Rebel League The Short And Unruly Life Of The World Hockey Association

He probably didn't think it would be an issue when he joined the WHA, but in addition to his many other personality quirks Mike Walton was deathly afraid of spiders, cockroaches, and anything else that crawled and had six or more legs. Sadly, this phobia qualified as something of an occupational hazard for Shaky, because the new league, in the early years at least, played in places that did not discourage the presence of insects. The Sam Houston Arena, for instance, built in 1937 and famous for its Friday-night wrestling cards, was fairly typical of the first generation of WHA rinks. Owner Paul Deneau invested enough money to bring it up to code and even installed Plexiglas in place of the chicken wire that was still in use in many of the old rinks. "I thought it was okay," says Dineen. Still, no one was mistaking it for Madison Square Garden. "We used to have cockroach contests in the dressing room," says John Garrett. "We'd be putting our equipment on, and a cockroach always got in your skates or your sweater. If you got a really big one, you'd hang it from a skate lace in the middle of the dressing room. Then the other guys would try to get a bigger one. There was no money involved. We just did it for the honour." Which was funny to everyone except Walton. During one road trip, the Saints played in Houston before taking off immediately for Baltimore. The accepted WHA procedure after a game in Houston was to shake your equipment vigorously to dislodge any unwanted guests, who could, if left unattended, multiply and eat your brain. Walton, sadly, forgot this safety precaution, which caused some excitement when he took his skates out of his bag in Baltimore. "I was in the coaches' room and I heard this horrible scream coming from the dressing room," says Harry Neale. "I thought, Oh my god, someone's cut their hand off. Then I see this cockroach coming out of our dressing room and I figured out what had happened. "I think the cockroach made the rest of the road trip with us and he didn't ask for a per diem so we kept him around." The pioneers of the new league would experience many such indignities in the WHA's sevenyear existence. While they were grateful for the opportunity, to say nothing of the paycheques, NHL veterans who'd lived the life in The Show would often look at their surroundings and ask the great existential question, "Just what the hell am I doing here?" Some of them never received a satisfactory answer. But the journeymen and minor-leaguers endured the league's more unusual aspects with patience and humour, because they knew the WHA was infinitely superior to the alternative. "I wasn't like Keon, McKenzie, or Walton," says Dave Hanson. "I had nothing to compare it to. I just thought this was the way things were, and it was a great adventure. We had a lot of fun." One of the WHA's biggest sources of amusement was its buildings. In time, the rebels could boast a series of new arenas that were years ahead of the NHL's and foreshadowed the great steel-andglass mausoleums of today. There was the new St. Paul Civic Center. The Oilers moved into Northlands Coliseum midway through Year 3. The Indianapolis Racers played in the magnificent new Market Square Arena. Nick Mileti would build a new facility for the Cleveland Crusaders in Richfield that, at the time, was the most luxurious in hockey. Cincinnati and New England would also move into new buildings. But over the first couple of years, the league was jammed into a collection of dusty old pre-war rinks that, while not without their own charms, fell somewhat short of big-league. &Willes, Ed is the author of 'Rebel League The Short And Unruly Life Of The World Hockey Association', published 2004 under ISBN 9780771089473 and ISBN 0771089473.