In DC, amusement was going to the National Portrait Gallery just to see Steven Colbert’s picture hanging over a water fountain next to the men’s room. In Walla Walla, anything goes. Such it is that driving by the Elks Lodge in September bestowed upon our eyeballs the following notice:
WED CHIC AND DUMP
Instructions for a short-lived marriage a la Britney Spears? What to do immediately after exchanging vows so as not to die of embarrassment after drinking too much the night before?
No. The sign is shorthand for Wednesday, Chicken and Dumplings. Such is the flavor of titillating humor in these parts.
To be sure, there are other notes of hilarity. The man who works at the muffler shop on 9th Avenue is also a folk artist, crafting human-sized and -like statues from the leftover car parts. As Drew Bledsoe of former NFL quarterbacking fame is from Walla Walla, there’s a muffler man to his honor, as well as a guy reading whilst perched on a toilet. The toilet itself is the standard porcelain contraption, and not comprised of rusty metal. And the proximity of the two is not a statement on the artist’s opinion of Bledsoe. The New York Store, which used to be downtown on Main Street and is now in “Eastgate” near the edge of town, sells western ware, an intentional misdirection known to make at least one native New Yorker burst into tears upon reading the sign. But for Walla Wallans, it’s a hoot, if not popular enough to sustain sales that can make the rent payments in the more expensive part of town.
A chiropractor in town also changes up his black-lettered sign every so often as well. These are more existential in nature, the humor only coming into play if one is already equipped with the sort of wit that would allow for a good snort after reading whatever he’s put up there.
WE’LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK SINCE YOU CAN’T SCRATCH OURS is something I would write, if I’d lost my mind and was a mad scientist chiro guy.
A colleague of Susanne’s nodded in my direction at a cocktail hour last Friday, “cocktail hour” meant in all seriousness and not as a joke, for the purposes of this blog. I greeted her with a smile.
“You’ll have to check out the Elks Lodge before Saturday,” she told me, in the same kind of tone as “Mick has some really good shit on the street right now and you better get there before it sells out.” I asked if it was camera-worthy and was assured that yes, it was.
What could surpass WED CHIC AND DUMP?
“The furries are coming to town,” said the colleague, with fake astonishment.
“It’s like that CSI episode,” I said.
The Furr Ball, as it turns out, was a fundraiser for the local Humane Society. Paintings and other art were auctioned off at the event. One of the pieces was done by the as-yet-still-small child of a friend, and sold for $300. It must have been like something by that child prodigy that nobody believed could really paint, although now that I look at it, her work sold for $24,000. That’s probably one dollar for every homeless dog and cat in the city confines.
However, this child is better, for many reasons, I’m sure, but one of those reasons is this—she made a lawn sign for my write-in campaign for city council. She also managed, in 5 or 6 places, to include the greeting “HI” to whomever paused to read the sign, and for this, I decree that I’m glad my supporters have taken a stand against mud-slinging. Such a scourge on our democracy, those negative campaigners. Let it never be said that Everett Maroon slung any mud toward his opponents, even if he did refer to them as “jackasses” a couple of blog posts ago. That was only meant for incumbents who left the 30 inches of snow in Walla Walla unplowed last winter.
So, I suppose we try to take everything with a dash or pinch of dry humor. As opposed to wet humor. Since you know, it’s a desert.
Trans/plant/portation 
Leave a Reply