Roaring read: ‘Ballad Of The Whiskey Robber’

Why you should spend time with The Chicky Panther

In 1999 while working as a magazine writer Julian Rubinstein stumbled across an item in Sports Illustrated about a Romanian hockey goalie arrested by Hungarian authorities for 26 bank heists. 

Rubinstein, author of articles for The New York Times, Rolling Stone and other notable periodicals, planned to write a magazine piece on the goalie’s extracurricular exploits. 

It’s wonderful for us that things did not go as planned for Rubinstein. 

Instead of an article he ended up with “Ballad Of The Whiskey Robber,” a roaring, laugh-out-loud account of Attila Ambrus, a comically awful professional hockey goalie who supplements his income by robbing banks — wearing suits, a crazy wig, often carrying flowers to give to female clerks, and generally doing shots of Johnny Walker before perpetrating his crimes. 

“Ballad Of The Whiskey Robber” is one of the entertaining book I’ve read.

“Rubinstein has found a story of the sort that would make even the most dry-mouthed journalist slobber: sometimes sad, often hilarious and always absurd,” reads a New York Times book review. 

Rubinstein masterfully paints the changing social landscape of 1990s Romania and Hungary. 

Ambrus, who would be called a modern-day Robin Hood, grew up under Romanian dictator Ceausescu, a leader so deluded and deceitful that he actually mailed himself forged 70th birthday cards from Queen Elizabeth and Spain’s King Carlos, then published them in newspapers. 

Attila, a teen-ager who sets a new international standard for incorrigible, is expelled from an elite private school for short-circuiting the electricity on exam day. 

He escapes Romania for Hungary and in hilarious fashion lands a job as a second- and third-string goalie with a pro hockey team. Attila soon earns one of the more super-cool nicknames one will run across, The Chicky Panther, a reference to Ambrus’ Transylvanian hometown — Csikszereda — and his catlike speed. 

“Like a cat, Attila Ambrus one would have many lives,” Rubinstein writes. 

Attila actually gets some time on the ice for the biggest professional team in Budapest. 

“Attila’s 1995-96 season as UTE’s starting goalie may be the worst performance by a goaltender in the history of hockey,” Rubinstein writes. “During one six-game stretch from Nov. 3 to Dec. 15, the Chicky Panther gave up 88 goals, twenty-three of which were deposited during a single outing.” 

At one arena, his performance was so bad that the announcer informed fans they’d need to keep score in their heads once the score reached 9. 

“The coach of the once mighty hockey club told his players that if they held their opponents to fewer than 10 goals a game they could consider it a victory,” writes Rubinstein. 

Clearly Attila needed another source of income. 

Fueled with whiskey and taking advantage of post-Communist disarray in Eastern Europe Attila commits brash, broad-daylight robberies, and stays ahead of corrupt and confused authorities and a lead detective who learned how to be a cop in large part through watching episodes of “Columbo.” 

There is so much official corruption, carpet-bagging of the economy by foreigners and poverty among natives, that Attila’s colorful crimes, which have the effect of exposing larger societal ills, turn him into a national hero. 

Attila is one of the more intriguing characters — real or imagined — that I’ve encountered in literature or journalism. 

Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Burns resides in Carroll.

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