Patchwork waver

OSVALDO PADILLA / FLORIDA WEEKLY Donald Wahl Long before every busy Lee County street corner was populated by some wannabe waving a cardboard sign promoting some-or-other business, Donald Wahl was out there dressed as a giant slice of pizza. Twelve years ago, before it was cool, he was shaking a pompon and saluting cars in the name of commerce. He is still the master street waver, so dedicated, in fact, that he wore out both of his wrists doing it. Still, he keeps at it, finding ways around his injuries. It’s what he’s done for most of his life.

Mr. Wahl is a patchwork man, riddled with scars and propped up by leg braces. “I’ve got no left eye, don’t even have a nose,” he said, lifting his shades to reveal a prosthetic peeper surrounded by an ill-fitting eyelash. He rubbed the nub in the middle of his face that passes for a proboscis. “They had to make a throat our of my intestine. They took skin off my leg, put it on my chest. Took skin off my chest, put it on my neck. Other than that, there’s nothing wrong with me.” He said it without a hint of irony.

Despite his appearance, Mr. Wahl is still the same man he was about 35 years ago when thieves poured acid on him. He said he was working the overnight shift at a convenience store on MLK Boulevard when two men robbed him at gunpoint then poured a mixture of bleach and lye on his face. He lost count of the operations during two years of treatment. But when he got out of the hospital and came back home, despite the fact that his wife had left him, Mr. Wahl got back to the business of living his life. He is friendly, talkative and giving, just like he was before his painful fight for survival.

“You get up in the morning and you can get out of bed. I’m breathing,” he said.

He hardly wastes a breath. He only gets a few hours of sleep every night then wakes up hours before sunrise to tinker or cook. He is remarried. He is known to bake pies for friends at the bowling alley on their birthdays. He makes pickles and shares them with the people he rides the bus with from North Forth Myers every day.

“I don’t sit still. I’ve got a 52-inch TV that I very seldom watch. I’m always working in the yard or doing something, I can’t sit still.”

Despite his zest for life, he has been doing a lot more sitting recently. Since the cartilage in his wrist separated from the bone, he can’t wave anymore. He has no feeling in his feet. These days, he has given up the pizza costume and is pitching for a debt resettlement company on U.S. 41. If you drive in Lee County, chances are you’ve seen him and even come to expect him and his cardboard signs.

Mr. Wahl built two elaborate billboards to compensate for his lack of mobility. There are several pompons and an American flag on each of signs. They face opposite sides of traffic. He wheels a self-made wooden cart where he keeps clips and straps and is able to put the signs away at the end of the day.

“I’m always figuring out ways to do things better.”

Contrary to his friendly disposition, talk to Mr. Wahl about the plethora of sign wavers that have popped up in recent years and he turns competitive.

“I started it. I’m the original pizza man. Some of these people with other companies, they’re out there on the corner making monkeys out of themselves.” Again, there’s no irony. “They’re jumping up and down and moving their signs side to side. That really causes a traffic hazard. I’m not. I’m just sitting here, not distracting traffic, not causing a problem.”

Under the shade of an oversize umbrella, he awaits the cool weather that promises to drift our way this fall. Occasionally, a passing car will honk and he’ll lift his arm. His wrist remains immobile, wrapped in a black support. His job is neither good nor bad, it just is, he said. It is neither hard nor easy. It is what he does. He feels no anger, but definitely no love for the men who tortured him so many years ago.

“I don’t want to find them. The man upstairs will,” he said. And he believes it is that same man upstairs who will take him only when his time comes and turn this patchwork man whole again. 