While Super Bowl XX@LVI%$DD?Q was reserving its place in the history books, it was stirring up some of my personal football memories, most of them being my gasping for air under a pile of every kid from the opposing side. Later, I did have a girlfriend who was one of the Chicago Bears Honey Bears, but a few years before that there was Dick Butkus, Mr. Super Crunch #51, all-pro linebacker of the Chicago Bears in the 1960s and 1970s. No, he wasn’t a girl friend.
The first time I saw him was when his gold Caddy bounced down the gravel driveway of the Lansing home of my friend, Rick Richards, where I was alone near the garage, helping refurbish an old Chevy van. Butkus asked if Rick was home. I told him he wasn’t, so he said he’d catch him later.
I knew Butkus and Rick had grown up together in Roseland, section of Chicago’s South Side and were still best friends, but Dick and I never had been at Rick’s the same time.
My next Butkus encounter was on a Tuesday night when I dropped by Rick’s. I parked behind a white Corvette. The house was dark. As I passed by the living room window on my way to the side door, in the glow of the TV screen, I noticed three seated figures, hunched in the dark. One figure was Rick, second was Ed, Rick’s roommate, and the third was Butkus. They were deeply engrossed in Kung Fu, their favorite TV show. I tapped on the window. Without taking his eyes off the screen, Ed signaled for me to come in. I could have been Jack the Ripper for all he knew. I entered quietly, not wishing to disturb them. These were big humans, each a head taller than I was; a professional football player and two steel mill workers, guys even Jack wouldn’t want to mess with.
Once KungFu’s Caine had administered his final karate chop, Rick introduced me to Butkus. That’s when I became aware of an unnerving conversational characteristic of his. If Dick didn’t hear you or didn’t understand what you’d said, he’d blurt, “WHAT?” Combined with his permanent scowl and humongous size, it was scary. In reality, it was just his way of saying, “Pardon me, but I didn’t quite get what you said.”
Quite often, Rick went with Dick to Playboy resort hotels as guests of Hugh Hefner. On Rick’s first trip with Dick to the Playboy mansion, Hefner greeted them at the door. Dick fingered the lapel of Hefner’s thousand-dollar suit. Without cracking a smile, he said, “Where’d you get this rag, Hef? It makes you look like (bleep).”
I bought a copy of Butkus’s book, “Stop Action”, passed it to Rick to get it autographed, and asked Rick to see if Dick would add a little something short, maybe funny, maybe about the Bears or just football in general. Butkus wrote, “Good Luck. Dick Butkus.”
“Looks like he forgot your name.”
When his football career reached the two-minute warning and with problem knees, Butkus begrudgingly investigated other possible careers. One Kung Fu night at Rick’s, I saw a couple of movie scripts Dick had dropped on the kitchen table. One was for a John Wayne western, the other for a comedy possibly starring Bill Cosby and Raquel Welch. Although I would have removed a couple of my favorite organs with rusty garden spade and sacrificed them to the pagan hamster god to work with Raquel Welch, Dick didn’t care. He wanted to crush bodies and play football.
Butkus even thought of venturing into the world of live entertainment with his brothers. They’d sung together for years and Rick encouraged them to make a record. Because I was a musician, Rick asked me to write a song for them. Rick said that Dick felt president Richard Nixon was getting the Watergate shaft, so maybe it should be patriotic, inspiring, and conservative. Dick’s favorite singer was Kris Kristofferson, so something in his style.
I cranked out a song I felt would make any right-wingers eyes bleed, and taped it with my band, which I gave to Rick. Butkus liked it. He was booked for two weeks as a solo act in Las Vegas singing and telling jokes, and would set up a recording session when he returned.
For two weeks my mind was even more blown than usual. I dreamed of sitting pool side, maybe at a Playboy resort, sipping a piña colada with bikini-clad Aphrodities, formulating my Grammy speech, and maybe telling Hefner his suit looked like (bleep).
Then came Rick’s call. “Dick’s recording. It’s off.”
“It’s what?”
“Off. The Vegas critics bombed him.”
I dumped my imaginary piña colada in my real lap.
Not long after, Butkus moved to Florida. One of his last days in the Chicago area, he borrowed our band’s van to move some things to his mother’s house. “Thanks, uh…(he was apparently searching for my name). “I just gassed it up.” He handed me the keys, then jumped in his white Corvette and sped away.
That was the last time I saw Butkus. He left his ‘vette parked at Rick’s for his use on trips back to the Chicago area. I’d see it there, but never the owner. Not that he’d remember me anyway, because he couldn’t remember me then. Nearly 50 years have passed.