The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-04-05
Joe stecher, Nebraska's
 Human Scissors, 23 Today

When it comes to grabbing free publicity, you've got to hand it to the Nebraska villagers. The outside world would have remained in utter 1gnor- apce of Wahoo if Sam Crawford hadn't been born there. St. Paul. Neb., is immortal as the home of Alexander the Great. And now comes the viii
 1age of Dodge, with less than thou sand souls all to1dB getting columns in the public prints by reason of the pos2
 session of Joe Stecher, the human scissors, whose brawny, educated legs
 have made him the marvel of the wrestling fans. Joe isn't any masked marvel, either. He doesn't have to be, He is the easiest to look at of any grappler in the game. Most European | Wrestlers seem to have taken a fatted porker as their physical model The Nebraskan is tall and big and magni-
 fcently developed, but he looks s1endz CT and sVe1te compared with many of the man-mountains who aspire to- heavyweight grappling honors.
 This is Stecher Day in Dodge, for | it is Joe's twenty-third birthday. He was born in the Nebraska village on April 5, 1893, of Bohemian parentage.
 The Bohenians have long been ardent
 wrestling fans, and, as there are many
 of them in Dodge and vicinity, Joe is
 8 local hero, and when at home he is the monarch of all he surveys. The. Dodgers wouldn't be half so proud of | a pugilistic champion as they are of
 the big, good-natured boy whose dead 1y scissors hold has made him the
 ackn nowledged king of the catch-as-
 catch-canners. f 4 A Iit'ry visitor to Dodge, could quickly accumulate the raw material
 for ten-Yo1ume de luxe deck1e-edge biography of Joe Stecher. Every citi-
 zen has 8 fund of anecdotes to relate
 about the hero. Every incident of his l boyhood has been resurrected from the
 past by Joe's admiring neighbors, and
 they are always ready to spill their stories and statiFtics on the slightest
 provocation. Joe it a, local institution.
 When he travels about the land, visit
 ing the great cities of East and South,
 North and West, his retinue is com posed almost exclusively of>Dodgers in
 good and regular standing. A less l1evel-headedk chap might give Dodge
 the cold shoulder and engage metro
 po1itan talent for his managerial and 1 training staff. But not Joe. He has
 given New York the once-over, and
 mingled in the busy life of Chicago
 Louisville, Minneapolis, Omaha, St.
 Louis and scores of other cities but
 none of them look as good to him as
 that dear old Dodge. Joe has had
 cigars and babies named after him.
 and beyond that the President him
 self can't go.
 l Joe comes of a big, old-fashioned
 family, and his brothers and sisters
 are all athletes. The champions s
 father was a pretty fair "'rassler'' in
 his young days. It is to his mother
 that Joe gives most of the credit for | his great physical development. It Twas the "eats'' she provided, he de- 1 clares, that made giant of him. Pads and fancies in diet don't appeal to Joe He eats what he wants when he wants
 it, and all he asks is that the food be | plain and wholesome. When he is at home he can depend on getting that
 sort of grub but he doesn't find it
 so easy living at hotels in the big cit
 ies His elder brother, Anton, is Joe's
 chief trainer. Anton is a pretty classy
 wrestler, and so is brother Lewis, an
 officer in Uncle Sam's navy.
 Joe is a, credit to the game. In ap- i pearance, action and speech there is
 no suggestion of the roughneck or the
 swel1head. If he assumes the crown
 of Gotch, as now seems highly prob
 able, he will be~the sort of champion
 that should bring about a big revival | in wrestling interest.