Graham Barrett, GPC Student
Uncle
Wally, Codger from
Uncle
Wally was born 150 years too late. If Clint Eastwood is the epitome of a cowboy
or if Jack Palance has that perfect cowboy face, then
my Uncle Wally is their mean older brother. It didn’t take any imagination at
all to picture him perched atop a runaway stagecoach thundering through a
sun-baked desert canyon with his trusty old
Uncle Wally filled my first memories of him with an unforgettable fear and trepidation. He would toot the car horn loudly to announce one of his random visits to our small suburban home in East London, South Africa and the next two or three minutes were spent jostling for the back door of the house with my two brothers. The loser would have the unenviable task of opening the front door to invite him in and on the occasions that it was me, I would take a deep breath in anticipation of seeing that smiling face that was just not meant to smile. He always did though, and it looked more like the bloodlusty grin of a rampaging, axe-wielding mass murderer just before he gleefully imbedded his blood-soaked blade into your inviting forehead. The combination of wrinkled skin and blue and red veins looked like some kind of geographical map sketched on a dried piece of cow hide. Some minor scarring from the surgical removal of skin cancer on his lumpy red nose some years before only added more irregular contours to the already rugged landscape of his leathery face. The first thing Uncle Wally would do was punch me in the stomach with stiff arthritic little jabs that hurt for hours. The thought of retaliating never occurred to me because my sole objective of those first few harrowing minutes was to dodge and weave madly and hope that he tired himself out. Besides, I always figured that I would do some serious structural damage to my own fist if I ever did try to parry or punch back. The worst part was that he would keep pumping away with those seemingly endless little combinations without breaking that skewed sadistic smile on his face. Only my mother had the power to save us from the onslaught and we silently prayed for her quick and miraculous intervention. Our old black Labrador, Jester, had seen through him long before and I eventually found out that while my brothers and I were fighting to get away from the front door, Jester was being given his ritual treat of an assortment of cold cuts behind the old Ford after he had scampered around the side of the house upon hearing Uncle Wally’s “toot.” Uncle Wally only gave me one occasion to exhale in relief upon seeing him when I opened the front door. That day his smile was strangely absent and instead he greeted me with an ominous frown, a black eye and one hand wrapped in bandages and hanging from a makeshift sling. At the ripe old age of seventy-one, Uncle Wally had punched a mugger in the face before being knocked to the ground and robbed by two others. When the police arrived twenty minutes later, the unfortunate brigand was still unconscious and Uncle Wally had that same wry smile plastered all over his bleeding face.
It was years later when I started playing rugby that I finally figured out why everyone, including our dog, loved him so much and I too began to call him Wallypops. Uncle Wally loved to watch rugby, both live and on his flickering old black and white Philips TV that balanced precariously on a small coffee table with only three legs and a pile of tattered yellow National Geographic magazines holding up the fourth corner. He started to watch me play when I was nearing the end of high school and it was around that time that I first began to see through his tough facade. He always wore his immaculate navy blue blazer with the rival crests of the South African and Australian rugby teams displayed on the breast pocket. He had once traveled all the way to Australia to watch his beloved “Springboks” play against the hated “Wallabies.” At first he would vanish after my game’s conclusion like a star at daybreak but soon he began to stay longer and I would notice his bandy-legged stance and catch his single wave before he slowly trudged off to his old white Ford Escort parked under a tall pine tree in the school parking lot. Finally, after a big win against my older brother’s school, Uncle Wally stayed behind to pat me on the back and reminisce about the game. Even though he must have felt me flinch involuntarily at his touch, he placed one old liver-spotted hand on my shoulder and for the first time his smile looked different. It was no longer scary but beaming with pride. After that day he became my second coach and would call me before game day to offer advice and any other tidbits of news about the opposing team or players. For him it was all about showing that you were tough even though sometimes you didn’t actually feel that way but here he was, revealing his softer side to me for the first time. Suddenly, I was knocking on his front door to join him in front of his black and white TV on select Saturday afternoons when the “Springboks” would play. Uncle Wallypops always insisted on pouring us a Johnny Walker on the rocks, even though I never drank but hadn’t the heart to tell him. I was afraid that one day he would find out why the tired-looking potted plants in his dimly lit TV lounge were dying and why they vaguely smelled of alcohol.
It was in his own home that I saw how gentle Uncle Wallypops really was. He treated his wife of fifty three years as though she were his very own queen. Auntie Alison was five feet nothing and weighed a hundred and nothing but he was putty in her frail little hands. He would even interrupt an exciting televised game to help her find something she had misplaced, if that was her wish. His sense of humor was also boundless and once, while I was visiting, he helped Auntie Alison look for her outdated thick-rimmed spectacles when all the while they were tucked snugly on top of her head of thinning gray hair. The mischievous smile never left his face the entire time and he would glance at me and wink periodically just to make sure I was enjoying the joke as much as he was. He also showed his sentimental side in that house in a way I would never have imagined. One whole wall of the slightly musky smelling lounge was a collage of photographs, some old and faded while others colorful and new. Uncle Wally never had children of his own so he had collected photos of my mother from when she was a baby and they spanned her entire life right up to present day. She had been the first to call him Wallypops. My brothers and I were up there too and I saw pictures of myself I had never seen before that mom had mailed to him when I was a baby. He had kept track of all of us like some unseen earthly protector and finally, almost twenty years later, the real Uncle Wally was revealed to me.
Wallypops died in 1990 at the age of eighty-eight after fighting cancer in the same way I first envisioned him fighting off bad guys, with fearless bravery and a sense of pride just to be along for the ride. He left behind memories of fear, fun and an undying love for those close to him. He will always be my gentle giant, my Wallypops.
