Our Sputnik Moment? Heck, Sputnik Was A Friend Of Mine

In the early 70’s, Johnny Nichols, a native horseshoer and brother to the once famous jockey, Jimmy Nichols, was having a beer with red beans and rice at a bar in Bossier City, Louisiana. Unbeknown to him, a professional wrestler was having trouble keeping his younger girl friend faithful during his wrestling travels. He was enjoying his meal and several beers when a large, ugly guy came up behind him and grabbed him by his long hair, kept in the traditional long style that many natives prefer, and pulled him backward from his barstool, knocking off his expensive western hat in the process.

Johnny was a small guy, but not adverse to mixing it up; however, he knew when he was clearly over matched. The professional wrestler had him on the floor and threatened all types of physical damage upon his loin cloth wearing body if he ever came near his girlfriend again. Johnny was physically shaken and once the threats and the assault were over, he came looking for me.

Back in those days, I was 220 pounds of muscle and bone: women made cougar noises when I walked by on the beach, while men looked in another direction and pretended they didn’t notice me. The years have altered the physique, but that was the way it was back then.

Johnny found me asleep in my motel room, I listened to the story of a giant wrestler throwing him to the floor in a crowded bar and threatening Johnny over a woman. I found it humorous that a woman was the cause of the whole incident, because Johnny seemed to be intimidated by women. Reluctantly, I slowly dressed to prepare to avenge Johnny’s honor, such as it was on his more sober days. I had him repeat the story, since it sounded so bizarre, Johnny stealing a professional wrestler’s girlfriend, I almost wanted to find the wrestler just to hear his version of the story.

We heard the wrestler and his girlfriend were at the bar across the road, Gypsies Tramps and Thieves; yes, that was the actual name of the bar. We walked in and I looked at this middled aged man with a lock of long white hair in front, he was sitting with a woman I had met at the clubhouse at the race track who kept asking me about what horses I figured were going to win in the next race. She had a bit of luck and won some money and told all her girlfriends about this dreamy horseshoer at the race track who had all the winners. The girlfriends told their husbands who couldn’t wait to tell her boyfriend when he got back from his latest wrestling tour.

Upon hearing of the supposed infidelity, he figured Johnny was the horseshoer who was entertaining his girlfriend and her friends at the race track with all the winners. He and his girlfriend had talked over the whole deal before we walked in, and when the middle aged, 240 pound, slightly pudgy, wrestler saw me his face dropped and he walked over to apologize and shake our hands. He introduced himself as Sputnik Monroe, I had no idea who Sputnik Monroe was or that I had given his girlfriend a few winners by sheer luck.

It turned out the best for all and it was actually quite amusing, we had several laughs and in the eyes of the world both Johnny and Sputnik felt like they had saved face. Sputnik and I became friends and he took me to a couple of matches and I met several of the guys. I saw how the business worked and even tried to promote wrestling matches in Kentucky later on, it all proved to be a rousing failure, but I have never been one to pass up a chance to lose money.

Last night, President Obama referred to our Sputnik moment, of course he has never heard of Sputnik Monroe: yet, Sputnik Monroe set the segregated world of the old South on its ear when he refused to perform unless the Blacks in the audience were allowed to sit anywhere they wanted. Yes, Sputnik Monroe is a race hero in areas of the South, when racism was very much alive and dangerous. I can attest to this personally, for when I visited Sputnik in his adopted home of Memphis and we called on some of his Black friends and fans, they always had three pictures on the wall, Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Sputnik Monroe. Yes, Sputnik was a hero to Black people when our president was still crapping yellow in diapers. Yet, Sputnik wasn’t playing for political leverage; he stood up for racial injustice out of a pure sense of what was right and what it meant to be an American, for Sputnik was a fiercely patriotic individual.

The term Sputnik as used by our president was supposed to bring up the image of being in a cold war with the Soviets after their leader said he was going to bury us and a year later they launched a space satellite. The Free World was horrified at the though of Soviet Russia coming over here to bury us with an army of bulldozers, for kids and many adults those fears were real, but we, with the help of President Reagan, destroyed the Soviet Union economically. Now, with a rudderless ship of state, we are supposed to destroy China with technology, not the technology we have given them or the technology they have stolen from us, but magical new technology, that the Chinese wont be given. The same China that has been our friendly bank and creditor, controls an ambiguous amount of our governmental policies, while we spend like drunken sailors and devise new stimulus plans to slow our economy even more thus enriching certain business entities and individuals, while most of us are treading water on the edge of a violent whirlpool that is trying to pull us down into economic oblivion.

We must really seem gullible to Obama, he figures to work the crowd like a professional wrestler works the crowd and tell us we must stop spending after he has mortgaged away the farm, all the while making the fans love him: wrestling fans are gullible and the wrestlers are showmen, but at least one of them made a real contribution to society.

“I’m rough, tough, and hard to bluff; 235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal, the heavenly body that women love but men fear.” Sputnik Monroe