You can imagine, then, what the Hercules/strength equation must have meant to a man like The Great Sandusky. He could afford it, you say. Yes, but it hurt.
“He was a strong guy, sure, but could he have had better developed lumbar lats than that?” Sandusky has asked, his feet a careful nineteen inches apart, his hands locked in impossible tug-of-war behind his neck. He couldn’t have. In his prime Felix Sandusky had the biggest lumbar lats in the business. According to Sandusky, “Hercules got a good press only because the rest of your Greeks were little men. Sure, vitamins have killed the strong-man game. People are taller now, bigger in the arms, the legs, the chest. You hear a lot of talk about longevity, statistics about the average man living thirty or forty years longer than his great-grandfather, but that’s only half the story. Your trunks are vaster now. Look, it’s like anything else. It’s all contrast. Everybody has force.” (Sandusky liked to call his strength force.) “But if a guy has only a little force then a guy with just average or a little better than average force is a big deal. Hercules could probably take care of himself, but your general run-of-the-mill Greek was a guy with lousy force. So don’t tell me about Hercules! What with health foods and wonder drugs and vitamins and scientific weight training it takes a real man to stand out today. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has force today.”
Getting to meet The Great Sandusky was my first campaign.
I left Penner’s as elated as I had ever felt. Twenty- four hours before I had been broke. Since then I had earned twelve dollars and still had more than eight, which meant that I was getting, including expenditures, at a rate of better than seven-hundred-fifty per cent. That was very high-grade getting for me and quality keeping for anyone. Furthermore, I had made a decision which would change my life: a decision not to mess around. Herlitz helps him who helps himself.
In the gymnasium, daydreaming, just before sleep on the tumblers’ mats I had pulled down from the wall, the idea came to me: The Great Sandusky. The very name was a revelation. The Great Sandusky. We were both strong men of the world. He would help me. That he was in the city was common knowledge to all the regulars in the gym. It was Penner who had shown me the feature article on him in the paper. It said he lived now in a hotel near the river. I would write him. The Great Sandusky. Of course!
I let myself into the gymnasium office, took three sheets of stationery, and wrote:
The Great Sandusky
Riverside Hotel
2nd and Steamboat Streets
St. Louis, Missouri
Dear Sir,
I am an admirer of yours. Not simply because of your feats (which no man could gainsay), but because I am a strong man myself and know what effort was involved in the accomplishment of those feats. I should like very much to meet with you in order to discuss your achievements and to talk over with an expert certain plans of my own. Please arrange whatever appointment would be convenient to you. May I close by saluting a pioneer in strength and by remaining yours very truly, etc., etc.
I wrote it several times until it was awkward and stiff enough. Then I signed the letter and addressed the envelope. At the last moment I had an idea that would demonstrate my earnestness. I hunted around in the office until I found a couple of nails. These I bent and put into the envelope with the letter.
I supposed I would hear from him within two days. What the hell, an old man, out of condition, in a lousy water-front hotel — he would answer as soon as he got the letter. He would go downstairs and beg a few sheets of hotel stationery from the night clerk and painstakingly scratch out a reply. He didn’t. I heard nothing. On the fourth day I wrote again:
Dear Sandusky,
Perhaps you thought my last letter insincere, the work of a crank, or the teasing joke of a jealous man. I assure you neither assumption fits the case. I have the greatest respect for your feats. I know of your fabulous cow lift. A picture of you pulling the locomotive is in my wallet at this moment next to my mother’s own [with my crummy eight dollars, buddy] and I should like to assure myself that a life given over to the cultivation of strength reaps rewards in later age commensurate with the Spartan, with the Herculean [knew what I was doing] efforts necessary to develop that strength.
Remembering what I had read in the papers I crossed out “strength“ and wrote “force.” “I am a professional myself, sir,” I finished, and signed the letter.
Instead of two nails I enclosed a half-inch spike which I paid a professional machinist to heat and bend for me. This time Sandusky would certainly answer. When he didn’t I was more surprised than hurt. Then it occurred to me that, after all, he was now an old man. Perhaps he was dead. I called his hotel.
“May I speak to The Great Sandusky?”
“He ain’t in.”
“Please, it’s important.”
“There’s no phone in the room.”
“I don’t care what you give the cops to keep your license. I’ll see to it that Fire Chief Lesbeth hears about every one of those violations. You’ll be out of there so fast your head will spin. Get Sandusky.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jimmy Boswell, that’s who it is.”
“Just a minute. I’ll see if he’s back.”
He went away.
“Hey, Boswell. The old man won’t speak to you. Says to tell you the spike is a cheap trick, that any jackass with reasonable force could bend a friggin’ spike.”
He hung up.
So, I thought. He had hubris, the old man. So much the better. The great are touchy folk. They are goosey. The goosey great. I give them every credit. It’s a free history, right?
I wrote a third letter:
My dear Sandusky [I began], I appreciate your reluctance to meet with outsiders, with the jackals who feed off the greatness of others. Let me be frank. I read the feature about you in the papers. It was disgusting. If I were a lawyer I would advise a suit. It made your efforts appear comical. The reporter’s insistence on your emphasis on the sub-scale of ordinary Greeks was a deliberate attempt to offset scientific observations by making them appear hobby-horsey. To provide amusement for weak, fat-ridden office workers. What does an outsider know? Has he sweated under the strain of a bench-lift; has he felt the pull of the jerk-and-press; the thrill of the curl; the back-hoist; the arm wrenching, shoulder wrecking agony of the dead lift? I am a strong man, Sandusky, and I have a legitimate historical interest in your training. If bending half-inch spikes is labor for a child then what is this?
I enclosed a twisted one-inch spike.
I received no reply, but in the mail three days later was a package for me. In it was the spike. Sandusky had straightened it.
In a hardware store I bought two pounds of iron filings. I put them in a box and sent them to Sandusky.
Two days later there was a post card addressed to me in the gym office. On the front was a picture of a sunset over some southern resort hotel. On the back was one word: “Come.”