My Secret Life With Lou - Page 3

Close Encounters of the Safeway Kind

Well if that don't beat all! A few months later, there you are, Lou, in the Sunday newspaper, looking good as ever and making a local appearance right here in town – "Come out and meet Lou (The Hulk) Ferrigno and sample his new nutritional snack bars – next Tuesday at the Boulder Safeway." Are you coming back to see me and your namesake on wheels? Was there something we forgot to discuss back on that Halloween night? My friends at the bakery will never believe this story. Like I always tell them, 'I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender.' After work, on the day of this promotional event, my buddy David and I hopped into the Swinger (Lou) and headed over to the Safeway to meet the spirit of my car in person. Hey big guy – I see you in the crowd signing autographs and looking massive as ever. Your bicep bursting body sits poised at the display table surrounded by candy bars, body-building books and a couple of two-bit, polyester types hovering suspiciously behind, monitoring for crowd control I think. Who are deez guys – Superfly hustlers trying to pay the rent with your name? Lou don't need no bodyguards! In my car, in my mind and in my words, Lou is something bigger than life. That's why I'm here today with the admiring public and children chasing autographs. Your persona, Lou, rides with me on the highways like a modern Saint Christopher, protecting this wayward driver from another fender bender. Your presence inspires the quiet strength of imagination, which guards me daily ever since that thread of conversation in a pizza parlour, on Halloween many years ago. Whether he knows it or not, Lou occupies that place in me where the strength of imagination, the power of the creative will, tempers all that revolves around this crazy world in the chaos of my own mundane existence. And here you are now, in the supermarket, selling health food bars. Wow! In a flash, I intrude this promotional stunt and say, "Excuse me, Mr. Ferrigno, remember me? I used to make pizzas at the Wildflour." Nervously I pause, fearful that he may have forgotten our meaningful encounter. The Polyester Man casts a baleful look in my direction, as if he were about to disassemble my frame in a moment's notice. Lou gazed up from his work, blinked an eye and said, "You mean Jay, Steve and his wife uh …" "Wendy," I say, prompting his memory at last. "Yeah, I remember you. What are you doing here?" he asks as if he does not perceive the chrono-synclastic nature of this reunion. "I live here, Lou. I'm married and live outside of town." And now, in a flash, he begins to understand. "Hey, you're the guy that used to make the antipasto, right?" Lou Ferrigno with author Tim Weil In that instant, he stands up, putting aside this supermarket scene for the candy bar firm. He turns to the passers-by to announce, once again, "Hey everybody – this is the guy who used to make me antipasto!" No one seems to notice, but I stand in Lou's shadow, too humble for words. My friend, David, snaps a fews photos. I thank Lou and we leave, taking with me an autograph, a box of health food bars and a taste of that indestructible presence of Mind Out of Time. That evening, I ate a half-dozen of the Go-rilla protein bars and in my dream, I am transported to some new power spot of the universe. I am wretched sick for the next few days and in my enfeebled state, arrive at the moral conclusions to this story -

Taste the power of imagination but Don't bite off more than Lou can chew. It's not easy being Green!

Lou Ferrigno - Safeways - Go-rilla bars