Many years ago in Jamaica Plain, MA:
When I saw Wally this past Saturday, it had been awhile. Every time I see Wally, he says, “There’s my little photographer girl!” On Saturday, he hugged me and gave me a big kiss. (On the cheek of course.) He was wearing a blue denim cowboy hat. Mr. Blue had given it to him, he said. “It was brand new in the wrapper.”
One day, after our preliminary greeting, I asked Wally how he was doing. He said, “I’m feeling naughty.” I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t elaborate.
Wally says he works for a moving company in California. He’s the “executive field director of operations.” Which means that he’s the “troubleshooter”. When something goes wrong, he goes out into the field and chews people out. He works at the First Baptist thrift shop on Thursday and Saturday, which is where I usually see him.
Most of the time, Wally says, he gets paid to sit in his room. He tells me that he has a “teletype machine” which pages him when he is needed. He tried to describe this machine to me, but gave up and said, “Goody’s seen it.” For his job, Wally needs to sometimes travel extensively throughout the eastern seaboard. He doesn’t drive anymore, but people cart him around. Sometimes he flies “in a chopper”. Last Thanksgiving, Wally had coffee and donuts in Boston, ham and eggs in New Jersey, seafood in Bangor, Maine, and then, pheasant under glass in Boston.
In his former life, Wally was a photographer. He still has his Hasselblad, and insists that my Mamiya is every bit as good. “I’m a twin lens man myself.”
