It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast special report. The Lapse Fan presents the complete Hull Coogan, a real American story. We're brought to you by Garage Pierre.
Oh, Billyoks speaking Hi Billy Johnson. Yes, sir, Hi, this is Jack at the Lapsed Fan. How are you real good? Good? Can you hear my co host JP? If you could say hi to Billy JP? Hey, Billy, how's it going real good?
How are you doing today? Good? Thanks?
Thanks for doing this, really looking forward to it, So we'll jump right in, Billy. We really look forward to getting your insights here because this is a part of Terry's life that a lot of people don't know anything about. So yes, let's get started.
In seventy nine, I.
Worked in the port. I worked for a company called L R. Stevedoring Company. And Terry was a union checker back then with the International Longshoreman's Union, and basically he was working all over Florida wherever you know they had, they had checking jobs. Basically his job was to check the Back then, we really didn't have cargo ships. This was back in seventy nine, and we really didn't have
container ships. We had actually cargo ships where we bulk loaded the ships and his job was as a checker, was to make sure the goods were coming in.
Mostly we were handling.
Oranges and grapefruit at the time, and we were shipping out it at the time in Canaveral Fort Pierce, Port Everglades and then over and Port It Tampa, And I believe he was based out of Tampa. Yeah, but he you know, he worked wherever they called him to, whichever port because they those guys made pretty good money.
They made real good money back then.
It's really interesting, Billy, because we tried to piece together how he moved through the seventies. You know, he got into wrestling in seventy seven, and then in seventy eight he went to Cocoa Beach. He was managing a bar there and he also worked in a in a gym, and then in seventy nine he kind of got back into the wrestling. In like March of seventy nine, he's wrestling mostly out Alabama Pensacola area. Then he goes to Memphis,
Tennessee in like the summer of seventy nine. But it's not clear to fans did he go back to Tampa like every other weekend and worked the docks, or do you remember exactly when in seventy nine he kind of showed up.
Actually, I might be a year off on that, because I'm thinking I started with them in seventy eight.
Okay, how did I think about it?
Because I just graduated from high school in seventy seven. So it was it was that fall after high school that I started working for Eller, I mean for Coastal Stevedoring back then. And I know he told us back then he was doing a lot of training at that time. He was really training for Mister Universe more than anything. And him and another guy were training a lot over
over in Tampa. And I want to say Sunshine Jim, if I remember correct, And I remember he used to like I said, he was a union checker for us, and we were working anywhere from Port Everglades, Fort Pierce, Port Canaveral and Tampa.
And so I mean, you know, you know that.
And at the time I really didn't know him wrestling yet. I mean it was later on that we started watching wrestling. I see wrestle, but I do know this. Uh, in my office, I had a refrigerator and he used to keep his lunch in my refrigerator.
And his lunch. Back then.
He actually he was kind of a freak about his body, you know, as.
Well as what he ate and everything.
And he had real long blonde hair, straight blonde hair back then, and I mean he looked almost like uh, I can't think of who that like Fabio almost with the long blonde hair and all back then.
Is what good one?
Yeah? And uh but he used to in my refrigerator leave his lunch in there.
And I remember him always every day he had like seven pounds of grapes and he always had this uh this this juice or this uh shape that he drank. Yeah, and it smelled the high heavens. I always told him, I said, Terry, I don't mind you keeping this in refridger, but don't open it up my office. Open it up because it I don't know what was in that shape, but it smelled.
But he always explained to us.
That that he ate the grapes because when he was doing all of his weightlifting, and all the grapes made his skin thin so that his veins would bulge out more.
Is that right?
Yes, And that's why he ate so much grapes every day.
But I never will forget the first day I met
Terry when I first went to work there. My boss back then was Bruce Brannigan, and he was probably all of about five foot to maybe five foot three, and he was taking me around the port, just introducing to me all these guys, and he goes, this is Gene the meme machine, and this is Dick, and this is you know, Tom, and this is Paul and you know and and uh and all of a sudden we come walking up to Terry and I said, and each one of these guys he was telling me what they did.
You know, Oh, he is an operating engineer, he is a he's he does this, he does that. Well anyway, and all of a sudden, here we come up to Terry and I go, who is this And what does he do? Because you know, he was really big. He goes, Oh, that's Terry. He does whatever he wants.
Right Yeah, who's going to tell him something he doesn't want to do.
Right, Yeah, that's Terry. He just does whatever he wants. But uh, yeah, we just you know, we we really had a good time. And I mean, uh, I remember, you know, Terry didn't back down from nobody, you know, I mean when we joked down. I mean he didn't care what he said or anything else. I mean, you know, and uh we we just all had a really good time. And I mean I never felt uh scared of Terry. I always enjoyed being around. I enjoyed being around Terry.
I like him being around there. In fact, I remember we had a guard at the port at night, and this was at Christmas time, and the company paid for us all to go to this fancy dinner uh cafeteria up in Vero Beach and we go up there and uh.
And anyway, uh we had this guard there.
His dame was uh Felix, I think alex Or Felix, and he was like we always made fun of this old guy.
It was funny.
He had this little clock on him and he had to go everywhere and get.
A key and push the clock on his waist or whatever.
And uh, anyway, he would he was always worried about everything about security and all that. Well, anyway, he gently left at like two o'clock in the morning or one o'clock at night.
I'm sorry, went in the morning.
And we got here about one point thirty and he's already left. And there the whole place the gates were all locked up, and none of us could get to our cars inside. So we jumped over the fence, went into the shop and got a cut forklift and came out with a cutting torch on there, and we went in there and cut the locks off of the fence and got our cars and just kind of like dummy, locked the.
Gate back up.
Felix come back the next morning. Man, he was like, oh my gosh, let me call the long let me call along, and we're all like this guy laughing, like Felix, we did that. We couldn't get to our cars. Did you see all of our cars gone? And he goes, oh, I didn't even think about that.
That's a good time. What's the What was the routine like? As far as the schedule, Billy, is this like a Monday Friday thing? You know when Witarry report to work.
We had to actually work whenever the ship was in the port. And they these ships, we had so many days to get them loaded up, and a lot of times it was like two and a half days we had to get them loaded up. And we started at seven o'clock in the morning. We stopped for lunch for thirty minutes and then we'd stop again at we'd stop at six and take a dinner break until seven, and
then we'd work till one o'clock in the morning. Now, these ships, these ships, if they were a day late or whatever, generally they would send the ships on before they were late, because I think they got charged like a million dollars a day for these ships if they were late or whatever. And I can remember one time we had a ship in Tampa. It was called I believe it was called the Sun Belt Dixie, and it
was it was on its maiden voyage. It had just came from Japan to Jacksonville and it was loaded with two thousand Toyota cars and then it went over to Tampa where we loaded it up with I think it was grapefruit that we loaded on there, and we had to load three thousand semi loads, which was a thousand boxes per semi load. We had to load three thousand semi loads on there. We had three days to get
it done. Wow, and it has it turned out one of the trucks, one of the trucks got in just at the last minute, and another one was broke down somewhere and it showed up at the port as a truck as the ship was going out in the port, because we couldn't afford a million dollars for one truckload of grapefruit.
You know, so so much great. He seemed to take a lot of pride in being able to look In his book he talked about these days and like sort of being mathematically minded as far as how to perfectly stack the cargo so that it would fit the container and the dimensions of the container. Was that was that a big part of the job was sort of like that judgment called.
No, we didn't have containers back, well, we did.
I might be using the wrong turn, Billy, Yeah, but.
We had is we had we had to bulk load these things, like the Japanese fruit that we send a japan It was kind of like laid on skid sheets and dropped right on the ground and they actually picked them up well off the ship and loaded them out.
You know in Japan.
We had these big hoists and we drop them down there and we kind of like move them over in the ship and off and uh wherever we couldn't get them to uh we had to stop or whatever. Gentally, we put wood shoring in there and and uh they
nailed it down and off. But we actually drew up stowage plans before the ship came in, and we actually figured out weight, displacement, till and everything else so that we knew where we were putting everything before we even started loading on each one of these cargo ships.
Like that, I'm trying to figure out as far as the routine goes, like, how would you guys get word that a ship's coming. You kind of said that it wasn't like a set day that you'd be there, It was sort of whenever the ships arrived. How would Terry or yourself get word Because we're trying to figure out how he balanced doing the wrestling with with.
You know, well, we actually knew I had a time. I mean one of the we had a couple of big people that ship the fruits and vegetables that we handled. One of them was D and E Sales that they were out of Fort Pierce, which they were a huge citrus distributor, and the other one was a do in somen American Foods which did a lot of vegetables and all. So they actually arranged it to where they had a refrigerated cargo ship whenever they had one coming into the area.
You know, they knew days ahead of time, and they would schedule it out so we'd actually know when we were dealing with the ship, you know, And like I said, we might be two and a half days or three days on a on a a refrigerated cargo ship loading it with oranges and all.
And we knew that. Now.
When they worked down in Port Everglades, they had all kinds of ships coming in, cruise ships and cargo ships and everything else. And I mean that was pretty much a routine thing there. But I don't think Terry well, yeah, I guess they did use union checkers to bring bring the supplies in and stuff for the ships and all, because that's what he was. He was a union checker, and he checked in the supplies and stuff that would go on the ship.
It's interesting that I was a union checker since he became so anti union later on his wrestling career.
Yeah, I think he kind of gave it up after a while back, you know, later on.
I mean it got to be where it was a hassle.
But you know, he's I think he kept his Union card and every once in a while if he didn't have work he'd come back and you know, fill back in with the union and stuff.
So is it that easy, Billy? Is that how it works? You really just whenever you're free, you can pretty much get work.
Well, we're talking about nineteen seventy eight and seventy nine. You know, I'm quite sure it's a different ballgame today.
You know, they just have so much cargo coming into ports.
There's no way that you could, you know, you could be a musician and be a longshoreman at the same time, or you know, be a wrestler or a longshoreman at the same time. You know, I mean today, But you know, back in those days, you know, it worked out for him.
You know, did he ever express any desire to do something other than that? He seems to when he talks about this time in his life in his books and stuff and interviews, he always seems to be of two minds, like, I'm doing this because it's good money and I want to make the most money for the time in But at the same time, I've got these dreams. Did he ever talk about that.
I'll be tripping with you when I knew Terry, I never knew that he was going on to be a wrestler.
Yeah, I always his goal.
Back then, his ultimate goal was to be mister Universe. I mean he was training him and a couple other guys were training to be mister Universe and that's what they were working on. And uh, I guess that never really but then all of a sudden, wrestling came along. I think he made it when we was up in
Port Everglades up there around Cocoa Beach. He started seeing well they actually had wrestling and Coco Beach and Fort Pierce and he actually thought it the Armor in Fort Pierce here at one time too, I believe, Uh that's where he got to start because yeah, uh, the Florida Wrestling Alliance or whatever, I mean they I think they were out of Tampa or whatever, and that's how he got And it was funny they had wrestling pretty much
everywhere where. He was working in the ports too. But yeah, it's interesting.
So I wanted to ask you if you could help us understand kind of back then what people from the area what drew them to the ports. Was it pretty much the best money you could make, was it? Did you have to get in through like a referral? Like was it easy to just sign up. But what was attractive sounds like a backbreaking job for sure. Back then.
Well, his job wasn't because he drove.
I mean all he did was walk around with a clipboard and papering and check off stuff. He this was, you know, it was high paying jobs. I mean basically.
I mean, I know, our company fought about down in Port Everglades one time they you know, the union came in and they had what they called alignment, and his job was when the ship came into port, they would throw that monkey's pole over with a small rope and then he'd pulled the big rope over and then drop the loop on the cleat and he'd go down the ship to run down real quick and do the other two down there so that they could winch yourself on
into the seawall there. The unit came in and said, wait a minute, we're not going to let a.
Guy do that like that.
We want three guys for the ship when it comes in. We want to give him a four hour minimum. And this was back in nineteen seventy six, I believe, and or no, seventy seven. I think it was seventy seven or seventy eight that they did that and they said, we want three guys to do this, and we want to pay them a four hour minimum, and it was eighteen seventy five an hour back then, you know, which
that was good gravy money. Yeah, and these these guys got, These guys got and that's for each ship that came in.
You know, they didn't and.
If they did three ships that day, they worked twelve hours, even though that was you know, that was like ninety minutes. They got paid for twelve hours.
I'm starting to get it now. Okay, not only was it.
Not only was it twelve hours, it was you know, overtime paying all after eight hours, right, even though these guys were only working ninety minutes.
And we they fucked that tooth and nail.
But the union won that one there, so they just kind of let it slide, to let it go because they originally talked about putting four to six guys on some of these ships, and they ended up for the linemen and uh, they ended up going with they settled for three and uh.
But I mean that's the kind of things that they were doing.
But I'm gonna tell you, we we did all kinds of things. I'm telling you we we did a lot of stuff, and.
I'm pretty sure Terry was with us.
And in uh Port Everglades. One time the Dea busted a cargo ship off of uh uh Sebastian near the golf stream there and it had I can't remember how many bales of square grouper it had on it, but they caught it and they brought that ship in.
To UH to Canavil.
And UH we were high to uh unload all of it and loaded up on Semis and all of the the uh the international longshoremen that worked on there. They had to basically strip down and wear these white jumpsuits that that the customs gave them, and they had to be checked every time they came off.
Of the off of the ship and everything else.
And UH, I remember we had some guys in there that were working and and UH.
I probably shouldn't say this, but.
I think where you're going feel free. Just do you leave names out of it?
Yeah, Well, anyway, UH we were joking about this. One guy, Frank uh said, you know, I don't trust that guy.
Right We said to the custom we don't trust that guy right there.
You know, he may he may need a cavity search because.
I'm I'm sure he got stuffed.
Head, and we're all like, no, that's not true.
You know, you're lying.
Oh my god. So the cavity search guy was Terry or was somebody else?
No, it was it was just a joke, Yeah, of.
Course, yeah, yeah, I thought, Okay, I just want to be sure you weren't saying that Terry was the guy that needed to be cavity searched.
No, okay, I'm thinking it was Terry that said it about Frank, but it was.
One of the guys, one of the guys.
Yeah.
And uh, but you know, we we cut up a lot.
I mean, we did a lot of crazy takes, but we worked a lot of hours and we had a lot, you know, a lot of work to do.
I mean, you know, that was no doubt about it.
Absolutely. That must have been a component of the job, right, or people smuggling illicit things, right, you don't know what you're handling sometimes. I bet the DEA was always kind of sniffing around.
Well, you know, in the seventies, you know, there was so much square group for being around this area.
I mean, you know, Jimmy Buffett wrote his song.
You know pirates look at forty, you know, and he talks about smuggled so much weed that you know, and he pissed.
It away in Miami. Well that that really did.
That really was happening back in those days. And we had customs check every single ship that came in. There wasn't no doubt about it. But that ship that we unloaded and port Port Canaveral up there, that was busted out in the ocean out there I see, off of Sebastian. It was about ninety miles from I don't know, thirty miles from Canavil.
I think thirty or forty five miles something like that.
But they ended up the coast Guard ended up bringing it into Canavil and that's where we unloaded all of it. But yeah, they they actually checked every single person when.
They came off the ship. That's why they had to.
Wear these these white jump suits and almost like and suits, you know, the orange jumpsuit that prisoners wear. Well, what these guys had to wear load pot off there. If I remember right, I spent so many years ago, but I think there were twenty eight truckloads of the pot that was unloaded. The square grouper that was loaded on the semis Wow, and uh, there was twenty eight of them and they hauled it all over to Sumter County.
They kept some for evidence, but the rest of it they hauled in bulked to Sumter County and they had they had a large incinerator there and that's what they did, is they burned it all.
That was kind of the joke, talk about a contact high need to go to Sumter.
Man they sell a lot of brownies and.
Something like, Oh that's great. So you guys standing there like on the front lines, you must have gotten a pretty good flavor of like this is how this business works. Like here you know what I mean, here's the import export game everybody's playing. It must have been kind of kind of interesting to be able to see be on the front lines of that kind of hidden commerce.
Yeah, I mean, be truth, What is the only drugs that I ever seen like that? Was that one particular that wing. But I mean that was all legitimate for me.
Yeap for sure. Do you remember the Jim you mentioned that he was going to Any chance you remembered is stands natural write Jim or stands Jim in Tampa.
Well maybe that's the name that he said, But I always thought it was Sunshine's Jim is what I remember.
The only reason I ask Billy is because around this time he showed up on a few wrestling television shows, him and his buddy Ed, who he was working out with and who he grew up with in Tampa, with that T shirt on. So I wondered if maybe that would help us, because I'm trying to figure out what years, to the best of our ability, that this took place
in the seventy eight or seventy nine. To you, it doesn't make a big difference, but when you're trying to put together Hulkogan's life story, there was are two very different years for him. So I was trying to wonder if that was a hint.
I'm I'm pretty sure we were definitely working in seventy nine.
Yeah, Yeah, that was your first.
Thing to you like this. It was when they do citrus. We were doing citrus.
Late in seventy eight, we were shipping citrus, and then spring of seventy nine, you know what I'm saying, Ye, the mark the season on that.
I mean, it had to be fully.
Ripe citrus before we started export it, and it was generally like closer to even though they were picking citrus in November and in October and all that. It was almost late November, just before Thanksgiving before we started shipping like that.
Okay, so that that.
Would have been seventy eight when we were doing that, and then we were doing it in the spring of seventy nine.
I know Terry was there all during that there.
So you're thinking maybe fall seventy nine, Is that my figuring this out right?
No, I'm talking about spring of seventy nine, Spring seventy eight and fall of I mean fall of seventy eight and spring of seventy nine. I know he was working there then got it great, and I think I worked. I worked there until late nineteen seventy and then that's when I I went off into another I went to work for some on my own that time.
And starting when that belly, When did you start your own company?
I started actually started kind of part time in seventy nine, but by eighty I was full time in the I was doing a long maintenance and then I started a Lawmore shop. By eighty three, I had a love More shop.
And then so you would have been off the docks, so to speak, by nineteen eighty.
By nineteen eighty.
Yeah, and do you remember Terry?
Do you remember Terry being gone before you left or was he there when you stopped?
I know he was there in seventy nine a spring, I mean the you know, the Winner of seventy nine, you know, the early spring spring seventy nine, and we we quit shipping citrus probably by uh. I want to say that big load of grapefruit we sent to Japan out of Tampa was somewhere around I mean, I have to double check it. I'm just trying trying to thinking off my head, but I'm going to say that it was. It was like, uh, December of nineteen seventy eight, that big load that we sent out.
Okay, Yeah, I can see that making sense for his story too, because he didn't start until like March out in Pensacola. But and I don't know that that seems like a big drive to get back to Tampa for that spring of seventy nine. But you don't think there's a chance he worked there in the in the fall or late seventy nine as well.
Yeah, well, I know in the spring.
I'm trying to think did he work seventy nine?
Gosh, sorry to be so specific.
Yes, he would have still been working in the fall of seventy nine.
But like I said, I left after that. I left.
I probably left because I started my own company by January. For sure, I was already you know, part time in it and before that, and then I went off.
I mean, we all were looking for a better life, you know.
So Yeah, were you about to say, I'm sorry to cut you off, Billy. Were you about to say that you kept in touch with him after you left to start your company.
No, I only seen him one time after that, and I went to go see him another time when I showed you that picture of Yes, I went to go see him there, and I couldn't see him because.
He was in a hurry to leave to go somewhere.
Else at his karaoke bar or whatever.
Yeah.
Uh but uh I, uh I seen him one year when his daughter was down in West Palm Beach at the uh I forget what they call that, the uh I think it's the Sunshine Fast or what festival or whatever down in West Palm Beach there and his daughter was actually singing there, And uh I seen him down there and then and my son was with me, and I kind of walked behind him, and I said, I hear that. You know, I made a I kind of yeah, did a loud thing. I said, I hear that Hulk Cogan.
He's uh, he's kind of not you know. I didn't say it quite yeah, I got to say it to words. I don't know if he's uh, you know, if he's straight, you know, and like that, and all of a sudden, he turned around and looked at me and goes.
Jock gave me the biggest and my son's eyes were like so big. I mean, he's like, dad, he's going to kill you, you know.
And he turned around and he just kind of like gave me a big bear hug and lifted me up in the air and he just says, good to see you, brother, I haven't seen you forever.
And I said yeah. I said, uh, some of us peawns are still, you know, poking away down here.
And were you rich guys or you know, did you I'm knobbing it down here in West Palm Beach.
You know, do you remember when you realized, I mean, especially if you didn't know when Terry worked there that he was trying to become a pro wrestler. Do you remember what it was that you realized that the Hulk Cogan that everybody knew was the guy that you worked with.
Well, he's that was a long time before he really became Hulk Hogan. Yeah, I mean we watched him when he became you know, you know kind of.
I remember he was a mask wrestler too.
Yes, that's when I really that's when we were all starting to keep I mean I really didn't watch wrestling that much, but then when I knew Terry was wrestling, that's when a bunch of us would started watching it. I can't remember what his name was, but he was one of the mass wrestlers. There was a pair of them, and he wore a mask and.
You know, yeah, he was Super Destroyer under the mask in nineteen.
Yes, yes, super destroyer. Yes.
See that's interesting, Billy, only because he was a Super Destroyer in seventy seven. And it doesn't sound like you knew him in seventy seven.
I didn't know him as a wrestler for sure.
Yeah. Because that's a fascinating thing too, because wrestling fans would love to see video of him back then, but there wasn't any video that survived. There's hardly any photographs even of him wrestling as Super Destroyer. That was a a very short period of time in seventy seven where he first tried to make it as a wrestler, suffered injuries and just wasn't making enough money and gave it
up and then went to Cocoa Beach. So that that was the fact that you remember that is interesting because it seems like that would have happened before you knew him, and there's no photos or video of it.
Maybe that's what it is.
I don't know, but I remember him more as being a bodybuilder when you know, going for mister Universe, when I knew him.
When he was doing that.
Go ahead, sorry, finch him.
I mean that's just what I remember the most about Terry, you know, being around him, and I just remember his seven pounds of grapes every day and as his uh you know, it was like a half gallon of I don't.
Know whatever it was, but it smelled the high heavens.
Had to be there. There must have been exiting, must have been ra eggs in there.
Well.
He had it in a refrigerator, but you didn't smell it until he took the lid off of it.
It did it did quite have a tinge to it.
Wow.
Now, well, I want to ask, was you know when he when he was in when he was doing this the bodybuilding and training for mister Universe, did he or did anybody ever compare him to the Incredible Hulk at that time?
No, because I don't think Incredible Hulk when did that come out?
Seventy eight?
Yeah? Yeah, so if it's it's possible, but it's possible.
But I I mean, I only thing I remember is Terry was telling me he was training with some guys over in Tampa and he kept talking about this one particular guy that he's working out with a lot.
He said that guy might be mister Universe.
Oh, I don't know what his name was, but I remember him always talking about this one particular guy that he was trained with a lot.
Okay, well he had a good friend ed Leslie. Is that the guy it could be? I mean, okay?
Would he have been younger than Terry?
Yes, by two or three years.
Yeah, and that's probably him, because I remember Terry was older than me, and I know he was saying that this guy was probably about seventeen at the time. If I remember right him, I was I was I turned eighteen and I turned eighteen, and I want to say seven, either seventy six or seventy seven.
Seven, I think seventy seven.
I turned eighteen in and he was telling me that this guy he trained with was seventeen at that time. So I was probably eighteen nineteen when we were talking about that.
Yeah.
In his book, Billy, I'd love to get your kind of thoughts on this, he kind of characterizes this part of his life. He kind of mixes it together with some time he did as a laborer. He got into the laborers union as well, and he said, at first they sent me out a construction jobs or pouring concrete, helping electrical workers. Then one day they sent me out to the docks to help load and unload ships. I took to that real quick. I was good at anything to do with math, figuring out how to load these
ships the right way. It was all about math and balance. It was important too, if you had a big ship going to Singapore or Tokyo and that ship wasn't loaded correctly, you could sink it no joke, is that true.
That's exactly what I was telling you about the stowage planets.
That we had to draw.
That's the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, that was one of my jobs. Me and another guy.
I want to say that is Terry.
Bruce Terry, another guy named Terry.
You're saying, yeah, I'm thinking another guy.
Okay, we had to.
This is the thing. I mean, we had to.
We already knew exactly how many boxes we were going to put in each hole, and how they had to go in there, and how they had to be boarded up short and everything else.
Well, I heard you talk about him with the clipboard, and then he writes, they threw me down in the hole and I worked real hard to the point where they invited me to join the lung Shorman's Union.
So I don't I don't ever remember him working. Uh that was the I l a. That was a different bunch of people. He could have.
Sure, Yeah, it's possible. He talks about it.
He did.
He didn't do it where we were at.
He was a union checker by the time I met him, and that's all he did was he checked and Uh, his job was with a checkers jobs.
We had four or five checkers there. They were to receive the.
Cargo and market in and then they also had to note what cargo was going in which cargo hole and how how many boxes and how many you know, how it's to be loaded and everything else?
Got it? And uh he talks about a guy he used to because he used to do rock and roll too as a kid. He used to be a guitarist. And he talks about a guy named Gary Devrend, who I guess was a hot shot in the long Shoreman's Union. Do you know that name? He was in the band with him, and I think he helped him too. As far as the lung shorman's part of it, I don't remember him. Yeah, Okay. Firstly, something else, he says, I'd
love your thoughts. He says, I was the first white guy ever to get into the long Shrman's Union in Tampa. Believe it or not. Was that a thing? Was that like really like a job for black guys? Or was he like what's he talking about?
Were all black in the I l A.
In the il A.
Wow?
Look at that? Interesting?
That's the International Longshoremans Union and most yeah, most of them were.
Brother all right?
Uh yeah, yeah, most of them were black.
But now you had several differents. Who's that?
All right?
Uh?
Most of the uh you had different unions. You had operating engineers. Those are the ones that ran the cranes and run the equipment, the heavy equipment and all down to Port Everglades too. I mean you had you had uh uh tankers come in with with uh like gasoline and jet fuel and stuff like that.
I mean they had guys that.
Did that and uh Terry was actually a checker for that kind of stuff. And they had they had a lot of white guys that.
Did that too. But yes, that most of the I l A.
Were were black goat as far as the labor part of it.
The labor, right, Okay, got it? And I wanted to ask one thing, did you ever uh did did uh? I don't know if they ever made it down to the uh to the docs or now, But did you ever meet his parents?
No?
No, I only seen his daughter once in and beach down there. That's the only time I remember that. Got it? All right?
I got to tell you not a little story. You may not want this on there.
Or whatever, but all right, leave it up to us.
Yep, we hit We had a big Christmas party at the time, and one of the guys from Tampa, I mean from Port Everglades he was a supervisor too, like I was. And uh he worked for Ler Stevedor back then. And I'm not one hundred percent sure if the name is right because I'm getting so old down and forgetting some things, but I want to say his name was Michael Cash.
And one of the ally, I mean, I l a guys had.
Fell off of the superstructure of the ship and landed on the uh uh landed on the uh the deck, not on the deck of the ship, but on the He went over the side of the ship onto the platform on the the dots there, laying it on the dots and uh and the guy, the guy, uh, I mean, you know, he was pretty bad shape and all. And and Michael Cash was worried about the guy. And I mean we all had to take CPR and all of that. You know, that was part of our training in the CPR.
And uh and the guy, Uh, the guy you know, ended up going to the hospital and he was in pretty bad shape.
But they he was back to work, you know, the next year or whatever.
The guy.
And but anyway, we was at this Christmas.
Party and uh, we were all together and uh we were at this club and uh, Terry goes to Michael.
He goes, hey, Mike, he.
Said, when that guy fell off the ship and you had to give him CPR, he said, and you doing that mouth to mouth, did you?
You didn't slip him a little tongue?
That just.
And we were all like, oh my god.
And uh and Mike's probably you know, my size, you know, and Terry's you know, had us both by about you know, probably eight inches or ten inches more.
And I mean, what is Mike going to do? Like, you know, and you know, we.
Just all just started laughing and joking around. But yeah, I just never will forget him said, hey, Mike, you didn't have to slip the little tongue in there when you were giving him mouth to mouth.
That was that the Terry You knew that kind of sense of humor. I mean, oh yeah, I would force myself to laugh if he was that big.
But you know what I mean, well, yeah, I mean, I mean, the guy wasn't gonna, you know, Michael Cash wasn't gonna you know, go, you know, jump on Terry because uh, you know, but you know, we were in an environment where people said what they want to say, and I mean Cus Cussin was uh you know, that's just part of the.
Language, you know.
Uh. But yeah, but I mean we had you know, we were continuously every day, you know, joking and eat. We all ate lunch together whenever we were together. You know, we always a lot of times we'd be eating with our feet hanging over the seawall, looking out at the pretty water and looking at the fish and eating lunch and everything else at the same time.
That's beautiful.
We joke around.
But uh, Terry was uh, you know, I don't know who Terry was at the end, but I know Terry was downright super nice guy.
Uh. He wasn't above anybody, you know. I mean I know people who.
That are billionaires and you know, they're down to earth and everything else.
I always felt Terry was one of the guys. Yep. Uh.
He had a he had a really good job with the Union back then as a checker. Uh and I probably, yeah, he probably was, you know, being his size, he probably could have handled doing the uh the labor part of it when they were loading ships back then. But then later on, I mean, you know, by the late eighties, I mean the type of ships that we were loading, all of that went by the wayside and everything was loaded up on big open ships with containers loaded stacked
up on him. And I mean, you know that's that's that's shipping now, you know.
That's that's a lot less grabbing things with your hands and more truck to truck kind of transport.
Basically, yes, yeah, And I mean and uh, basically a union checker today, I mean his job is to check the seals on a container, make sure the seals are and say, okay, yep, there it is, that one's on the that one's going into port. Or then you know, when it's in the port, Yep, there it is. It's going off to the ship.
You know.
And I'm not I haven't been around the ports long enough to know, but I'm quite sure the rule of thumb of what we did probably applies to what they do too with these containers that they load. I mean, the ballasts and the trim and everything else has to be just right for these ships to maneuver to go across sea, you know, to Japan or whatever.
And he would he himself would soon be traveling to Japan, but not as not as Margo, but as a big, bulked up wrestler who made a bunch of money over there, so Japan got he got he got his money back from Japan, I think tenfold.
Well, we he was involved with us too when we were there was a set of ships that were from a shipping company in Japan. I can't even think of the name, but they were all brand new ships that were built back then.
They were called were they that could have been okay, but.
I forget, but I remember the name of the one ship with sun belt Dixie, and I've got pictures of other ones at my house.
I'd have to go look up the names.
But uh, these ships were built back then in the days to be able to come from Japan and go through the Panama Canal.
And back then these ships would the.
Biggest one of them was like nine hundred and something feet long, but they were only like one hundred and five to one hundred and about one hundred and five to one hundred and seven feet wide. And the reason why they were only that wide is because I think the Panama Canal was only one hundred and twenty five or one hundred.
And thirty feet wide at that time.
Now that Panama Canal is much wider and they could get much bigger ships going through there. Now but back then in the seventies, and these ships were all built over in Japan Nschiewa, I think it is, or either Nagasaki or NiTi Nagasaki.
They were built over there, I think.
And they all were somewhere around one hundred and seven to one hundred and one hundred and seven to one hundred and five feet wide, and they gently were somewhere around nine hundred the longest one and probably seven fifty to eight hundred feet, more like eight hundred feet eight to nine hundred feet. And these ships could go to
Japan and come through the Everglades. And like I said that that one we loaded up in Tampa, it came through the it came through the Panama now, and it went all the way around Key West and down the Florida Straits, and it came up and went the Jacksonville and unloaded two thousand Toyota cars back then and then went back all the way around the Keys.
And then came back to Tampa.
And that's when we loaded the two hundred and ninety nine semi loads of grapefruit.
Look at that. Wow, that is a full circle moment. Well, Billy Johnson, we want to thank you so much. This was such a great color for a part of Helk Hogan's life that he's made reference to, but a few lived shouldered to shoulder with. So thanks so much for joining us on the show and reflecting it's been awesome.
Thank you. We'll show you, Buck.
Milsan.
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