People are writing to ask me about Dave's history, specifically a column he wrote that gives a description. What Dave usually did was more like snippets, slipping in a couple of paragraphs about a memory, rather than a full newsletter.
One thing he was particularly careful of was glamorizing his life during the drugs and alcohol years, but otherwise, he was usually very upfront in answering questions. In fact, I can't actually think of a column that specifically addresses the bad part of his history and even in Brother Iron, of which the first section is autobiographical, there's only a small section used to discuss the negative aspect. Reads like this...
From Brother Iron, Sister Steel, starts on page 24:
"Allow me to sneak within a few thin pages a sufficient discourse of my life out to pasture between the years of 1970 and 1985. The weights never left my side, no more than a good old sheepdog leaves a gritty sheepherder tending the south forty. I trained every morning with fire in my gut before the cock crowed. Got along fine with the bird, 'twas people who presented me minor distress. Or, was it the other way around?
"Living in Venice in the '60s was like living in a junkyard with a bunch of junkyard dogs. Biting was allowed and the food wasn't free. I had to make a living, learn and grow. My workouts served to stabilize, fortify and entertain me, but no way could I see training to beat Sergio Oliva a real wise career decision -- baby needed shoes. (As if I could have; he's from another planet, you know.)
"I found myself making rugged oversized furniture out of old wood, loving it and making enough money to pay the bills. Very cool. Tranquil, alone and natural, woodworking matched my workouts. Someone could say the '70s never happened and I'd believe 'em.
"I became, quite by accident (as is commonplace in all my pursuits), a carpenter of sorts. To keep me company as I sawed planks and carved wood into oversized objects of furniture, I drank a little wine and smoked a little dope.
"This pattern -- smoking, drinking, eating, training, carving and sleeping -- kept me busy. The world around me, but for a handful of friends and family, spun on its own familiar axis. Frank, Arnold, Mentzer -- whoever -- did their thing and I did mine, light years apart. I didn't ignore or neglect, judge or deny competitive bodybuilding. I simply lost interest as one does for racing cars on the boulevard or watching corn grow season after season. My respect and affection for the guys and our experiences were cast in bronze. Creating in wood and trips to Big Sur and Mendocino became my preoccupation.
"The bodybuilding world expanded; it appeared to grow tentacles and I found it alien to my perception of muscle and might. I dug the metal then and now: the single-mindedness, the struggle, the intense body feelings, the pump and burn and heat and sweat, the battle, defeat and mostly the victory, the wordless communication and knowing amidst a very small tribe and the muddled or vacant stares I captured from puzzled, stumbling on-lookers -- the rest of the world, really. Not so much an ego trip, as an amused ape, comfortably aware of itself.
"I came to understand that staying big and muscular and strong was inherent and a chosen function for my new passion to build my large wooden forms. The egocentricity I shared primarily with myself was fulfilling and harmless enough. Far as I could see the world nearby was kicking itself up and down the freeway and maybe I could help it by not participating. Somewhere, halfway through the '70s, my family and I escaped from the expanding yet deteriorating Los Angeles scenery to settle like toadstools in the midst of the Santa Cruz redwoods. Heaven, one would conclude, a dream come true: a wooden house in the middle of twelve wooded acres, lovingly cultivated by God Almighty.
"Not quite. I saw my family depart and my sinister, cynical companions, drugs and alcohol, lead me from my home to a barren gardener's shed in a little orchard on the edge of Nowhere. No power, no running water, no bucks, no buddy.
"Hey, I still had the weights, was still lifting, never stopped. Commendable. Add to that: the booze and dope stopped. Suddenly.
"However, not until after, at one point in '83, so did my heart. The doctors and staff at the Dominican Critical Care Unit treating me for acute congestive heart failure expected my life to cease as heartbeats strained and failed repeatedly. Three weeks after this bout I was wheeled out the side door to resume my tortuous journey.
"My eyes cleared and I looked at the black and white and smoldering landscape around me, silent ashes. If I didn't do one good thing each day, I still plugged into the gym and resuscitated the soul. Two years of one day at a time, sets and reps, iron and woodwork therapy, fear and trembling, prayer and God, and I stood upright. Apples grew in the orchard, grapes on the vine and the bees pollinated as they gathered their makings for honey.
"From the earliest day to this, I trained to build muscle and might. As the crazy '60s lengthened, bodybuilding took on critical mass and an acute change of direction. The control gates failed and the flood was sudden. Bodybuilding was about to be exploited, big-time. There was money to be made, accompanied by greed, power and frenzy. Muscle mags resembling catalogs appeared ubiquitously. Merchandise, apparel, miracle supplements for overnight muscle, equipment of every description, gym chains, mondo contests and promoters swamped the fields of green.
dd
