Brother Chuck

I lost a friend two days ago. Yesterday I found out about it. Today it's hitting me. Chuck Luther died of a heart attack. It's hard to believe Chuck had a weak heart.  He didn't live that way. I think Chuck was 12 when he moved from South Central L.A. to Bell. He lived four doors down, but it might as well have been next door. There might have been some days when we didn't make contact over the ten years that followed, but not many. We were the charter members of the Pine Street gang.

I learned some things from Chuck.  Maybe the most important thing was it was alright for a man to cry as long as it was over the score of a football game. I learned from Chuck that no matter how tough the odds, go for your dreams. I'm sure to this day Chuck remains the only pigeon toed quarterback of the Bell High School football team. And who can forget the guy up there on the stage with Larry Ramos singing Chuck's creation, "Sippin Lemonade on a Hot Summer Day." 

Another thing I learned from Chuck, which he says he learned in South Central, was that everybody had to have a nickname. Mine became Rhino, oddly not directly related to my last name, Reinertson. Chuck started calling me Rhino because of the clumsy way I went up for rebounds on the basketball court. Typically when I went up for a rebound three or four players would fall to the hardwood, a whistle would blow, and someone would say, "Geez Rhino." My older sister already had a nickname, but Chuck took care of the rest of the family. My parents became Mama and Papa Rhino, and my sister Baby Rhino. It wasn't fair. None of them played basketball.

One of the other things I learned from Chuck is you play until you win. There is no quitting.  We had a ping pong table in the garage and there would be some summer days where we  would start hitting the ball about 9 in the morning and not stop until 9 at night. We'd have running game scores of  something like 100 to 85. I guess you could say it paid off because we took second in doubles in the L.A. rec league. And it left us both proficient enough to compete at East Los Angeles Junior College at lunch time. I'm sure it's meaningless to him, but one of my biggest thrills was beating Tony Lorick two out of three games. It has nothing to do with anything, but Tony went on to play running back for the Baltimore Colts.  Bottom line is I learned to be competitive from Chuck Luther.

One thing I didn't learn from Chuck was his miraculous capacity for remembering sports statistics.  I think all of us who were close to Chuck felt sure he would some day be doing play by play.

I wasn't around but there is this Chuck Luther "The Legend" story that has Chuck sitting at a bar, I think in San Juan Capistrano. Some big guy saunters in and sits down next to Chuck looking really down on himself. The guy orders something like ten boiler makers, and Chuck knows his guess is right. Chuck never shied from striking up a conversation.  "You doing alright buddy?"

"No not really?"

"Want to talk about it?" Chuck would have been a good bartender too.

"Ah, I just got cut from the Chargers."

"Yeah, what's your name?"

"Oh, you wouldn't have heard of me. I'm no big name."

"Try Me," says Chuck.

"Billy Lugnut."

"Billy Lugnut. You played three years with the Montana Muskrats. You had over a hundred tackles each year. You were all conference in the Antelope league two years in a row and would probably have made it three in a row if you hadn't pulled that hamstring. And you mother's name is June."

The story goes the guy cheered right up and started sharing those boiler makers with Chuck.

Chuck and I didn't always get along. For two years we worked together off and on in General Mills Warehouse in Vernon. Our job was to unload boxcars full of 100 pound flour sacks. You had to work as a team swinging the sacks on to pallets twelve high. Typically it took four men four hours to get one boxcar emptied. Well I doubt either one of us could have told you the next day what the argument was about, but to put it mildly we were not getting along. Rather than swing at each other, we started swinging those flour sacks. We emptied that boxcar on our own in less than an hour.  Funny thing was you'd have thought management would have been thrilled and used us as an example of what a General Mills worker should strive  for. Truth is they were scared ____less that some union boss would hear about it. They got us aside when we'd calmed down and whispered, "Don't you guys ever do that again."  I got to tell you its a great way to work through anger.

Chuck and I certainly drifted away from each other geographically over the years.  There was usually a decade in between meetings. Usually in the re-connect conversation comes, "want to play some ping pong?" 

Miles are one thing, time is another. They can help you or let you forget. But I never wanted to forget Chuck.You never forget somebody who gives you your first nickname.

"Be seeing you Chuck. Oh, who you takin in the finals, Detroit or San Antonio?  Do you think Brown will put Lugnut in if Billups gets into foul trouble?"