Tough Guys, Machismo

   Growing up as a boy and male as I did, I took clues from family, friends, and media as to what toughness was. For some, that is "being a man", a "manly man", or being a strong dude, to be able to work hard, run hard, not cry, stand up for the weak and yourself, chase the bad guys, be stoic and overcome all. To a certain extent, being a guy, a male, and tough were big parts of the equation, but not always. There were some females that I knew that were pretty strong and tough; I could define grit and strength and power of will through them, too. But since I am a boy, a male, I will focus on the macho male part of being tough.

    My dad was a pretty tough guy, because he would go to work super early with work boots on, and if it were really cold, he would put on a thick hat and coat and gloves and brave whatever elements were out there to wire houses. For those who have never wired a new house or apartment complex or store, you are exposed to a lot of the elements; very often there is copious amounts of mud and dirt and deep trenches and gravel, exposed rocks and boards and nails and dark, hairy carpenters, at times loud music blasted from ghetto blasters and loud saws and hammers shaking the foundations, missing stairwells descending into deep cavernous basements and guys yelling from the roof to the basement and all kinds of treachery that will get you hurt like exposed slivers and shards, sharp edges and scary heights, and the very tools that my father wielded would punch holes in your hands and fingers or maybe a sledge hammer would punish your knee or foot. Dad would proudly show us his war wounds. He would simply go back for more. Every day. Electricity and chemicals could be quite hazardous, too, plus the bee that stung him and sent him to the hospital before he went into anaphylactic shock.

   The stories my dad would tell often had tough guy morals and lessons. Sleeping overnight in a small boat in the Atlantic and almost not figuring out where land was the next morning. Checking a potato sack with a stick in the West African bush and seeing a deadly black mamba slither out. Getting hit in the forehead with a rock hurled by a kid at school intended for someone else; he still has the scar, and came "that close" to getting his eye. Accidentally yanking the head off a big mother hen that would not give up her eggs and would peck my dad's hand when he came to gather the daily quota. Breaking his hand playing soccer in college. 

    Being caught in the bowels of a B-52 bomber when someone started it up and he had to escape for his life before the engine roar would blast his eardrums. Barely made it, but he still has the inner eardrum scars from that one. Helping a roadside traveler who needed his trailer tipped right side up, joining in with a dozen others and all of them dropping it without warning. Horses that want to edge their owners into barbwire, always tales of warning and woe, that all served a purpose. Be tough, but be careful, be wary, come back in one piece. Don't be foolish and watch your back. Be streetwise, that was a thing for sure. Being tough was not about being foolhardy.

 

      My Uncle Bill was another kind of tough guy. He was bigger than my dad, and was more athletic. Bill had lots of tough man stories, because he had been a near-Olympic athlete in tough man events like the hammer and track and field, played college football, and even when older was a good enough kicker to be considered by the Dallas Cowboys, but he lied about his age, and they gave up hopes on him. But that is pretty good, pretty strong, that he made it to the stage he did. He kept his physique up and still threw the hammer competitively until his seventies. 

    Bill would travel the country and win the event at his respective age all over, like in Florida or when I saw him compete in Utah when I was attending college there. He worked house rentals and would stay active, often shirtless and tan well into adulthood. He talked tough and I thought he was. He would tell his little sons not to cry and "knock it off" if they were going to be babies. Don't come whining to me about your boo boos, Markie! Rub some dirt on it. Get back on that bike and ride the trails! You are four years old! You are not wearing diapers anymore.

   The movies and TV shows my dad watched always had tough guys: Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Jack Nicholson, Robert Conrad, Sean Connery, Charlton Heston, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, on and on... By the time I got into the newer movies there were the new tough guys: Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Reeves, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Henry Winkler as the Fonz. There were some tough leading women, too, but again, I took my cues from the guys.

    Among my friends and social circles there could be some occasional tough guys. There were the natural neighborhood rivals that we had on my dead end, the Jones boys. Not sure why. They talked and acted tough, but I was coming into my zone of toughness. In second grade I was wearing my Cub Scout uniform to school, (you have to respect a man in uniform!), in third grade I was taking weekly tae kwon do classes and getting some pretty powerful reflexes and muscles for my age; some kids feared me a little, especially if they made me mad, but I was usually defending the small guy. That is what real tough guys did, after all. They stood up to bullies, like David in the Bible or Ammon in the Book of Mormon. (If you do not know the Book of Mormon, Ammon was the servant of the enemy king who lopped off many arms of the thieving bandits of the royal flocks to prove his worthiness and loyalty to the man he wanted to impress in the name of God.)

   Tough guys were cool, they were strong, they worked hard, they did they right thing, they won, they were sexy, they were favored of God. I saw myself as a tough guy, and a few others did too. I was still forming, still pretty little. But I had some big, tough, ideas.

    What about sports? Of course, that. Sports are in the realm of toughness, for sure. That is what competition in the field of play simulates, right? Mock battle? In Bloomington we had the legendary Robert Montgomery Knight, aka "the General". He had coached first at Army and then came back to the Midwest from West Point; at Ohio State he had won the national championship as a player with former tough man Hall of Fame Coach Fred Taylor. 

    Knight became both a legend and his own worst enemy in my town, winning huge successes but also accruing a large debt of poor behavior and bullying, sycophantic words over the years against referees, opponents, Indiana University administration like the presidents and athletic directors, his bosses, some alleged abuse against his own players, violence against Puerto Rican law enforcement (it involves a trash can), and other somewhat bizarre and provocative acts like taking his team off the court when playing an exhibition game against the Soviets early in the second half, throwing a chair across the court against arch rival Purdue, choking a player, getting in trouble for a poorly chosen metaphor in a personal interview with nationally known journalist Connie Chung (there were street protests for his removal after that one), and a host of other somewhat shocking or crude incidents, like the post-game interview where he purposely used the F word the whole time so that no one could use his quotes.

Ahh, Bobby. We had him for 29 years! And, he was finally fired for grabbing a young freshman's elbow, trying to correct the kid from small town Nashville, 16 miles from campus, on how to address him as Coach Knight or Mister Knight, not just "Knight", as the young triplet mistakenly but excitedly tried to share with his friends. Zero tolerance for that offense, sir. Gone. Fired.

The tough man of my college town was shown the tough love door. He didn't come back for another 20 years. Tough lessons to be learned about toughness.

When I was 15 my older cousin asked me if I liked Bobby Knight. I replied not really, but I liked the team. Cousin Philip said, "Eddie, that is like saying you like the kernel but not the corn!" He had a point. By then Coach Knight had won two March Madness tournaments, which was a big deal. It was hard to separate Bobby's teams and him. He had heroic athletes who were tough, like rugged seven foot blonde Kent Benson who was part of Knight's first championship, the last undefeated NCAA championship team since, in 1976, who back then came into my parents' shop on 10th street, me a wee kinder gardener, and this living giant scraping the door frame and ceilings to make copies or get a paper typed at the little Crosstown shop where I would hang out after morning classes. My parents and everyone were in awe.

Bobby Knight basketball players: tough, tough, tough. They were more afraid of their coach than anyone else. He was tough. In eighth grade, two years before his final championship team, he kicked talented sophomore forward Mike Giomi off his squad. Dismissed a starter from his team, period, for skipping classes. Bobby, he was tough, on and off the court. Play by the rules. Go to class. A student does the right thing, or there was tough love. Adios, amigo. We don't need lazy, softies who cut classes. Toughen up or get out, just leave.

Tough love.

Tough love was the word for a concept of how to deal with unruly teenagers or drug addict alcoholics, or non-repentant thugs and criminals. Show them the business, show them that life is tough and tough love will fix them, or no more chances. Tough love was like Army boot camp, and that was the mentality of Knight as a coach. He, like his protégé Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, who went on to surpass the master, were tough because U.S. Army cadets were built to take orders, charge at enemies, stay clean, try hard always, not cut corners, make beds with hospital corners, go to war, literally, when called upon, get your gear packed and store your ammo and load up the weapons and drop down on the enemy and crush them.

      Army tough. Knight said if he could not be hard on the Army soldiers at West Point Academy, who could he be tougher on? The Marines didn't have a basketball team. The General molded young men and made them tougher, winners, champions on and off the court. Knight was friends and hunting and fishing buddies with people like baseball great Ted Williams, U.S. Commander General Norman Schwarzkopf, hero of the Persian Gulf War, former president and WW II hero George H.W. Bush, and the King of Spain. Knight lived and acted tough. A man's man. He also accidentally shot his friend with a shot gun while hunting. The guy lived. Tough luck, though.

    My childhood friend Eric (name changed) was pretty tough. He would talk tough, and sometimes raise his voice loud and brash, and curse like a tough guy. I thought he would grow out of it, as far as the talk. He did, in some ways, and now I wonder where all the bravado went, or what it ever was. Eric would study like a fiend and do well in the hardest chemistry and math classes, and later in his adult years get into some pretty big arguments with others and talk tough. He was vociferous at odd occasions, but he was super studious and excelled at school and work. 

    Eric got good jobs and did business school after the undergrad in economics, leaving the Ivy League with his choice of high-powered jobs; I sat in the passenger seat of his minivan when he once got into a heated and almost physical altercation with a young punk on the road in our hometown, both of us having moved away but back to visit with family. He was ready to go tough on this guy, for an offense and obscene gestures on the road, a little adrenaline-charged road rage.  Life has been tough for him lately; I am not sure if the toughness was an act, or if not an act, if it was not a posture or attitude that can be continued throughout life. Eric used to have well paid jobs, in many parts of the country. Now he depends on his family to pay the bills. Not the other way around. He is the dependent, like he was when he was six. At seven he was carrying his own.

How tough is that?

Tough, tough, tough. Some in the U.S. streets have called it "hard", like "hard core". Intense.

What does tough mean? Is it a male characteristic? Is it an attribute of physical prowess and strength? Is it a person who can shout down another and get his way? Is it an animalistic trait and inner power?

Brashness, loudness, yelling: those are attributes of a bully and a boor, a potential despot or tyrant, a possible abuser or exploiter. Perhaps it fits a former president or governor, here or there, in this great republic of ours. Mostly men, but not always. Some ladies think that getting loud and abusive is a good, tough, attribute.

Macho in Spanish means "male", "masculine". In English it connotes a sometimes-chauvinistic male, sexist, who show or exhibit a presence of being hard, tough, "manly", too harsh, too extreme. It can mean being callous and rude. Some can take macho positively, like cool and tough, where others interpret it negatively. (Sexy being good, not sexist, which is bad).

The world needs tough guys, tough gals. Tough people. Not those who exploit. Those that commit and contribute and help others move up and onward. As they say, tough times deserve tough measures. And the people to implement and live those values. Sure. Tough love, tough talk: live straight, decent, and true.

But, we could do with less of the machismo. Being macho is not tough. It's foolhardy.

That's where we stand, Coach Knight. You were a tough coach. But the machismo, or lack of rational speech and behavior, we could do without that.

From kid to teen to young adult to middle aged, I have seen and heard about my share of tough, macho, people.

The toughest ones?

The dogs that don't bark; they just sink their teeth in and won't let go. And these dogs will fight to the death, not to strike fear into others for show, but because that is a what a tough dog is: a fighter who does not give up when the softies give up.

Tough guys are macho in the sense that they have things figured out; they realized long ago it requires tenacity, endurance, and compassion to be the strongest and best version of themselves that they should be, to help themselves and those around them.

Tough guys: Chuck Norris. Jackie Chan. Mark Wahlberg. Matt Damon. Liam Neeson. Benecio del Toro. Josh Brolin. The big, bad athletes of the public stage. A billion other people assorted around the planet doing their everyday arduous, sometimes tedious, but often times dangerous jobs, week after week, month after month, year after year, most to little aplomb or acclaim.

My dad. My mom. My sisters. My uncle. My aunts. My cousins. My friends. My church members. My wife. My coworkers, my countrymen and countrywomen. The farmers, the miners, the laborers, the ones who work and toil and keep going on and on. They are the tough ones.

Tough times require tough measures, tough people. 

Not jerks.

(Re-read, edited and touched up a bit, 12 May 2024). Read out loud to my wife when she requested "bike" as a search.)