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Great story of rags to riches. He ran his empire in Union city, NJ where I grew up. I saw him when I went to his HQ to pick up free magazines when I was a kid. A worker told me that's Joe Weider walking in. He wore a suit. I remember being in awe of him as a young kid. His show room was incredible through a young kid's eyes. All the equipment he sold was pristine new and you could smell the fresh paint. The containers of supplements also added to the scent. The workers there said expired magazines were thrown out and they would give me a stack when ever I visited. I blame Weider for my life long interest in lifting weights. I still kept an issue from back then. I think it was 1965 or 1966. It's in tatters but every once in a while I look at it and it takes me back to day when I saw bodybuilding as something as close to magic as a little kid could get.
When I was a kid I thought barbells an dumbbell could magically transform me. It wasn't until I was in high school around 1974 or so that I sent away for booklet on bodybuilding's secret drugs. It had Dickerson on the cover. I don't remember what it was named but it looked to be amateurishly published. There in black and white they went over all the drugs of the day. The secret was revealed to me. Suddenly I knew all the anabolic steroid names back then. I also remember in the late 70's and early 80's bodybuilders found out they could get a huge supply of injectable horse steroids for a song named Winstrol V and Equipose. Drugs exploded during this period and soon the secret of bodybuilders were public knowledge to the many.
I'm shocked today that many can't figure out how an soft actor puts on an incredible amount of muscle for super hero role and think it's a personal trainer that accomplished that for them. Nope, it's the syringe and pills.
Sometimes I wish I was never exposed to Weider as a kid. I bet I would be a runner doing bodyweight exercises or even involved in the fighting arts. I would be much healthier and fitter. I do give a lot of credit to the weights though. It gave the smallest kid in every grade confidence. No one is a harsher critic of what I look like than me. My wife recently video taped me in the pool and maybe for the first time I was able to say to myself vainly, you look pretty damn good. I'm sure drug users would disagree.
