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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, November 22, 1999
The scoop on Wally Wise
Granted, in most respects this editorial-writing gig is a dream job: the perks, the shiny limos, the groupies. Still . . . I feel a pang of regret now and then at being pretty much precluded from the fun stuff other newsies get to do. You know: the investigative stuff, the surreptitious meetings in parking garages . . .
However, even a boring, sedentary editorial writer (forgive the redundancy) may stumble across a package that turns out to be laden with dynamite.
So it has been with me. I was just sitting here, minding everybody else's business (did I mention I'm an editorial writer?) when, out of nowhere, The Question imprinted itself on my consciousness in letters of fire.
Whatever became of Wally Wise? Or, as he sometimes styled himself, Wally Wise Guy. The ambiguity is telling: Wally is Jay Gatsby in a shell. His origins are obscure, his associations cloaked in ambiguity - yet there was this charisma about him that the unanswered questions seemed only to intensify.
Wally burst onto the scene in 1994 when he was tapped to be the Talking Turtle for the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Catapulting to stardom, he preached preparedness and Sheltering in Place to local residents - particularly those close to the refineries.
For a time, he was everywhere: in the schools, at the meetings of civic groups, at high-society soirees, waving at the adoring multitudes from parade floats. But then he faded from view. Hope endured: Surely, we told one another, F. Scott Fitzgerald notwithstanding, there are second acts in the lives of American turtles.
But the wait dragged on - and then came the shocker: Suddenly, Wally's gospel of safety and common sense was being preached by . . . an insect. A bee, or a wasp, or something: There it was, on billboards and in other venues, urging us with insufferable preciousness to Bee Safe, Bee Prepared, Bee Alert, that sort of thing.
Discreet inquiries failed to produce even a hint as to what had become of Wally. Friends said he had dropped from view altogether. Finally, though, a tip came in: Wally, my informant said, was spending his time at a turtle biker bar, knocking back one Rolling Rock after another, and feeding quarters into the jukebox, playing Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life Again," over and over and . . .
It was with a certain unease that I made my way into the tavern. No question, it was a real bucket-of-blood dive. Clustered at one end of the bar were some grizzled outlaws wearing greasy denim vests bearing the legend "Born to Raise Shell."
At the other end was . . . Wally. He was gazing at nothingness, and occasionally shoveling a fistful of dried flies into his mouth from the bowl before him. Diffidently, I sidled up to him. He peered at me through reddened yes, then raised a flipper in a limp greeting: "Don't worry, kid: I'm not a snapper. I won't bite ya."
I introduced myself and explained the nature of my errand. Though his wrinkled visage remained bleak, his mood seemed to lighten a little.
I put it to him straight: "What happened, Wally? Where did it all go wrong?"
"Beats me, kid," he rasped. "It's just like with the old gunslingers: You're on top of the world for a while, but then the word gets around, and before you know it there's some . . . insect there to take you out. I used to eat insects for breakfast. Still do, come to that."
"But what about a comeback?" I insisted.
"Ain't as easy as you think," he said. "They toss me a gig at one of the schools once in a while, like throwing me a crumb. Like they're doing me some kind of big favor, y'know? But, basically . . . I'm history."
Then he nodded his head in the direction of a table in a corner in the saloon, where three youthful but obviously dispirited and dissipated turtles were gazing moodily into drinks with little paper umbrellas atop them. "You recognize them?"
I looked again, more intently. "Are those guys who I think they are?"
"That's right: the Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were huge. But look at 'em now: The only work they can get is as squeegee turtles at expressway intersections.
"It's life, kid," Wally said in tones of infinite sadness. "You don't have to be a box turtle to be a turtle in a box."
Brooks Peterson
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