours really wasn’t so crowded.
    They were from Montreal and originally spoke only French, but the kids picked up English fast. As for their parents, well, Benny did OK, but Lil brutalized the language and could not have cared less. All that mattered to Lil was that her husband was OK and her kids, too.
    Benny was never really a great wrestler, but he was hard-nosed and pretty tough, pound for pound. He would fight for the wrestling business at the drop of a hat, but at five-foot-eight and with a pot belly, promoters would never let him be a main eventer. Like most of the wrestlers I’ve known through the years, Benny was hooked on the business. He doubled sometimes as a referee but just knew that if he had the right gimmick, he could make his fortune in wrestling.
    Wrestling in the late 1940s and 1950s was a six-night-a-week occupation. No promoter would chance working on Sunday, or it would’ve been seven, but the guys wanted that day of rest to be with their families.
    Driving to a different town every night could get monotonous, and good traveling companions were necessary. For my dad, Benny was the perfect companion, I believe, because he thought everything Dory did was grand, and thought everything Dory said was hilarious. Looking back, I guess he was living vicariously through my father.
    My father worked in the Ohio, Florida,