Nicky the Bear-Wrestling Pundit

by Mike Newall

It wasn't until hearing Nicky the Bull tell about the time he wrestled a bear on the Wildwood boardwalk that I felt confident Barack Obama would actually be the next president of the United States. It was shortly after 11 a.m. on Election Day, and the question of whether white working-class voters would turn out for Obama was the subject of debate outside the polling center at the Casa di Pazzi Italian American Social Club on 12th and Federal streets. ("Casa di Pazzi" translates to "House of Nuts," and this isn't a coincidence.)

"The state of Pennsylvania, you kidding, they hate everyone," Anthony Molinari was saying. Anthony was the judge of elections for the polling center and a Republican. He had an unlit stogie stuck between his teeth. "Obama will never win Pennsylvania," he said.

"Nah, I think people are going to hold true to the party, no matter the race issue," Nick Schmanek replied. Nick's a Democratic committeeman. He was wearing sporty reflective sunglasses.

"Oh! Here comes Nicky the Bull," yelled Anthony. "Ask him what he thinks. He beat up a bear once."

Nicky the Bull slammed the door of his black sports car. He was wearing a black T-shirt, black polyester pants and black cap. He had the nose and build of an old street fighter.

"It was 1972 when I beat the bear," Nicky the Bull said. "Come on, you remember Victor the Wrestling Bear, they'd bring him around in circuses and challenge people to fight him. Well, they had a tournament in Wildwood. There was a huge crowd. Joe Hess, a black belt in karate, went in first. He came out with two broken arms. Then I went in. He was an ugly brown bear, probably 7 feet tall and 500 pounds. I was 250 with 50-inch shoulders and a 30 waist. They declawed him and put a muzzle on him to even things out."

Nicky the Bull went into a crouch position.

"I tried to get a hold of his balls but I couldn't find them," Nicky said. "He hit me in the face with his head and my nose was bleeding bad. Then he picked me up and squeezed me, but I got under him and held him off for 7 minutes before they called it. It was the 7 hardest minutes of my life. I smelled like a pole cat afterward. I stunk. I had to use Ajax for a week to get off the smell."

"So, who's going to win the election?" Nicky the Bull was asked.

"Oh, I don't see any way Obama's not going to win," he answered without hesitation. "He's got it in the bag now."

You listen to men who wrestle bears and win. And anyway, this election has always become clear to me in small moments like this. In New Hampshire, Dave Mance sat at the bar of the Shaskeen Grill after waiting in the snow for an hour to catch an Obama speech at the Palace Theatre. Dave was working-class, white and undecided. His buddies were for McCain. But Dave couldn't get over the speech at the Palace.

"I just like the guy," Dave said of Obama, staring into his beer and sounding almost embarrassed of his own opinion. "I'm not for a second saying I understand the complexities of all the issues. But every once in a while a candidate comes along, regardless of party, a Kennedy, a Reagan, that you see something special in, and though you don't know exactly what it is — an intuition more than anything else — you put it upon him and just hope he fulfills it for you in some way."

Committeeman Nicky Armata was working the same polling spot at Second and Moore streets in Pennsport he's worked for 42 years. Nicky was asking voters to support the Democratic ticket from the top down, and he was getting lots of glares. By midday he was pretty sure McCain would carry this overwhelmingly white Democratic stronghold by a hundred votes. But as evening fell, more and more young voters kept filing past Nicky, voters he'd never seen before.

"Look at all these yuppie-duppies," Nicky said with a laugh. "Oh, boy."

Obama carried the division with a 2-1 margin.

Dispatch is filed from all corners of Philadelphia. E-mail mike.newall@citypaper.net.