Chapter 7: All Roads Lead to the Beer Leagues...and Then To Hell

All Roads Lead to the Beer Leagues

This entry is not so much about hockey.  There is some, but it is a more a story of crashing, burning and rising from the ashes. I hope you will bear with me.

So that was that.  My college hockey career was over.  I wasn't sure what was next.  I graduated in May.  I ended up moving down to New Canaan, Ct where my girlfriend, Mo, was a school teacher.  Mo and I dated for two years, my last two.  She was a year older than me and graduated the year before me.  But we were together often during my senior year, nearly every weekend.   I'm pretty sure she was more serious about our relationship than I was.   You may recall Frank married Pat. I did not marry Mo. 

After graduation I got a summer job as a live-in counselor/mentor in an at-risk youth home in New Canaan.  The ABC House, A Better Chance!   I also worked at the hockey school in Darien.  While there, I made some extra cash taking photo's of the little tykes posing in their hockey gear. Once their mom's saw their toothless little smiles on the black and white 8 1/2 x 11" mounted poster board, they couldn't buy them fast enough.   I took some photography classes during my last year at Uconn.  I had a dark-room and a Hasselblad camera.  

The way I remember it, Mo had been nudging me to be "more committed" than I was in our relationship.  Later that summer she went to Northern California, Mill Valley, for a vacation.  When she returned, she was a changed woman.  She had fallen madly in love with California.  She couldn't quit her job and move there fast enough.  What didn't make sense to me was why she moved to Southern California, San Diego to be specific.

It turns out that what she fell in love with wasn't so much California, but the life guard in Mill Valley who happened to attend San Diego State University.  This never occurred to me and it took a while to dawn on me that she decided not to wait for me to come around.  It was mid autumn when I finally realized I'd been jilted and oddly enough, I suddenly fell madly in love with Mo and I had to have her.  Every love song on the radio sounded like it was written just for me.  I set out to win her heart back.  I started writing letters, poetry, journaling....my heart was in pieces....What an idiot.   

I finally accepted my fate and told Mo that I was ending my quest.  I told her not to call me unless she was interested in getting back together....she called.  I don't think she had any intention of reuniting, but that's not how I saw it.  So I hopped on the next flight I could and flew to San Diego.  Oddly, I'd never thought much about California.  I'd never wanted to visit.  I had no interest.  I knew it was there, but if not for Mo, I don't know if I would have ever gone there.

So, I got to San Diego.  I got to see Mo.  I met her boyfriend.  It was immediately obvious that we would not get back together...but I was fascinated with San Diego.  So what did I do?  I went home, packed up and drove my beat up old Peugot cross country and moved there.  I secretly kept hope that somehow it would work out with Mo, but I faced reality and started to build my own life.  

By the way, my career plans were not as whacky as you may have gathered from my earlier description of how I decided to major in Anthropology.  My grandfather was a pioneer in the movie business.  He and his family built a theater empire in the Chicago area called Balaban and Katz Theaters.  They were bought out by Paramount Studios in 1926.  My grandfather was named president of Paramount Studios in 1936 and was there until 1964.  He remained as chairman of the board until his death in 1971.

I wasn't interested in "Hollywood", but I did have a interest in film.  It was my plan to get my degree in Anthropology, attend graduate school for film and then head off to travel and make documentary films.  That was the plan.  I was accepted to the University of North Carolina Grad school for film before I made the same mistake I'd made when I decided to follow my high school girlfriend to Uconn.   

So I was in San Diego.  No job.  No School.  No girlfriend.  Lot's of hope and naivete.  I got a job at a TV production company working on making commercials.  I was playing senior league hockey in a checking league in Mira Mesa.  I was in great shape.  I kind of tore it up there.

My room mate at the time was a really nice guy named Jeff.  Jeff was a guy I met through a classified ad in the San Diego Reader.  We lived together at an apartment in Pacific Beach.  Jeff was a bit of a coke-head.  He worked as a "bar-back" at Crystal T's Emporium in Fashion Valley.  Crystal T's was San Diego's version of Studio 54.  

Jef'f dated a really nice gal who was a reporter for a paramedic magazine.  I remember her talking to us one day about an article she was working on dealing with how often times accident victims would walk away from a car crash only to wake up paralyzed the next day because they didn't get proper treatment.

That same night I had a senior league game.  It was fairly early in the game, I recall skating in one direction at the center red line, then stopping quickly to go the other way.   Bam!!!  It felt like a hand grenade exploded in the middle of my back.  I limped off the ice and got to the bench.  A few minutes later, I took my next shift.  Ka-pow!!!  Again with the excruciating pain.  My back was on fire.  In a lifetime of pain, it was the most intense agony I'd ever experienced.   I was helped off the ice and to the locker room.  I couldn't reach my feet to remove my skates.  One of my teammates helped me unlace and take my skates off.

My first inclination was to say I was fine.  I'd be alright.  Then I remembered Jeff's girlfriend's conversation about spinal injuries...You know what, maybe I should go to the hospital.  I was driven to Sharp Hospital, still wearing my hockey gear.  I walked in and was admitted to the e.r.  They got me out of my equipment and laid me on the table.  By the time I was examined, I could no longer feel or move my legs.  Oh crap.

It was already late at night.  Our game was at 10:00 or 11:00 pm.  By now it was already the middle of the wee hours of the morning, probably 2 or 3 am.  They gave me a mylogram.  Nasty procedure.  Dye is injected into the spinal canal and you are tilted on a table while they read  the results on an x-ray machine.  Massive headaches follow.  

Dr. John Cleary visited me at about 5:00 am.  Well, it wasn't good.  He told me there was damage to my spinal cord.  There was less than a 50% chance I'd walk after the surgery.  My parents were informed and were flying out from Connecticut.

The injury was at a unique level of my spine.  It was a massive ruptured disk at t-12.  Dr. Cleary informed me he had never seen this type of injury at that level in his career.  And he was no spring chicken.  Oddly enough while I was in the hospital he ended up having another t-12 laminectomy.  This one was from a woman who worked at a casino in Las Vegas.  She injured hers picking up a bucket of coins.

It was clear that my "accident" was the result of ten years of not taking care of my original injury when I was a 13 year old bantam.  Then playing with the pain for all those years.   It was no mystery what had happened..

So the surgery was performed.  I recall waking up, pretty groggy from the anesthesia and hearing the nurse tell me that there was good news.  They applied "pain stimulus" to my feet.  In other words, they stuck my feet with needles and I responded.  I would not be paralyzed.  

There was no way to know how much damage had been done, nor how permanent it would be.  What was clear, according to Dr. Cleary, was that I would never skate, lift cameras, ride horses or jump up and down.  I'm not exactly sure what that left, but I did appreciate the fact that I would not be paralyzed.  Thank you Jeff's girlfriend.

Thus began about of decade of discovery and life without hockey.  I recovered from the surgery.  I was able to shuffle, then walk.  I lived near the beach where I spent a lot of time, swimming, stretching, doing yoga and just hanging out.  The surgery happened in March.  I applied to graduate school at San Diego State University for Telecommunication and Film for the fall.  That summer I got about the worst possible job any one recovering from back surgery could imagine...I got a job bussing tables at the Vineyard Wine & Cheese.  It was a really cool, gourmet wine and cheese store and deli.  Way ahead of its time.  We were one of the only places in San Diego where you could get an espresso and a frozen banana dipped in chocolate. 

I also started jogging in the sand at the beach.  I'd spent my entire hockey based youth exercising "in order to" get in shape for hockey. Our training runs at Uconn were three miles long.  I'd never run more than that distance.  I worked up to a three mile run on the beach.  Of course, when I hit three miles I was done.  That was my limit.  One day, as I started to approach the end of my run I remember thinking that this was the first time I exercised just to exercise, not to get in shape for hockey.  I recall nearing the three mile mark and wondering to myself what would happen if I just kept going.  So I got to the end and I took one more step.  It felt like I'd stepped through a door.  I suppose it was what is known as a runners high, but for the first time ever I experienced effortlessness.  It was a dance.  Pure joy.  Nothing but me, my breath and the wind.  I kept going.  By the time I was finished I'd gone eight miles.  

I was hooked.  I ran everyday.  By October, I finished my first and only marathon in just over 4 hours.   I ran the entire time.  I never got tired.  I never thought of quitting or even walking.  Sorry, Dr. Cleary. 

Graduate school was awful.  It was academic, theoretical and really boring.  I quit and worked my way up from bus boy to deli worker, to manager of the deli and soon I would be offered the position of store manager.  

This will get back to hockey soon, I promise....but this was a time in my life of no hockey whatsoever.  I do recall having some interest in following the 1980 Olympics.  But besides that, I don't think I gave hockey a second thought for nearly 13 years.  I went the entire 80's without knowing who Wayne Gretsky was.  I couldn't play, I didn't care.  

At the time I was offered the job to manage the Vineyard, I had the opportunity to go up to Los Angeles and spend a week on the set of All In The Family.  I still have a fun polaroid picture of me sitting in Archie Bunker's easy chair.  I have family in the entertainment business in L.A. and I'm sure I could have gotten some kind of gopher job if I wanted.  I considered it, but when I got the offer to manage the store I opted for that instead.  The Vineyard held weekly wine tastings on Satuday's and once a month we hosted a winemaker from Napa or Sonoma for a big event.  I was invited to sit on a tasting panel for a national wine magazine  called the Grapevine.  It wasn't film or anthro but it was a lot of fun and great business experience.  

I did that for a few years then moved on to a few other careers before I finally settled on the financial services business.  I was a registered rep, stock broker, bond broker, commodities trader, Certified Financial Planner and Wealth Management Advisor.  All fancy ways of saying I was an investment guy.  I had a career. 

In 1989 I had client whose son was an anesthesiologist.  He always bragged about his son's practice which was in the, then newly emerging field of pain management.  I could use some of that.  Ever since my surgery in 1978, eleven years earlier, I continued to have pain at the site of my injury.  I would describe it as having a hot ember constantly poking on my spine in the middle of my back.  Every once in a while, it would spasm and flare up into a full on raging immobilizing blaze.  In those instances I would be flat on my back until it subsided.  It usually lasted the better part of a week.

After my second visit to Dr. Amundson, I was home zenning out(zoning out?) on my couch.  The procedure was what is commonly known today as a steroid epidural. This was the early days of this kind of therapy.  They injected cortizone and morphine into the area of the pain.   There I was on my couch drifting off into la-la land.  I felt my body relax and then I could feel the knotted pain in my back actually melt away.  It has never returned.  I was healed!!  Well not really, but at least that pain was gone.

There was one hockey experience I had in the 80's that is worth sharing.  Apparently, and this is a little known and long forgotten fact, San Diego was actually home to a Division I college hockey program. It was a school called United States International University or USIU.  Other than Alaska it was the farthest west D1 program in the country.  It was around for around seven or eight years in the 80s.  Chris Chelios was cut from the team and nearly quit hockey.  They were an independent team.  Uconn came out to play them. I went to the games.  Ben Kirtland was coaching Uconn at that time.  We lost by scores of 8-1 and 9-1.  I watched USIU beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers.  They beat that year's national champion North Dakota for their only home loss of the season.    The story behind this program is that there was a student, the son of a Saudi prince who was a big hockey fan.  So his father funded the program and the rest was history.  The kid must have graduated or lost interest and the team folded. 

This cleared the way for the next chapter of my life which would see the birth of my children and the return of hockey to my world in a huge way.

Up next. The birth of my son, the return of pro hockey to San Diego and my wife suggesting I start playing hockey.  Coolest wife ever!