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Informationen zum Autor Dustin Rhodes with Mark Vancil Klappentext Highly personal! direct! and honest! "Cross Roads" offers readers an inside look into the lives of one of the most famous families in the history of the WWE! as told by Dustin Rhodes! first son of legendary figure Dusty Rhodes and older brother of emerging star Cody Rhodes. Photos. ONE THE FEVER I got the fever as a young boy growing up in the long shadows of a big man in Austin, Texas. The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, is my dad. As a young boy, all I knew was that my dad was gone all the time. For the most part, my mother, my sister Kristin, and I were left to fend for ourselves. I can remember being five or six years old and seeing my dad come home after a long trip. I was like any other small boy. I wanted to crawl all over my dad when he finally walked through the front door. But he was too tired and his body too sore. Back then, wrestlers worked territories, and they were gone for months at a time. He might spend two or three weeks in one place, come home, then head off to Japan for a month or more. He would take us places and we would get time with him, but it was always cut short by his schedule. My dad was naturally charismatic and very smart. I certainly didn’t understand how smart he was about his career then, but as a little boy all I wanted was more time with him. He was larger than life to me. Then, one day, he was gone for good. My parents divorced right around the time I entered first grade at a private Christian school in Austin. I didn’t get the chance to know him the way a young boy wants to know his father. I was seven years old when my parents divorced. I remember crying for hours at a time during the days, weeks, and months that followed his departure. Even though he was gone a lot before the divorce, I always knew he’d come walking into the house in his cowboy boots and hat. Divorce meant the exact opposite. My father was gone and he wasn’t ever coming back. In those days, his life was rolling along at one hundred miles an hour, and being home with family was the slowest part of his existence. As his stature grew in the business, the shadow became larger and more difficult for me. I don’t know if I have ever wanted anything as much as I wanted to leave Austin and go live with my dad. My mother married three times over the next eight years. Like everyone else, she made some bad decisions. The first two stepfathers beat the hell out of my mother. Kristin and I would crouch in the hallway just off the living room. I wasn’t old enough to do anything to them physically. We’d just sit there with our backs against the wall listening to the violence. No child should have to live through that. We watched one man after another come into her life, and each one of them did the same thing. My mother protected herself as best she could. Incredibly, she took care of us and made sure we never endured what she did. In every other way, my mom took care of us and never complained. She worked as many as three jobs and held together what little we had. She was a great mom, but sometimes stuff happens. Everybody makes bad decisions here and there. That’s life. My mom was a hairdresser and she’d put in as many hours as possible, sometimes working at two different salons. When she wasn’t doing hair, my mom cleaned houses and did whatever it took to make ends meet. I’m sure all those men beating up my mother contributed to my desire to leave, but all I remember is crying a lot. It was just one incident after another. I don’t know how we became so dysfunctional that we allowed bad people into our lives. Maybe we attracted them in some way we didn’t realize. Maybe my mother had so much guilt about one thing or another that she felt like she didn’t deserve anything better. I remember one time, my mom and second stepdad came home, and both of them were getting out of t...
