OK,having some coffee and ready to share a few stories about Ray Harris,one of the hardest training most dedicated motherfuckers I ever met in this game.
Of course I gotta put up a bit of background stuff so this makes more sense to people.
As a kid int he 1960`s.I grew up in a mostly Italian neighborhood............
...............eventuall
y they started moving out and Blacks started moving in.
My uncle owned a house here so that was where we lived...................
....dad was a drunk and the rent was cheap.............it is what it is.
I got bussed to a mostly white school along with the Black kids in my neighborhood during the big segregation movement of the late 60`s to early 70`s.
White kids din`t think too much of me when I got there but the Black kid I lived next door to for all of my life since I was 5 years old,wasn`t a black to me,he was just the kid next door.
As a kid you do not have the prejudices that later develop in people as you grow older and hopefully wiser.
That being said,since the neighborhood was 90% Black,my friend Ray Harris was also Black.............if this is offensive to anyone here,then just kiss my ass or call me a black lover but this kid was like a brother to me.
OK,enough of that,me and Harris both got into working out at the same time..........we used to watch old Hercules flicks with Reeves and Park and w wanted to look like they did.
The only difference in us besides skin color was that I had the genetics of a fucking hummingbird,and he was like a Mack truck.
We trained in my cellar at first and this is true shit.........remember,we were kids who were poor and lived in the ghetto...........kind of my disclaimer for some of the crazy shit we ended up doing.
OK first off I had a plastic set of weights from Sears as most kids got back then,after that we stared stealing old iron plates or vinyl coverded stuff out of peoples back yards and shit like that.
We amassed quite a tonnage of plates and bars after a while.
We also needed mats like we saw in the mags............ like the floor mats they had at Golds in Venice.
To get around this we stole peoples rugs and rubber doormats off their porches and broke into vacant houses and stole mirrors off of medicine cabinets.
We had the begininings of what would become our own personal Golds in our minds anyway.
Even though my father called me a fag for lifting weights,he built me a situp board and a set of squat racks...............pret
ty good job too he must have had a sober moment or two at that time.
Then we set up a few pulleys for pulldowns and pessdowns and we were good to go...........a few coats of paint,a few pics of Sergio,Franco,Draper,and Arnie and we were off and fucking running! LOL
If you look back a few pages to the Ferrigno skipping the contest stuff I wrote,in the results you`ll see the name of a guy who placed in the show named Chris Gordon..................
he was in the movie Pumping Iron most famous for his stupid wife jumping up and down cheering while he posed on stage.
He was in the movie,but to us he was Godlike and here`s why.
Like I mentioned Dave Mass trained in my city and he rained with a guy named Ken Knapp,then there was Chris Gordon............the Black Steve Reeves !! LOL
You had to meet the guy to truly understand what I mean by this but I`ll give you one example of how he acted in public to the untrained person who would admire his physique and question how he got to look the way he did.
In essence,he was full of himself but the fucker did look good...............OK here`s the impression you got if you saw Chris on the street on a hot summers day.
First off he would always have a very light coating of baby oil on ( I KNOW I KNOW) LOL
but it`s ridiculously true.....then he would have a tight pair of usually white shorts on,a black tank top,sandals,two Hercules wrist bands which were sold in the back of comic and musclebooks and then he had his two white German shepherds one on each arm leashed to his wrists............this guy was nuts!! LOL ;
When asked who he was,he would always introduce himself as Chris Gordon, Mr. New England.............I shit you not!!
He was young also but older than us......................
...later on in years we got to know him and he was a pretty normal guy strangely enough.
So,it was Dave Mass,Chris Gordon,and Ken Knapp that inspiired the shit out of Harris and me whenwe were getting started...............od
dly enough,we never spoke to any of them except Ken Knapp as we were just kids in awe of these freaky motherfuckers..........g
otta remind you again,not very many guys looked like these guys did back then and there were very few gyms around at all.
OK,taking a short break but trust me this stupid stuff gets better once Harris gets serious.
