Dirty Wally Turns 90

I am often accused of making up — or at least exaggerating — the assortment of oddball characters who populate my columns. “Nobody could possibly be that peculiar,” is the standard objection. Well, let me offer evidence to prove that everything I write is true.

Exhibit A is the one and only Dirty Wally, an old reprobate who has been hanging around cardrooms since the days of Wyatt Earp. Now, about to turn 90 in a few weeks, he is still running as strong as ever … especially running at the mouth. With his long and stringy gray hair and whiskers, his cowboy hat festooned with more emblems, badges, campaign ribbons, and decorations than Oklahoma Johnny Hale has in his entire closet, complemented by a water bottle sticking out of his back pocket, he’s still pretty much the same outlandish presence that I first encountered some 25 years ago. Not only does the old goat look the same, he acts exactly the same, as well. Once he starts talking, he is still impossible to shut up, spouting off about everything that has happened to him of late, along with supposedly inside gossip on what’s going on in every cardroom in Southern California. Nothing has changed.

Every time he sees me, he reminds me that I have been granted the honor of being the chief pallbearer at his funeral. Yeah, right. By now, all of his other appointed pallbearers have croaked, and if he thinks I’m going to get a hernia trying to lug his coffin all by myself, he’s nuts. With all of his talk about his imminent demise, I wrote his obituary in advance about 10 years ago. But as it became increasingly probable that Wally will outlive me, I decided to use that material in this column rather than let it go to waste.

I first met Wally when I was writing a poker column for a publication called Players Panorama. One of my columns offered ways to pull dirty tricks to put opponents on tilt. Wally contacted me, accused me of stealing his ideas, and talked me into interviewing him. He was the one who invented dirty tactics, he declared. For example, he said that once, when he got into a beef with an Asian player, he taunted his opponent by telling him that he shot his father out of a coconut tree during World War II. He then regaled me with tall tales of how he was the heaviest baby ever born in Chicago, how as a youngster he dealt poker for Al Capone in the back room of a barber shop, how he had won countless tournaments, how he had been married about six or eight times, always to women young enough to be his daughter (or granddaughter), how he had appeared in 100 movies under the stage name of Wally Wagner, and was on the verge of “hitting it big” until he had to go into hiding to escape all of his ex-wives’ alimony demands. One of his ex-wives, he said, was a well-known, sexy actress of the ’50s.

I dutifully wrote up what he told me, and that’s how he became famous. Even today he still proudly hands out photocopies of that story to everyone he sees.

Right after my column ran, I came across the autobiography of his movie “ex-wife.” I was surprised to find that while she candidly described every sexual encounter she had with every bellhop and cab driver she ever met, she never mentioned marrying Wally. Just must have slipped her mind, I guess. Then I did research on his notable movie career, and discovered that the only speaking part he ever had was when he played a corpse in Birth of a Nation and got to say, “I’m dead.”

For a while, Wally co-hosted a poker radio show where his bio claimed 159 tournament wins. The Card Player database badly needs updating, because it shows no wins and just five cashes in his 65-year career. Or, maybe Wally uses different names to fend off his alimony-seeking ex-wives. And while it’s true that for 35 years he’s had a vanity license plate that reads “Card Pro,” I suspect that he bribed someone at the DMV, because it’s an obvious case of false advertising.

The proudest period of Wally’s life, however, came when he served as a Marine in the war, fighting in the jungles of Guadalcanal. He frequently wears a Marines tee shirt, and on his wrists are several silver bracelets signifying confirmed kills in those battles. Unfortunately, due to his bad aim, the kills were all members of his own platoon.

Well, enough of the jokes. For all his eccentricities and despite the fact that his nonstop gab caused a hearing loss in one of my ears, and despite the fact that I discovered his Lexus was leased after he promised to leave it to me in his will, Wally has been a good friend all these years. He was the one who introduced me to June Field when she was planning to start Card Player, so to a large degree I owe him my job. And he’s provided me with enough column material to fill a book. His family alone would cover several chapters. There’s his whack-job grandfather, Filthy Willy, the last surviving member of the Confederate Army of the Civil War; his father, Smelly Kelly, a cook in World War I who tried to open a can of mustard and killed his entire regiment by opening a can of mustard gas by mistake; and his sister, Dirty Gertie, who is tied with John Bonetti for the most curse-word penalties in poker.

Wally, I must say in admiration, has never been bothered by anything I wrote about him, except for the time when I said he was a fictional character. Otherwise, he’ll take any publicity I can provide.

My most recent encounter with Dirty Wally came at the press/celebrity tournament during The Bicycle Casino’s Legends of Poker tournament. We both played in it, but don’t ask me how he talked his way in. I donated one of my acclaimed books as a donk prize to the first player knocked out … and Wally ended up winning it. He told me he suffered a bad beat, but I know that he deliberately blew off his chips to get a free book and to hear his name announced by the tournament director.

With his birthday approaching, Wally asked me to try to get a casino to throw a banquet for him, or maybe stage a roast. I did my best, but every place gave me the same answer: “Tell the old fart he’s lucky we even let him in.”

I guess that’s about it. Happy birthday, Wally. I hope I’m still around when you reach your 100th. Who knows? You might even win a tournament by then!

Max Shapiro, a lifelong poker player and former newspaper reporter with several writing awards to his credit, has been writing a humor column for Card Player ever since it was launched 20 years ago. His early columns were collected in his book, Read ’em and Laugh.