Interesting people in my life..
I have known some very interesting characters in my life. Most of them I met through Paul’s mother. She has a knack of finding the strangest men ever put on this Earth. I think she should be proud of it. But this posting, well this posting goes out to one of them that was around the longest. Mr. J Wall! Paul’s mother didn’t date per say, she just kind of moved them right in right away. They’d start staying almost immediately and would just become a fixture at wherever we were living.
Mr J Wall was 6′ 5″ tall and weighed in at no less than two hundred eighty five pounds. He had thick full curly hair, a big thick reddish beard and moustache. He was half Irish and half Sicilian and just a brute of man. He had a speckling of freckles across his nose and light brown eyes, at least I remember him having light brown eyes. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Mr. J Wall. He usually worse a bandana on his head, covering his thick hair. He wore Levis jeans, black tee shirts with a front pocket and flannel shirts. He had his favorite pair of black motorcycle boots and he would scrub them and polish them.
Mr. J Wall could eat a cow at each meal and have room for more. He made the most amazing spaghetti dinners and would tell the most outlandish stories. Like how you need to buy tickets to Jupiter because the Earth was going to blow up and only he could sell them to you because he knew this guy and besides he liked ya. He also needed to sell you air, fifty pounds of pressure was his favorite amount to sell. But you could not buy both the Jupiter ticket and the fifty pounds of pressure at the same time. They had to be spaced out. I loved having school friends over or parent teacher conferences with him around. I never got suspended or had a detention when he attended meetings. But in spite of all that craziness he wasn’t all bad, he also went on field trips, help with school projects and was a huge help on field day.
I can use a laugh and if there was one thing Mr. J Wall was good for, it was a laugh, just never to his face! Mr J Wall was a patient/resident/inmate at times at the Worcester State Hospital. As if you couldn’t tell with the tickets to Jupiter. For those wondering, it’s basically a psychiatric facility. When he’d stay there, he was always in the locked down ward. We’d go up to visit him on the bus and stay for a couple of hours and play some pool with the inmates/residents/patients then head back home. Back then they actually had weekend furloughs where he could leave Friday at 4pm and would have to be back Sunday at 4 pm. He’s a danger to society and himself, but heck, take him on home with ya for the weekend.
One day on the locked ward, Mr. J Wall asked if he could have permission to go downstairs and get himself a pack of cigarettes. Well they denied him permission, telling him if the cigarette machine was up on their floor he could, but where it was downstairs he couldn’t. So what did Mr. J Wall do? Why he kicked down the supposed steel locked door, went downstairs, got the cigarette machine, stuck it in the elevator and brought it upstairs to plug it in so he could get a pack of butts without breaking the rules. He got his pack of butts and a couple hours of solitary too!
Then there was the time he got himself arrested, they were coming to pick me up and his car died on the side of the road so Mr J Wall decides it’s in his best interest to start smacking other cars going by telling them he is on a mission from GOD. Picking me up is a mission from God? I think he thought he was in a Blues Brothers movies. Well of course the police came. Took eight cops to subdue him, so Paul’s mother comes over to my best friends house and we go up to bail him out a couple of hours later. We spent a lot of time at the police station bailing him out actually, or at the court house. But that’s not what this story is about, this one he comes up out of the holding area, takes 19 pennies out of his pocket, tosses them across the lobby of the police station and says, “Here’s your fucking tip.” I kid you not the cop re-arrested him right there for, get this, littering. Paul’s mother forfeited her bail because of the re-arrest and he got to spend the rest of the night in the holding cells at the Worcester PD. We laughed all the way home. You could hear him yelling at the cops all the way back to his cell, “but I’m telling ya, it’s a tiiiiiiippppppppp. “
Okay, maybe not funny to some, but these were funny to me and still are funny to me. I haven’t seen Mr. J Wall in a long time, not since he offered to give me a c-section with my son on the kitchen table. Umm yeah, I’m going to have to go with NO on that one since I’m pretty sure a Jupiter landing pilot does not make you a surgeon! Nice of him to offer though. More stories of him to follow now that I’ve introduced him. There are so many to share, like robbing the bank and the car that ran out of gas. Goodnight all and sweet dreams!
Mr J Wall was 6′ 5″ tall and weighed in at no less than two hundred eighty five pounds. He had thick full curly hair, a big thick reddish beard and moustache. He was half Irish and half Sicilian and just a brute of man. He had a speckling of freckles across his nose and light brown eyes, at least I remember him having light brown eyes. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Mr. J Wall. He usually worse a bandana on his head, covering his thick hair. He wore Levis jeans, black tee shirts with a front pocket and flannel shirts. He had his favorite pair of black motorcycle boots and he would scrub them and polish them.
Mr. J Wall could eat a cow at each meal and have room for more. He made the most amazing spaghetti dinners and would tell the most outlandish stories. Like how you need to buy tickets to Jupiter because the Earth was going to blow up and only he could sell them to you because he knew this guy and besides he liked ya. He also needed to sell you air, fifty pounds of pressure was his favorite amount to sell. But you could not buy both the Jupiter ticket and the fifty pounds of pressure at the same time. They had to be spaced out. I loved having school friends over or parent teacher conferences with him around. I never got suspended or had a detention when he attended meetings. But in spite of all that craziness he wasn’t all bad, he also went on field trips, help with school projects and was a huge help on field day.
I can use a laugh and if there was one thing Mr. J Wall was good for, it was a laugh, just never to his face! Mr J Wall was a patient/resident/inmate at times at the Worcester State Hospital. As if you couldn’t tell with the tickets to Jupiter. For those wondering, it’s basically a psychiatric facility. When he’d stay there, he was always in the locked down ward. We’d go up to visit him on the bus and stay for a couple of hours and play some pool with the inmates/residents/patients then head back home. Back then they actually had weekend furloughs where he could leave Friday at 4pm and would have to be back Sunday at 4 pm. He’s a danger to society and himself, but heck, take him on home with ya for the weekend.
One day on the locked ward, Mr. J Wall asked if he could have permission to go downstairs and get himself a pack of cigarettes. Well they denied him permission, telling him if the cigarette machine was up on their floor he could, but where it was downstairs he couldn’t. So what did Mr. J Wall do? Why he kicked down the supposed steel locked door, went downstairs, got the cigarette machine, stuck it in the elevator and brought it upstairs to plug it in so he could get a pack of butts without breaking the rules. He got his pack of butts and a couple hours of solitary too!
Then there was the time he got himself arrested, they were coming to pick me up and his car died on the side of the road so Mr J Wall decides it’s in his best interest to start smacking other cars going by telling them he is on a mission from GOD. Picking me up is a mission from God? I think he thought he was in a Blues Brothers movies. Well of course the police came. Took eight cops to subdue him, so Paul’s mother comes over to my best friends house and we go up to bail him out a couple of hours later. We spent a lot of time at the police station bailing him out actually, or at the court house. But that’s not what this story is about, this one he comes up out of the holding area, takes 19 pennies out of his pocket, tosses them across the lobby of the police station and says, “Here’s your fucking tip.” I kid you not the cop re-arrested him right there for, get this, littering. Paul’s mother forfeited her bail because of the re-arrest and he got to spend the rest of the night in the holding cells at the Worcester PD. We laughed all the way home. You could hear him yelling at the cops all the way back to his cell, “but I’m telling ya, it’s a tiiiiiiippppppppp. “
Okay, maybe not funny to some, but these were funny to me and still are funny to me. I haven’t seen Mr. J Wall in a long time, not since he offered to give me a c-section with my son on the kitchen table. Umm yeah, I’m going to have to go with NO on that one since I’m pretty sure a Jupiter landing pilot does not make you a surgeon! Nice of him to offer though. More stories of him to follow now that I’ve introduced him. There are so many to share, like robbing the bank and the car that ran out of gas. Goodnight all and sweet dreams!