My father had a friend many years ago named Jerry Bolden. (Both he and my dad died a few years ago.) Jerry had been raised in the Florida Everglades by his grandmother, who he often described as one of the toughest women on the planet. He said he once sassed her, then ran and jumped on the back of his horse. He spurred it to race away before she could get to him. She calmly reached down from her rocking chair on the porch and grabbed her bullwhip. She whipped it out, wrapped the end around Jerry’s neck, and yanked him off the back of his horse.
Jerry moved to San Jose in the mid-50s, where he met my dad. He lived out in the country and drove heavy equipment for a living. But he did a lot of hunting on the side – deer, bear, and wild boar. A friend of his brought the first Pit Bull dogs into California for Jerry to use to hunt hogs. (Pit Bulls were much smaller in those days than most today. Jerry gave me one of his pups in the late 50s and I raised it.)
Jerry was a tough guy, your worst enemy or best friend. He once killed a bear with a hatchet. He killed a 400 lbs. wild boar with a hunting knife. He was a handsome, charismatic, and funny guy, who dated a lot of women, including married ones. He came home from work one day to find the husband of one of the women sitting on his sofa with a shotgun aimed at him. Jerry somehow managed to finesse the guy into letting him move closer. When he was within range, he kicked the end of the shotgun. It blew a huge hole in the ceiling. Then, Jerry beat the guy up so badly that when the police arrived, they arrested him.
On a dare, he once removed an abscessed wisdom tooth with his pocket knife and a pair of pliers.
Jerry was just one of the many strong models of a man I saw while growing up. These images were in my mind when I began karate training in the 50s. Training was very rough in those days. Dojo wars were a common affair back then. Dojo windows were blacked out or boarded over so no one could see inside. The front door was kept locked. When someone knocked, a black belt was sent to answer it. He got into a fighting stance before he unlocked and opened the door. One of my first instructors told us he wanted to see blood at every workout – and he did. Part of training back then was seen as getting used to the presence of injury and pain.
I “pinged” my knuckles – punched a concrete wall full force to break the “cap” on my middle knuckle so it would harden and protrude when it healed, allowing me to hit as with a ball peen hammer. In fact, I broke it twice.
Along the way, I got into the habit of setting my own broken bones. I found that if you reset one soon after it broke, it was numb and not a problem. Some weren’t easy. But with images of Jerry Bolden in my mind, who could dig out a wisdom tooth with a knife, I viewed any hesitancy on my part as wimpiness.
My mind, as I’ve said before, came to be in constant combat with my body. When my body cringed away from my attempts to reset a dislocation or break, my mind would make my body press, pull, or twist even harder.
The only time I went to the doctor or emergency room for treatment of a karate related injury was when it was something I couldn’t treat or fix myself. I put in a couple of stitches once for a cut but it didn’t go so well. The needle didn’t want to penetrate the skin and I couldn’t tie the sewing thread close enough to the cut to be very effective. Next time I got cut, a student’s toenail sliced open the webbing between my middle and ring fingers, I went to the emergency room and let them handle it. It was a strange, gapping cut that I couldn’t figure out how to close. This was in the early days and I was in my gi. The doctor had never seen a karate injury before. He called in all of the other doctors, who all got a kick out of it, at my expense. This was another reason I avoided doctors and hospitals.
I’m certainly not advocating this approach for anyone but myself. In fact, it was probably a bad idea. It made my mind and spirit stronger and raised my pain tolerance but probably did so while putting my body at greater risk.
Thanks again for putting up with my ramblings.
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