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The World According To Dutch: Stone Cold and the Dutchman Stranded like Refugees

Posted: Dec 2nd 2009 By: CMBurnham

In the early 90's, Steve Williams, later known as Steve Austin, was working in Memphis and I was booking the company at the time. Steve and I used to travel together quite a bit as Steve was just starting out in the wrestling business. It was a Monday as we left Nashville for the 230 mile one way trip to Memphis and it was cold. It was February and the weather report for that night predicted freezing rain and sleet in west Tennessee. That was where we were headed. Memphis sits almost directly west of Nashville. It's not a bad trip but it's boring as hell. Little did I know that the boring part would be taken out of this trip we were about to embark on.

It doesn't snow much in Tennessee but in its place, Mother Nature dumps some killer ice storms on you. I guess that Mother Nature's way to keep you from getting too comfortable. I hated ice storms. Snow would be gone in one day usually but ice storms completely stopped everything.

When weather reports like this came down, usually, we would be notified if the show was off. I called the office and found out that the show was still scheduled. The weather, we were told by our crack weather tracking teams, was that west Tennessee or the Memphis area would be spared but Middle Tennessee would be hit fairly hard. I didn't like the way that sounded which meant we might be able to make it to Memphis but we might not be able to make it back. When I said 'crack' weather teams above, I didn't mean they were good. What I meant to say was they were probably on 'crack'.

Steve was driving that day that day as he usually did. His vehicle of choice was a little Honda or Hyundai or whatever he had. All I know is that it was a smaller car that didn't have a lot of room but it was fast. He drove like he was in the Daytona 500. I often told Steve that maybe he decided to get into the wrong business. Instead of wrestling, he could should have bypassed wrestling and headed straight for NASCAR.

When we left for Memphis, it was around the 30 degree mark with overcast skies. It was perfect snowing weather in Tennessee but the weathermen still were saying that the Memphis area would be fine. Well, let me say right now that I'm not a meteorolgist, but I could have predicted that those morons were off base. Time proved me right.

We started driving west at around 2PM with the sky spitting snow for the entire trip until we got about 20 miles out of Memphis. Then the bottom dropped out. It started snowing heavily like we we at the North Pole and it didn't take long for the snow to start building up. It was around 5PM and it was getting dark. The snow was sticking, lanes were all snowed over and we were down to driving 20 MPH. There were a few cars that had already spun out or gone off the road along the way. The closer we got to Memphis, the worse it got. I thought back the weather report earlier today that said Memphis would be spared. What happened to that report?

I knew that there was no way the matches would be held that night. But, like the idiots we were, we continued the journey since we were very close to the Mid South Coliseum. As we pulled into an iced over backstage parking lot, we saw the King, Jerry Lawler was getting into his car. He told us that the matches had been canceled. No s**t? Really? I didn't see any of the other guys in the parking lot or their cars so it seemed as though some of those guys had more sense than Steve and I did and decided not to come.

We were pissed off. Steve and I were cussing up a storm. The trip had already turned into a trip from hell and it didn't seem to be getting any better. We had driven 230 miles only to be told that the matches were off due to a situation that they had known about hours earlier. Hell, an idiot savant could have told them that. Thinking back on it now, I'm sure Lawler was the one who originally said that the Memphis area would be fine and the matches were a go. It was fine for Lawler, who lived in Memphis, because he only had about 20 minutes to his house. But for those of us who lived in Nashville, it was a major mistake. I didn't know who I was working for. A wrestling company or the US Mail Service?

That situation couldn't happen today because of cell phones and text messaging. But back then, we didn't possess the luxury of cell phones. Hell, we were so technologically crippled, we couldn't have even sent smoke signals. As we got back into the car to head back, I had already spent 5 hours in that crackerjack box. Hell, what's another 8. Needless to say, we weren't in the best of moods knowing that now, we would have to backtrack but this time fighting snow and darkness the whole way. Wow. It was great being in the wrestling business.

Steve and I started back. It was slow go not only because of the weather but because it was dark too. The TN. State Highway patrolmen were out in force and the highway trucks were busily salting the roads. We kept the radio on and listened to weather reports but what were we going to hear that was different. All they were saying was we're GONNA GET SOME SNOW TONIGHT, PEOPLE!!! I don't even know why we were listening to the radio. It's not like all of a sudden, the announcer was going and announce that in the next 15 minutes, it's was going to clear up with a high of 72 degrees. That's what I wanted to hear. But I didn't. They were predicting ice and an accumulation of up to 9 inches of snow.

We drove at a snail's pace for about 4 hours, which got us about 120 miles outside Memphis, but the storm was moving faster than we were. For awhile, we had been outrunning the worst of the storm but it had caught back up with us and it was stronger than before. If this continued, the Interstate would be almost impassable I thought. It was cold as hell and the wind was starting to pick up. On the windows, we could hear sleet coming down and it was getting nastier outside. Could it get any worse? I learned never to say that because when God hears that, well, you know the story.

The defroster in Steve's car was all screwed up because the front windows were fogging over every 30 seconds. Steve was driving and I was serving as the official window wiper. I had a towel and every time I wiped off the inside windshield, the towel got wetter. Plus the heater wasn't working very good either. The heat was just around the front of the car but it was freezing in the back.

It wasn't cold in the car but it wasn't getting any warmer and the side and back windshield windows were now frosting over. Then something happened that I've never seen happen before. It started snowing inside the car. You might say that's impossible but it happened. I looked it up later and it was something about the humidity in the car, which was our body heat, mixing with the condensation in the air, which produced a snowstorm within a snowstorm. Hell, if I could figure that out, why couldn't the experts read a Doppler radar screen.

At this point, we were down to driving 20 MPH, cars were abandoned all over the Interstate and we had very little heat. Steve, being the great visionary he was in those days, mentioned that we might be better off if we pulled off the Interstate to one of our regular stops and waited the storm out. We got off the Interstate headed to a truck stop where we always stopped even in good weather. The people who worked there knew us well.

Great call. This one call probably earned Steve his graduation papers from the University of Dutch. The snow by this time was about 6 inches deep on the ground and everything was frozen over including my ass. As we pulled into the truck stop, there were trucks as far as I could see with their engines running. It was around 12AM and all the truckers were asleep in their rigs. But not Mr. Austin and I. For the next several hours, Steve and I would be stuck inside the truck stop with no idea of when we would be able to leave.

As I got out of the car, I found out just how slippery the roads were because I slipped and slid all the way inside the truck stop.

We went in and sat down and the first thing I ordered was hot chocolate. I was cold, irritable, and mad all rolled into one. This was going to be a long night. Right after we sat down, we heard the report that Interstate 40 had been shut down for the remainder of the night or until driving conditions could be restored which I knew wouldn't be until morning. The next thing I did was to call my wife to tell her what was going on and not to expect me until sometime later in the day. She told me the weather report in Nashville was an ICE STORM EMERGENCY and that it was bad. She also told me that I was crazy for going. I agreed.

I started sneezing and that told me one thing. I was sick. I can always tell when I catch a cold right down to the minute I catch it. My wife always told me that was impossible but it wasn't. I always knew exactly when I got sick. When I sneeze the first time, I'm sick. I was sick thanks to somebody not calling off the matches in a f'n snowstorm. Thanks a lot guys.

Steve and I both stretched out in a hard seat booth in the restaurant. I used the term stretched out...it was more like passed out. We were both so exhausted from making the trip and fighting the ice and snow, we couldn't stay awake. The truck stop was packed because we weren't the only ones who were stranded out on the Interstate that night. Most of the troopers and truck stop workers knew who we were. One thing I can say is we ate well before we passed out. All of those people were wrestling fans and as such, they treated us like kings or as well as a king can be treated in a refugee situation.

The State Police finally opened the Interstate around 10AM the next morning and we left the truckstop to begin the 2 hour slow, slipping and sliding drive back to Nashville. As we made our way toward the city, it looked like a war zone. The storm had done a lot of damage. Cars and trucks were all off the roads, in the medians and in ditches. Power lines were down, tree limbs were snapped off. I thought back over the previous 24 hours when we had left Nashville. All it would have taken was for someone to use common f'n sense and cancel the show. But, apparently, Mensa candidates didn't work in wrestling offices.

We were driving very carefully but we were still slipping and sliding all over the road as we made our way into Nashville. The heater's usefulness had left hours earlier. The windows were still fogging over, I was sneezing and getting a sore throat and Steve was cussing. This whole trip had turned into a fiasco.

I finally got back to my house at 1PM in the afternoon after 23 hours on the road. This had turned into one of the worst trips I had ever made. The first call I made was to Christine Jarrett to tell her there was no way I could make Louisville that night. But the ice storm had hit Louisville too and the matches were canceled. Christine Jarrett had a little sense. She canceled the show.

Usually, when Steve and I would make trips, Steve would learn something from me because the University of Dutch never took spring break. The UoD always offered a 24/7 curriculum. But on this trip, I learned something from Steve. I learned how to cuss more effectively. I thought I could cuss pretty good but Steve showed me that he had the fine art of cussing down pat. It was f this and f that and f everybody and f this f'n wrestling business every 30 feet on the way back from Memphis. And when he wasn't f'n everything, I was. It was a night to remember or a night to forget. Pick your poison.

I was still cussing when I got to my house. I went in and fell into my bed. I slept for 18 hours.

Tags: Dutch Mantell, Jerry Lawler