The Zonk

[SWC75]

I'm continuing to read Larry Csonka's memoir "Head On", (It's in my throne-room library). Some interesting excerpts:

Halloween 1959: Larry and some friends collected a bunch of unsold, imperfect pumpkins from a farm and drove them in a flatbed truck to some local railroad tracks, where they unloaded the pumpkins on the tracks, making a pyramid of them. They waited for a train to come by. "As it approached us, we saw the engineer, his head out the window, straining to see better as the light from the train shifted on the mountain of pumpkins. I knew nothing about how an emergency break worked on a train but when that engineer pulled it, it like nothing I'd ever seen or heard. the wheels on the engine seized and shrieked. the sparks that flew out from underneath the locomotive - metal wheels against metal rails under tons of weight and propulsion - lit up the night. Flashes of blue, yellow and gold sparks blazed all around us. And then, the train hit the pumpkins they exploded like a ton of dynamite. The impact literally liquified the pile - pumpkin juice and seeds flew a few hundred feet in every direction. I felt like I'd seen the greatest fireworks show on earth.

"It took about 30 seconds for the train to come to a complete stop. then we saw the door of the caboose open. A very large, very angry railroad conductor jumped off the car, onto the tracks and started running toward us. "Hold on Boys!" he yelled. We all ran like hell for the truck. I cranked it over, jammed it into gear and it started to move. It was an old, slow clunker I could see the conductor gaining on us. I double-clutched it, forced it into the third gear and started to gain speed. In the rearview mirror, I saw him reaching for the back of the flatbed. He was trying to grab on when I finally pulled away."

He got home and the police were already there, talking to his father. His father told them that if they had any proof his son was involved, they can come back and arrest him. They left and Larry's Dad told him "Now go inside and comb that pumpkin seeds out of your hair."

---------------------------

When at SU he got married and Ben Schwartzwalder arranged to get him a job as a night-watchman at Bill Rapp's auto dealership. Bill had a wreck yard behind the dealership where they could harvest still usable parts. In the wee hours, thieves would pull up in a car with the headlights off and drive around behind the building and raid the junkyard for parts. Larry went outside and yelled at him, but they ignored him. he called the police, but they arrived 45 minutes after the thieves left. So, Larry decided to take things into his own hand.

The next time he brought his shotgun, loaded with non-lethal rock salt. "I knew what ammunition would injure or kill and what kind would just get their attention. I figure I might be able to scare them off...they were leaning over the open hood of a wrecked GTO. I assumed they were there to steal the carburetors. I stopped about 50 feet away. "This isn't going to work boys." One of them turned and stepped toward me he was holding a heavy wrench. the other two walked behind him. They were more hesitant but moving my way and sizing me up. "Who the hell are you?" they snapped. "I'm the new night watchman", I said, pulling the shotgun up. I jacked a shell into the chamber. "Game Over." They stopped, put their hands up for a second and then turned to run. I was starting to enjoy myself. I aimed low, toward the pavement behind them. I waited until they almost reached the car and then I fired. I knew there was no danger of hitting their eyes as they were running away from me. I also knew the slat would ricochet off the pavement, hit their car and maybe sting their legs. I heard all of them screaming "Go Go!" I jacked another shell of rock salt into the chamber. They floored the car. As they drove away from me, I shot the ass end of their car with rock salt from 50 feet away. They raced out of the parking lot, wheeled onto the highway and disappeared." This time the police were there in 30 minutes. The cop asked him about gunshots. "Must have been a backfire." Had had any trouble, like before? "No. Nothing serious." So, if you were one of that crew stealing parts from Bill Rapp's junkyard back in the day, the guy with the shotgun was Larry Csonka.

--------

We think of Larry Csonka as an indestructible battering ram, but he's very human. As a rookie, he caught a Bob Griese pass at the Bill's 6-yard line. He through he was going to score but got hit from behind on the 5 and fell head-first to the turf. the turf won. When he regained consciousness, the team doctor and trainer asked him asked him "Do you know where you are? "No" Do you know who you're playing? "No!"

"The two men shook their heads." The put him in an ambulance and sent him to the hospital, by which time his left eye had puffed up and turned red. the diagnosis was "ruptured blood vessel, impact broke suspension in helmet. Blood pooling in eye socket. Concussion. Possible seizure or stroke." "I was slipping in and out of consciousness. Someone had shaved a small spot on the side of my head. The I head a doctor say, "Here and here", as he marked my temple with a pen. the last thing I heard him say was "If the pressure doesn't cease, that's where we drill."

Larry's professional career was almost over before it had really begun. Fortunately, the pressure did cease. Incredibly, Larry sat out only one game but, playing against Floyd Little's Broncos, he was hit hard again and had to sit out the rest the game on the bench. (That happened to be the game where Denver QB Steve Tensi got hurt and they sent in a black QB by the name of Marlin Briscoe.)

The next week, Larry took a helmet-to-helmet hit against the Chargers and was out for a time again. I remember reading articles that Larry Csonka could bowl over collegiate defenders but that the NFL was proving too tough for his limited running style. Riddell had come out with an experimental helmet. "It was lined with special shock-absorbing plastic pockets filled with thick fluid - intended to cradle and cushion my head." he wore it the rest of the season.

After the season, Larry encountered "a giant of a man" also named Larry: Larry Little. He found out that Larry played for the Chargers, but the dolphins were considering obtaining him. Larry went to GM Joe Thomas and told him that this was the sort of lineman he wanted to run behind on the Dolphins. Thomas said they were negotiating with him. Larry told Joe "He's so damn big I can hide behind him. if nothing else, I'll use him as a shield!" He even offered to let the Dolphins pay Little from Lerry's own salary. Finally, he said "look at him! And look at this! [pointing to his still bloodshot eye]. I'll tell you how enthusiastic I am. We're on the third floor. [Pointing to the window]
Unless you can fly, you better get him here." Fortunately, Joe listened to Larry and the rest is history.

More later, after nature has called a few more times.

https://www.amazon.com/Head-Memoir-Larry-Csonka/dp/1637743254/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3CFJV4AJ6UL6U&keywords=head+on+larry+Csonka&qid=1671140636&sprefix=head+on+larry+csonka%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1

 

[SWC75]

Some more adventures of "The Zonk":

Larry got to know Jimmy Goodrich from his fishing and hunting expeditions in Florida. His day job was with the security division at Kennedy Space Center.

“He started inviting me to the Saturn rocket launches, (which powered the Apollo missions), and introduced me to some of his astronaut friends, including Neil Armstrong. I took my boys up for one of those liftoffs. You might say our vantage point was way too close. Goodrich drove us past the official viewing stands and parked hit truck about two miles from the launch pad for a close-up look at the most powerful rocket developed in the history of mankind. As the Saturn V blasted off on May 18 with its Apollo 10 crew. I could physically see the aftershock – a massive tidal wave of distorted air, heat and bugs – blowing toward us. As it approached, rapidly, the continuous vibration and rumble of the rocket engines was deafening.

“Hold onto your hats!”, Goodrich yelled as a powerful shock wave rocked us. When it all ended. I asked: Are we allowed to be this close?”

“Not really….”, Goodrich said.”


In early 1971, Larry accompanied a bunch of NFL players to Vietnam to try to ‘entertain’ the troops. It was a six-week visit. They didn’t do a Bob Hope-type show and didn’t go to where Bob Hope went. Larry had been given a deferment because he was married with two kids. Now he got to meet the guys who weren’t deferred. He flew from Florida to California, then to Alaska, Hawaii and then down to Vietnam. He’d always been fascinated with Alaska and in a brief stopover, fell in love with the place, (see the next story).

In Vietnam, “The USO divided us into small groups of two or three and then assigned us to the Rescue Corps – the brave medics who pull injured soldiers out of combat. Most mornings the medivacs would fly us out and drop us off at firebases along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. These encampments were located on mountains whose tops had been cleared to install gun emplacements…These mountaintop firebases were in the middle of nowhere. They were guarded by about 100 soldiers – and they were damp sure a target. Guerilla forces shot off mortars at night, trying to blow up the bases. Everyone, including those of us on the USO tour, were assigned to small bunkers. “Get in this hole right here”, a soldier casually told us, pointing to a foxhole. “If anything starts happening, jump in and we’ll come find you.”

After hopping from one firebase to another and meeting the troops, the time came to leave. The vehicle used was a small ‘spotter plane’. “The spotters planes typically fly low over the treetops looking for snipers. The engine was loud as hell. We were flying along, and the pilot was on the radio talking to the air traffic controller at the landing strip on the outskirts of Da Nang. It was a tiny airport where spotter planes refueled. As we were approaching the landing strip, I looked out my window and saw a tiny piece of the wing break off the plane. “Hey!”, I said to the pilot, “there’s metal flying off the….”. Before I could finish my sentence, he banked the plane hard left and began a series of evasive maneuvers trying to get the plane to the other side of the airstrip. My fingers dug into the dash of that cockpit while our pilot was on the radio using a code for sniper fire – but I didn’t need to understand the code to figure that out. The snipers were shooting at our gas tank – located right beside my seat.

The base got a Cobra gunship airborne right away. Our pilot relayed the sniper’s location. “We see them”, the Cobra pilot replied. The snipers had been flushed from the trees and were now running across the open grass field. We were circling the landing strip and saw them. “What are your orders?” the Cobra pilot radioed. “Smoke ‘em!” came the command. “There’s at 8 O’clock!” our pilot said. I could see two tearing through the field. When the Cobra’s guns opened up, everything around them turned to smoke. He incinerated them, blew them to pieces.”

After the spotter plane finally landed, the pilot told Larry: “I want to show you something.” He pointed to this flashlight to the underside of the plane’s right wing, illuminating two slug holes. They missed the fuel tank by about an inch. “That’s how close you came to dying. If he’d shot a half a heartbeat to the left, the bullet would have hit the gas tank and we wouldn’t have known what hit us.”


In 1997 Larry co-produced a TV show called “North to Alaska”, patterned after Curt Gowdy’s “The American Sportsman”, with his “life and business partner, Audrey Bradshaw”. In September 2005, they went to Umnak Island in the Aleutians to fish for river salmon, hunt caribou and do some saltwater fishing. The weather and seas proved too rough for the latter. “Instead, we surf-fished for salmon.”

“On our final day on Umnak, the morning sky was blue and the seas were flat. Our guide and the boat captain both agreed we could head out on our caribou hunt before the bad weather returned. So, we boarded the 28-foot Augusta D and motored to a bay at the foot of a volcano in a remote region where caribou roamed. We anchored and made a few trips in the small, inflatable Zodiac until we were all ferried ashore.”

Audrey and Larry set off with a guide and a two-man film crew. “We stalked and finally bagged the caribou we were after. Hunting laws in Alaska are strict and specific. In general, you must transfer all the meat from the field before transporting head and antlers. This helps keep the trophy hunters reigned in. After the meat was harvested, hauled down the mountain, loaded into the Zodiac and transported back to the boat, our guide insisted on going back up the mountain, on his own, to retrieve the caribou head and antlers. I tried to talk him out of it because the weather was really kicking up. “No, I’ll be back down before you’re all loaded up. Just run back in and get me.”

We continued shuttling back and forth to the Augusta D. On one of those trips with John and all of his camera equipment, I was standing knee-deep in the rocky bar, pushing him off the shore, timing the now-breaking waves. The water was churning and damn near freezing, too. My hunting gear was soaked through by now and felt heavy as lead, but I managed to throw myself into the Zodiac.” (Keep in mind Larry would have been 58 years old at the time.)

“Our trip back to the boat was a rough one. We were all finally back on the boat but couldn’t leave without our guide. The wind was howling now and there were whitecaps on the bay. I grabbed my binoculars to try and locate our guide on the mountain, but he was nowhere in sight. The weather was getting worse by the minute. We couldn’t just sit and wait. Rich and I decided to go back ashore to search for him. The water was even rougher this time. We were being tossed all over the Zodiac. We couldn’t beach in the same spot but managed to find a relatively protected place to land. It was now late afternoon. Rich waited in the Zodiac while I set out in search of our missing guide. I finally found him up on the mountain, sitting down, the caribou head by his side. He was having trouble breathing and said he just couldn’t go any further, I helped him to his feet and grabbed the caribou head. It’d be a difficult task to get both of them down the mountain. But the guide noticed something. A stream. “We could jump in and slide down the mountain”, he said. I wasn’t crazy about the idea but what the hell – I was already soaking wet…We jumped in and did a toboggan run. I held onto the caribou head as we bounced off the rocks and then plunged into a five-foot-deep pool at the bottom.

I’d had enough. I called the captain and suggested we camp on the beach. I’d rather be rescued on the shore than drown in the ocean. “No”, he said “Come on back. We’ll go out and take a look.” I wasn’t sure what “take a look” meant but Rich and I got the caribou head and the guide into the Zodiac. This small inflatable wasn’t meant to haul three men and the heavy load of antlers. We almost capsized getting back to the Augusta D. But somehow, some way, we stayed afloat, beating our way through the wind and waves.

The weather was severe by now. In good weather, the trip back to Umnak would take an hour or so. Our captain was staying close to the shoreline of this secluded volcanic island. With the mountains blocking the wind, the waters were fairly manageable. We were slowly making headway, but we were cold, wet and miserable. And now it was dark. As we approached the cove in Nikolai Bay and moved past the protection of the mountains, the gale force winds hit us hard. There was no way the captain could navigate the rough waves and high winds to reach the village.” He radioed ahead and was advised “You have to – somehow – submarine your way through the waves” Village residents, (there were 32), drove down to the beach and throned their car headlines on to try to guide the boat.

“We made another attempt to punch through the breakwaters, but again the waves again the wave tossed us hard backward. On the third attempt, we were all thrown to the floor and almost capsized. If that happened, we were all dead. Audrey urged the captain not to try that again. He agreed. We just didn’t have enough power to bust into the safety of the cove. He suggested we head for Anangula Island where we’d anchor on the leeward side and wait out the storm. At least we had a plan. Instead of fighting an angry sea, we’d motor with the wind and ride the waves to reach safe harbor. But we underestimated the power of the growing squall. We blew right past the little island. Our only choice now was to drift with the wind and the current.”

The captain was reluctant to call the Coast Guard because he’d have to agree to abandon the ship. “But the storm was escalating: dying at sea was becoming a prospect and I think he knew it.” So, he finally gave in. But the Coast Guard was busy that night and it would take hours for them to send a helicopter out. “As the darkness enveloped us, the winds really started howling and every wave seemed bigger than the last. Somewhere cresting over us and we were being thrown to the floor. The Augusta D was being tossed like a cork. Our engines were operational, but we didn’t have enough power to control our course. All the captain could do was attempt to point the bow through the waves at an angle and hope the waves didn’t completely swamp us as we rose and fell…I felt like hypothermia was setting in. I’d been soaked to the bone three times that day. The frigid air and biting wind made me feel like I was turning blue.”

They maintained radio contact with Umnak until the voice on the other end said, “It looks like, the way you’re tracking, we’re going to lose radio contact.” That meant that “we were drifting farther and farther away from the islands. We were tracking toward Russia. If we did lose touch, no one would know where to search for us.” Scott, [The voice on the other end], “primed us on what to do if we ended up in the water…You guys should start thinking about getting into your survival gear. If you end up in the water, stay together, lock arms and turn on the locator lights on the suits.” We were shoulder-to-shoulder inside the small cabin. If the boat had capsized, no survival suit was going to keep us alive.”

They managed to stay afloat through a night of pounding waves. The storm finally dies down in mid-morning. A C-130 prop plane appeared and made radio contact. “Help is on its way. A helicopter rescue team be here in an hour or two.” They were told to “clear the aft deck and lower our antennae. Next he ticked off what we could bring (ourselves) and what we couldn’t (everything else). We’d have to leave our camera equipment, gear, rifles – you name it.” [I guess that would include the caribou head.] “But I did manage to stuff the two Betacam tapes from our Umnak expedition into my survival suit.”

The promised helicopter showed up by noon. A Coast Guard swimmer was teeing up to drop into the boat and help us get into the basket that would lift us, one by one, into the helicopter. The wind was still whipping and the boat was bobbing all over the place. As the swimmer came down the line, and was swinging back and forth above the boat, I ran out to the deck to try and grab him. “Get back!” he yelled. I went back into the cabin and watched as he kept swinging like a pendulum. With the boat rocking back and forth, he was trying to time his movement with our motion. When he was low enough and directly over us, he released his harness. He dropped about 10 feet and bounced when he hit the deck. He jumped up, looked at me and asked, “How are you doing?” I said “How am I doing? How are you doing?”
The swimmer “slapped a locator light on the side of the boat in reply and asked, “Who’s first?”

He got them all into the helicopter. “Now with no captain at the helm to steady the boat, the helicopter hoist operator had a hellava time dropping the rescue cable into our swimmer’s arms.” He offered to “jump into the rough sea to make it easier. But she [the helicopter pilot] insisted on one more attempt and finally reeled him up. As we flew toward civilization, I watched the Augusta D and the beacon that tracked its location, disappear. For 17 nerve-racking hours, we’d ridden out the storm.“ The swimmer got a football out of a bag and asked Larry to autograph it, which he did. “Thanks for hauling my ass out of the Bering Sea, Larry Csonka”.

(If you think Larry had a rough day, how about the caribou?)


One more item before going back to reading the book:

Larry first broke his nose when he was kicked by a cow at age 11. “I bled for my nose a little but didn’t think much of it. Yet from then on, I got most of my air though my mouth.”

In the second regular season game in 1971, the Dolphins were playing the Bills and Larry go hit in the face by a flying elbow and broke it again. “The karate chop moved my nose to the right side. When I ran to the sidelines, Dr. Virgin looked at it and said, “This is going to hurt”. While our trainer, Bob Lundy, held my head, Dr. Virgin grabbed my nose with his hands and pulled my septum straight. Then he produced two stainless steel rods. “This is going to hurt, too”, he said as he shoved them up my nose. I heard a crunch as the rods opened my nasal passages. When he pulled them out, it felt like my brain was attached to the rods. The blood started flowing. Next, he soaked a wad of gauze with something medicinal and stuffed it up my nose. It stopped the bleeding and it deadened the pain a bit, too. I went back into the game.

In 1984, he finally went to an ear, nose and throat man. After examining the X-rays “Your nose is a wreck” Turns out my nasal passages were almost completely blocked. I had 10% airflow on one side, 15% on the other. “How did you breathe wearing a mouthpiece?“ Truth is, I always cut the sides off my mouthpieces so I could get air into my lungs. The ENT operated. He lifted my nose off my face, bored out the nasal passages and put my nose back into place. After six weeks of recovery, I took my first unobstructed breath through my nose since 1957.”

It's not easy being Larry Csonka.

 

[SWC75]

 

[SU68]

I didn't make his book, but I'm sure that I am the only one on this site who got knocked on his a$$ by Larry. We were Frosh living on Booth 1. A group of us would go across Comstock to the lawn at Thornden Park. In one of my more stupid thoughts in life, I decided to stop him when he had the ball. Needless to say, I saw stars for a while. lol

 

[SWC75]

I didn't make his book, but I'm sure that I am the only one on this site who got knocked on his a$$ by Larry. We were Frosh living on Booth 1. A group of us would go across Comstock to the lawn at Thornden Park. In one of my more stupid thoughts in life, I decided to stop him when he had the ball. Needless to say, I saw stars for a while. lol

You're in good company. Rick Dean, the 6-6 230 center on the basketball team, who had been an all-state DE in high school, decided to try out for the football team. He got hit by Larry and wound up flat on his back, 8 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Larry pulled him up, introduced himself and inquired as to his health, (a classy thing to do). Rick pulled off his jersey, took off his pads and walked off the field, saying he was going back to basketball.

 

[newmexicuse]

I was a frosh in 1966. Floyd was the superstar big name back. i still remember coming home to visit friends and family that first Thanksgiving. Everybody who followed college football was eager to ask me if Floyd was really as good as his reputation.

I, of course, said that Floyd was that good or even better, but then when I added that he was only our second best back they thought I was either joking or just flat out crazy. Larry was that good and proved me right over time, taking absolutely nothing away from Floyd.

 

[SWC75]

I was a frosh in 1966. Floyd was the superstar big name back. i still remember coming home to visit friends and family that first Thanksgiving. Everybody who followed college football was eager to ask me if Floyd was really as good as his reputation.

I, of course, said that Floyd was that good or even better, but then when I added that he was only our second best back they thought I was either joking or just flat out crazy. Larry was that good and proved me right over time, taking absolutely nothing away from Floyd.

They made a fantastic tandem and I continue to wonder why nobody does that anymore. Have the big guy get the tough yards inside and draw defenders in toward him. Have the fast, elusive guy run or catch passes wide. The defense doesn't know who's going to get the ball. You can fake to one and give it to the other. You could add in a QB who can run draws and still have two wideouts and a big tight end who can catch passes over the middle. You can protect the QB or pull the FB on third and long to get an extra receiver. It's great to have 4-5 receivers but how many quarterbacks have the time to go through that many progressions?

 

[Toga]

I didn't make his book, but I'm sure that I am the only one on this site who got knocked on his a$$ by Larry. We were Frosh living on Booth 1. A group of us would go across Comstock to the lawn at Thornden Park. In one of my more stupid thoughts in life, I decided to stop him when he had the ball. Needless to say, I saw stars for a while. lol

Are you still in concussion protocol?

 

[AZOrange]

They made a fantastic tandem and I continue to wonder why nobody does that anymore. Have the big guy get the tough yards inside and draw defenders in toward him. Have the fast, elusive guy run or catch passes wide. The defense doesn't know who's going to get the ball. You can fake to one and give it to the other. You could add in a QB who can run draws and still have two wideouts and a big tight end who can catch passes over the middle. You can protect the QB or pull the FB on third and long to get an extra receiver. It's great to have 4-5 receivers but how many quarterbacks have the time to go through that many progressions?

I mean the 49ers run variations of it today

 

[JustPherU]

Happy Birthday to the Zonk!
Favorite player of all time