Yeah, It's 'Walrus'

(Reading Time @ 90 Seconds)

 

As a kid some sixty years ago, the term might have started a fight.

 

"Hey there, it's Walrus!"

 

I looked behind me to see if the greeting was aimed elsewhere. Nope. This stranger - about my age and size, in a similar Hawaiian shirt and silvering hair - was smiling broadly as he approached during the wedding rehearsal function. He stuck out his hand and in that brief moment I could not make a connection. Friendly, but unfamiliar.

 

Now "Walrus" was an old grade school moniker playing on my last name that always sparked my anger. Had this been in my home state of Iowa, where I know everybody, the term might have made sense, but we were in the steamy vineyards of Lodi, CA for this social event.

 

"Read it in 'Walkin' Joe,'" he said.

 

"You're Denny Waller, nicknamed Walrus, right? Great book."

 

Will, the father of the groom and a lawyer, had much to say about our similar childhoods. He was amazed at our common bicycle gang adventures and mischief - his in California and mine in Iowa. His son Mike had given him my memoir.

 

"That could have taken place right here amid all the acres of peaches when I was a kid. They hired hundreds of itinerant workers like Walkin' Joe - right off the railcars. Put them in shacks near the orchards. Rough, but hard working fellows. One of the guys I remember was supposed to be a convicted murderer. I was fascinated by him."

 

He both laughed and winced at my book's tales - many matching his own.  The mutual history fostered an immediate and warm bond and Will said he'd passed the book on to a friend because he was sure it would interest anyone growing up in the Fifties and Sixties.

 

It was one of those pleasantries of reminiscing that grows more important as we age. Self-publishers best not bank on fame and fortune in today's complex book world, but the rewards of writing come at unexpected times. Will isn't the only one kind enough to express appreciation. 

 

I heard from Dennis, a P&G executive in Pennsylvania and Conrad, a logger in Washington not prone to crafting letters. A Catholic monk in Nebraska took time to write, as did a woman raised in an urban Jewish neighborhood. Harvey, who opens his own home to wanderers in Lewis County, WA, was most effusive. Notes have come from many states and are often former Iowans, like a woman author with a PhD in Florida, a professor in Oklahoma and the nurse in LA. And I can't count the number of phone calls, emails, texts and Facebook messages resulting from the book.

 

The memoir, "Walkin' Joe and The Midnight Marauder," is based on my hometown's Centennial year, 1954, as we grade schoolers tested the edges of the adult world. In places it is a bit raw, but judging by the response I've received personally - as well as the comments at book signings - we weren't the only mischief makers of the generation.

 

I'd like to think today's trouble-making juvies are more sensitive to the unfortunate folks who fall through the cracks of society, like Walkin' Joe.