Cowboy Lang - Midget wrestler - January 4
ric...@concentric.net
Midget wrestler Cowboy Lang died in Portland of heart disease on
January 4
aka Bob
<ric...@concentric.net> magnanimously proffered:
>There was a big news article in the Portland Oregonian about how the
>Midget wrestler Cowboy Lang died in Portland of heart disease on
>January 4
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1172559415132770.xml&coll=7
From The Oregonian:
What happened to Cowboy Lang?
Confident, agile and athletic, Harry Lang was a top midget wrestler
until misfortune took him down
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
STEPHEN BEAVEN
The Oregonian
Eight days after the midget wrestler died, about 30 people squeezed
into the community room at his low-income apartment building in
downtown Portland for a memorial service.
They drank coffee and Diet Pepsi and told stories about Harry Robert
Lang as gospel music played softly in the background. Funny guy, they
said.
Harry tried to seduce one woman, she remembered with a smile, even
after she turned him down. Harry borrowed money for beer, one friend
recalled, but always paid him back. And once he chased two drug
addicts from the front of the building, guarding his home like a
watchdog.
Then a fellow with one arm rose unsteadily to his feet in the back of
the room. With red and rheumy eyes, he wondered aloud how hard Harry's
life had been, how much Harry had suffered for standing 4 feet 4
inches tall. Can you imagine what that would be like, he said.
With the passion of a preacher, he reminded his listeners that Harry
overcame that by using his size to launch an unlikely career in a
business dominated by massive men.
"Don't anybody here speak of him as a midget," the man said, his voice
rising. "He's taller than all of us, I'll tell you that."
By the time it was over, Harry's friends had created a portrait of a
poor but generous 56-year-old man with a sharp wit and an affinity for
prime rib, Milwaukee's Best and "The Price is Right." But they didn't
dwell on his globetrotting career as a wrestler named Cowboy, the car
accident that left permanent scars or his brief marriage.
Though known by many, with friends throughout the country and siblings
in Canada, Harry Lang kept nearly everyone at arm's length. That's why
none of his family or old wrestling friends were at his memorial
service. And that's why they can't answer a lingering question:
Whatever happened to Cowboy Lang?
Harry Lang once told a reporter that when he saw midget wrestling on
television in Canada back in the '60s, he ditched his dream of being a
long-haul trucker and, at 16, hopped a train headed east.
Lang had dropped out of school by the eighth grade, recalled his
sister Elsie Murray. He was a charming boy in a poor family, the
youngest of seven kids. He had plenty of friends and lots of freedom,
often skipping school to play with neighborhood kids. And although his
mother worried about him moving across the country, Murray and her
siblings endorsed Harry's efforts.
"We all thought it was a good idea because we didn't know what else he
could do," she said. "At least he had some kind of career."
Lang ended up in Ontario to learn at the feet of a well-traveled
midget wrestler and promoter named Eric Tovey, aka Lord Littlebrook.
Even then, Lang didn't lack for confidence.
"I met him in 1966 in Calgary, Alberta," said Portland promoter Sandy
Barr. "He very proudly introduced himself to me and said he was going
to be a pro wrestler in about six months. I'll be damned if a year
later he wasn't wrestling right here in Portland."
This was back when midget wrestling was big, with regional circuits in
Canada and the United States. Wrestlers like Lord Littlebrook, Little
Beaver, Tom Thumb and Little Tokyo spent days on the road, going from
town to town. Portland was a favorite stop for many, including Lang.
The matches between the big guys were a primitive form of
entertainment, with heroes and villains and tidy endings. Cowboy Lang
and his undersized colleagues, on the other hand, were novelty acts,
comedic relief with a vaudevillian flair.
Each wrestler played a different character. Lang was a comedic cowboy
with a certain grace.
He might have adopted the persona in honor of his upbringing in a
small town on the Canadian prairie in Alberta, wearing boots and hats
and vests along with his tiny wrestling trunks, according to Greg
Oliver, a Canadian wrestling writer who has covered Cowboy Lang.
Oliver thinks Lang's popularity was due, in part, to the fact that he
stuck with the cowboy character for more than 30 years.
It didn't hurt that Lang moved with an easy athleticism. "Harry was
very agile, fast as lightning," said Bill Slusher, who watched Lang
wrestle and later befriended him.
He also had a none-too-subtle sense of humor. Danny Campbell, whose
ring name is Little Nasty Boy, wrestled with him in Lang's later
years.
"I'd say, 'Ref, he's biting me,' " Campbell recalled. "He'd pull out
his teeth and say, 'Here, see if I'm biting him.' "
Starting in the '70s, Lang climbed to the top of the midget wrestling
subculture, attaining B-list fame in a C-list sport.
He made good money -- hundreds of dollars a night sometimes -- and
traveled the world. Among his stops: Madison Square Garden, the
Louisiana Superdome and the Metrodome in Minneapolis, according to
Oliver.
In 1977, he appeared with Little Tokyo in Black Samurai, playing
himself in a corny kung-fu action flick.
He took care of business in the ring, as well, winning two National
Wrestling Alliance World Midget titles in the early '80s.
Though some think Lang and his colleagues were exploited, the
wrestlers would disagree. Amid the comedy, there was real wrestling, a
good paycheck and a chance to see the world. Lang and his colleagues
proudly called themselves midgets; it wasn't a disparaging term, it
was a career choice.
Lang, in fact, never liked the politically correct term "little
people."
"The only thing he liked about Little People of America," said Linda
Lang, his ex-wife, "was that they got the phone booths down so he
could reach them."
Linda Lang met her future husband in the mid-'70s when Harry was in
town to wrestle. Friends called him "Bob," his middle name, because he
didn't like Harry.
Linda recalled Lang as friendly and charming. His height wasn't an
issue. She doesn't think it drove him to be an entertainer. He liked
the crowds and the money and the people. There was no void, she said,
that he needed to fill.
"Bob was the kind of person who talked and you forgot he was short,"
Linda Lang said. "He had a charisma. He was a ham."
While Lang was on the road, they dated, going out for Chinese food and
beer when he was in town. He had never married. She was divorced with
kids.
They had good times in those days, when wrestling still boasted a
certain glamour. "It's kind of an exciting life. It was fun being with
all those people. It's kind of like playing for a living, I think,
instead of working."
Linda and Cowboy got serious in the mid-'80s.
But by then, everything had begun to unravel.
Until the early '80s, wrestling maintained its regional roots.
Then, Vince McMahon, the thick-necked WWF impresario, concocted his
goofy mix of wrestling, pop music and low-brow culture. Soon, Cyndi
Lauper, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Captain Lou Albano were beamed to
television screens around the world.
The glitzy TV shows and national arena tours hurt the local business,
squeezing many regional promoters out. That limited opportunities for
wrestlers such as Lang.
The new business model also made the midgets a degrading sideshow,
Campbell said. The push for entertainment came at the expense of the
old-school wrestling Lang preferred.
"Back in the day, you out-wrestled your opponent with holds and
moves," Campbell said. "Today it's like you're a Hollywood stuntman."
Perhaps the biggest blow to Lang's career, however, had nothing to do
with wrestling.
"As a result of an automobile accident on Oct. 16, 1986," he wrote in
an affidavit filed in Clackamas County Circuit Court, "I am unable to
read or write and need assistance in the interpretation of most
documents."
The details are sketchy because Lang didn't talk much about the wreck.
But, according to friends, it happened in Africa, maybe South Africa,
perhaps Johannesburg. Although people tell different versions of the
same story, Linda Lang said a truck broadsided a van full of wrestlers
and pushed it off a cliff.
No matter the details, nearly everyone agrees that Lang suffered a
brain injury and began a long, slow decline.
He stopped wrestling. He stopped joking. He stuttered and slurred. The
charm and charisma that endeared crowds and wrestlers and friends?
"All that changed," Barr said. "He wasn't the funny cowboy anymore. He
was kind of grim."
Barr gave Lang a maintenance job at the Portland Sports Arena. Then
they had a falling out. "He got mad at me," Barr said. "I didn't know
why. But he never showed up again."
It's a story many of Lang's friends tell. He'd get mad, and
relationships would suddenly end. Or he'd drift away without a word.
He stopped visiting his siblings after the accident and had no contact
with them the last seven years of his life.
Even when he was friendly, Lang revealed little about himself.
"As well as I knew him, I really didn't know him," said Tony Borne, a
retired wrestler who lives in Oak Grove. "He kept so much of his life
a secret."
Linda and Harry Lang married in 1987 and settled into her Clackamas
mobile home. Lang drank and tried to cope with life without the
crowds, the big matches and the travel. He was often angry, friends
said, despite anger-control classes.
In 1991, Linda filed for divorce. In a nasty legal battle, Lang
claimed Linda "intentionally misled me" and "made claims on my money,"
claims she denies.
The judge gave Harry Lang future rights to payments from a settlement
he received after the accident. Linda Lang got the mobile home, and
they split everything else. The divorce was final in December 1991.
Lang moved into a nearby trailer, and Linda went shopping with him,
gave him some furniture, she said. Sometimes they talked on the phone.
But after a while, the calls stopped.
Lang moved out of the trailer and drifted for much of the '90s. He
wrestled off and on with Campbell and others, sometimes using Eric
Tovey's Missouri home as his base.
But as he neared 50, Lang struggled with the rigors of wrestling. In
early 1999, he told a reporter with The Topeka Capital-Journal in
Kansas that he ached after every match.
"I can't move like I used to," he said. "I can't fly no more."
He retired a short time later with little money to show for a 30-year
career.
After wrestling, Lang lived for a time in a residential hotel just off
West Burnside, according to his friend Slusher. He moved into a tidy
apartment building for the elderly and disabled on Southwest 12th
Avenue in early 2003.
Although he lost touch with nearly all his wrestling friends, he was
popular at the apartments. He chatted with neighbors as they sat
outside and smoked. He watched TV with his buddies.
John Dodge met Lang two years ago and spent nearly every day with him.
Each morning, he'd leave his third-floor apartment, go up to the fifth
floor and kick Lang's door to be sure the retired wrestler could hear
him. Then they watched "The Price is Right."
The rest of the time, Dodge said, they'd "drink beer and swap
stories."
LaVerne Johnson lived in the same building and served as Lang's
unofficial caretaker, scheduling his doctor's appointments, cleaning
his apartment and occasionally going out to eat with him. He wanted
more out of their relationship, she said with a laugh, but she turned
him down.
Lang was still a charmer. But he also had an unpredictable temper.
Johnson said when she told the building manager that Lang's apartment
should be sprayed for roaches, he confronted her, yelling and calling
her a name.
"But I just let it ride," she said. "He got over it."
In the last few years, Lang's health deteriorated. He had a triple
bypass in late 2004, Johnson said. Blackouts were so common he'd lie
on the floor when he felt one coming so he wouldn't fall. Ultimately,
she said, he stopped taking his medication and quit going to the
doctor.
About 10 a.m. Jan. 4, a neighbor passed Lang outside their apartment
building.
"He says, 'You got any smokes?' " Thomas Hutchens recalled.
"I said, 'No, I quit the first of the year.' He said, 'Yeah, that'll
last.' "
About three hours later, Dodge knocked on the old wrestler's door with
some leftovers from the previous night's dinner. No answer. He kicked
the door, like always. No answer. So Dodge pushed open the unlocked
door, and there was Harry Lang, alone, facedown in the kitchen, dead
of heart disease.
He was cremated a few days later. Dodge keeps the ashes in a cardboard
box on the kitchen table, next to his cigarettes.
Reporter Jessica Bruder and researchers Margie Gultry and Kathleen
Blythe contributed.
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
aka Bob
<ric...@concentric.net> magnanimously proffered:
>There was a big news article in the Portland Oregonian about how the
>Midget wrestler Cowboy Lang died in Portland of heart disease on
>January 4
Aged 56. He lived far too short a life ...
The Kentucky Wizard
> On 28 Feb 2007 03:48:21 -0800, "ric...@concentric.net"
> <ric...@concentric.net> magnanimously proffered:
>
> > There was a big news article in the Portland Oregonian about how the
> > Midget wrestler Cowboy Lang died in Portland of heart disease on
> > January 4
>
> Aged 56. He lived far too short a life ...
But he did leave a small mark on the wrestling industry....
--
Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and
beat you with experience.
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
King Daevid MacKenzie
> About three hours later, Dodge knocked on the old wrestler's door with
> some leftovers from the previous night's dinner. No answer. He kicked
> the door, like always. No answer. So Dodge pushed open the unlocked
> door, and there was Harry Lang, alone, facedown in the kitchen, dead
> of heart disease.
>
> He was cremated a few days later. Dodge keeps the ashes in a cardboard
> box on the kitchen table, next to his cigarettes.
...if *that* doesn't give anyone immediate incentive to quit smoking,
*nothing* will...
--
King Daevid MacKenzie.
No brag, just fact.
http://myspace.com/kingdaevid
"You're only entitled to your informed opinion." HARLAN ELLISON