14 July 2011

Telling Wally Tales

Remember Wally? The guy who played the Mendelssohn at my wedding on the contra-bass clarinet? And who once jumped up and down on a peanut butter sandwich?

Here's a picture of him that turned up in a pile just recently - an old picture, not at all new. He'd been renovating a bathroom, and is very fond of oak furniture, so someone - possibly my mother - gave him that nice oak toilet seat for Christmas, for the new bathroom. Of course he had to wear it. It's kind of like how when you get new underpants for Christmas you wear them on your head? Well, we do, anyway.

Wally and toilet seats and my family go way back. Sometime not too long after we'd moved into our house, there was a plumbing emergency of the never-flush-tampons-again variety. There was a blockage in the sewer line, and my father thought it would be a good idea to open the clean-out plug in the cellar, at the point where the sewer line exits the house. It would have been hunky dory, except that there was three stories of sewage on the wrong side of the plug - which came pouring out when he opened it. Yeah. After a frantic phone call, Wally came up the hill wearing a WWII gas mask and carrying a camp toilet - one of those contraptions that's a toilet seat on legs with a plastic bag attached. Somewhere, I think there's a picture of Wally wearing that toilet seat.

He's good people, that Wally.

5 comments:

kathy a. said...

there are not a lot of friends one could call in that kind of sewage emergency.

i gave my sister an oak toilet seat once, along with a gallon jug of no-name-o wine. her husband at the time had an excellent wine collection, but their toilet seat definitely needed upgrading; he kept saying it was perfectly fine. i'm pretty sure those gifts weren't the reason they broke up a few years later.

flutter said...

he is freakin awesome. I love jumping up and down on a pb sandwich, hilarious

Carol Steel said...

This is a delightful tale. I met Wally just the once but found him so interesting, witty and wise. He cracked me up with his dry humor and the way he could poke fun at someone without them even realizing he was doing it. Lovely man!

S said...

Giggle.

And eww.

Elissa said...

I'll share with Wally - it will make his day!