Artists In The Peanut Gallery

Bill Soberanes, a columnist for the Argus-Courier, recalls the first wrist-wrestling contest in Petaluma, Calif. "It was held in Mike Gilardi's bar," he says. "A quiet place, damp and shady like a cellar, illuminated for the occasion by a single 250-watt light bulb. It was back in 1953. The building should have been preserved as a landmark, but now we have a branch of the Bank of America where Mike's bar used to be. Jack Homel, a trainer for the Detroit Tigers, was vacationing here at the time, and we induced him to grapple with Oliver Kullberg, a 200-pound rancher who was supposed to be the strongest man in Sonoma County. The match went on for three minutes; the ref called it a draw. The table collapsed under their weight." Genesis.

Arm-to-arm combat. Sweat and violent bursts of energy. Right arms pumped full of blood, biceps bulging out of short-sleeved shirts. The site of the present championship is the Veterans Memorial Building, a cavernous old hall in the hen house of America. Petaluma, self-proclaimed Egg Capital of the World. And now exalted by the public proclamation of Governor Ronald Reagan ("Be it known by all these present...") as the Wrist-Wrestling Capital of the World, too. The city is a mecca by default, since it is the only place the wrist-wrestling championships have ever been held.

The wrist wrestler's motto is "Raw Strength and Courage," but the fact is that anyone with an arm and opposable thumb can take part in the sport. In Million Dollar Legs, a 1932 film featuring Jack Oakie, W. C. Fields, Ben Turpin and Hugh Herbert, the affairs of the nation were settled by wrist wrestling: Hugh Herbert, Secretary of the Treasury, was matched against W. C. Fields, the President (stutterer vs. mutterer). Herbert lost. In The Old Man and the Sea, the old man grappled for something like 24 hours with an opponent in a Cuban bar—certainly nothing like the slambang bursts at Petaluma. Charles Schulz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, made Petaluma's barroom competition internationally famous by sending Snoopy to enter the championship a couple years ago. Snoopy was disqualified because he did not have a thumb.

Veterans Memorial Building, 1094 Petaluma Blvd. South, seats 3,000 and is spotlessly clean. You could eat off the floors—or the walls and ceiling if you happen to be a human fly. A few hours before the wrist-wrestling matches, a group of war mothers gathers, smelling of lavender and Johnson's Baby Powder, wearing patriotic red, white and blue pompons on their shoulders. It is apparently their regular meeting. They sit on baby-blue folding chairs. White cones in the ceiling shed soft light on them through circular metal grids. I come upon the women in my search for the wrist wrestlers. I cause a stir and back out carefully.

Finally I locate the weigh-in room. The contestants are lined up, fully clothed—five pounds off for garments. I speak to a contestant named Bill Rhodes, nicknamed The Colossus of Rhodes. Actually he is a lightweight (in a class for men up to 175 pounds). He is in his 20s, has short hair with long sideburns and sits across from me at a card table. He is dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a thick belt secured by a heavy silver buckle. His hidden brute force is belied by his voice. He speaks in a quiet manner. It is obvious that he takes the championship very seriously.

"My first year out here I spent six weeks training," he says. "I started out at 196 pounds. In those days I was living and working out with Jim Pollock, the middleweight champ. He suggested I go into this arm-wrestling thing. I wasn't too excited about it, but I went to the gym with him and tried it with some of the fellows around my weight and did real well. I figured it would be best to compete as a lightweight—I'd have a better chance in that class—so in a month and a half I had to lose 21 pounds but somehow maintain the strength I had. I managed to make the weigh-ins and took second place. That was two years ago.

"Last year I started my workouts earlier. I had less weight to lose because I kept it down during the year. But my training process was interrupted by my job. I'm a transportation engineer—a truck driver. Mostly short hauls. At the championships I went down swinging. I really had a good fight with this kid Mike Dolcini from Petaluma. We fought for quite a while, and it was a matter of endurance. Finally we lost grips because of the sweat on our hands; it was the first time I'd ever seen this happen. We had td begin over. It was an even start, neither one got the jump, and we just fought and fought and fought, and finally I could just feel my arm fading. And at that point my 12-year-old brother could have put me down. I just stood there and watched the arm go down."

To get himself ready for this year's contest, Rhodes says he has tried to immerse himself in the environment. "But all week long I've had to turn my mind off because I just start getting freaky," he continues.

"Last year I was so excited for the guy that won—he had beaten me in an earlier match—I ran up and put my arms around him and shook his hand. It was different the year before when I took second place. That time I was depressed, feeling that I had lost unfairly. I was fighting in the finals against a guy who didn't look like he would be difficult. But he looked very fast on his start. So when the ref started us, I wanted to get a jump; but I relaxed just before he said go, lost the jump, and when I tried to recover I pulled my elbow out and the referee gave it to the other guy. Well, I was disappointed, but not upset because I knew I could have beaten this guy."

There are few other sports in which a man is so completely alone. The boxer has his handlers to sponge him off and give him advice between rounds. He can come back strong after losing a few rounds; he has time. But the wrist wrestler has won or lost in a matter of seconds. A man risks explosive defeat under the spotlight. Manhood is at stake: he may be king in his own environs but, wham, in a second or two he is reduced to nothing in front of those who have considered him indestructible.