>Date:    Mon, 11 May 1998 18:39:43 -0400
>From:    Alan Gettleman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: COA Convention
>
>Lynn Scheu wrote:
>>
>  Great buys on the Silent Auction tables!
>> (Did anyone EVER figure out what happened to that hardhat of our old friend
>> Walter Sage that was auctioned in Texas?) I am going to miss a lot of that!
>
>Lynn neglected to say what she did at a COA auction that caused Walter
>to end up with the hardhat in the first place!
>
 
Ah, Alan, thereby hangs a tale! (You all, Alan neglected to say that he too
was involved in the plot. That's how he knows so much.) Our old shell buddy
Walter Sage was always one for a joke, and was a perfect butt for them
because he laughed so heartily at himself, so he had many played on him. A
grand practical "Walter joke" was becoming customary at each COA convention
and I was usually in the thick of this plotting, being a longtime friend of
Walter, dating back to his Louisville Days, and being blessed with a
puerile sense of humor. (And you'll remember, I told you COA Conventions
were one big shelly houseparty!)
 
It all happened one afternoon toward the end of the Silent Auction at the
Panama City Convention, so ably chaired by Linda and Jim Brunner, and not
during the Corpus Christi Convention at all -- My goodness! How my memory
does appear to be failing! Corpus Christi was the Year of the Pennies,
another Walter Sage tale for another day. On this fateful day Alan and I
were on the loose, and together, and that appears to be an ominous
combination.  We were innocently browsing the
full-to-sliding-off-onto-the-floor tables of offerings, bidding here,
checking there, clucking over prices at another item, when I spotted a hard
hat on one of the tables. I wondered what it was doing there and on closer
inspection, I saw that it was labeled as Walter Sage's Hard Hat, worn
during a shelling trip to one of the fossil pits. (There's my obligatory
shell mention, right?)
 
Now someone may have thought this was memorabilia of the Conchological
Great (Walter was, for those of you who never knew him, virtually Mr. COA.
He was longtime treasurer, advertising manager for American Conchologist,
unofficial COA ambassador, letter writer extraordinaire, shell show judge,
and everyone's favorite houseguest! All in addition to being Collections
Manager and Senior Research Assistant at the American Museum of Natural
History). But for his old friend, Lynn Scheu, whose kids he had baby-sat
for, this was just too tempting. Walter Sage's Hard Hat! What a hoot!
 
I was thinking at first of teasing him about it, but saw him nowhere. What
I did see was Alan, another old friend from the Louisville Days. I called
him over, and his reaction was similar to mine.  Delicious!! What could we
do? What should we do?  Walter would certainly be shamed if this eminently
collectible chapeau did not bring a good price! And nobody had yet bid on
this obscure treasure! We'd help him out! We'd see to it! We decided that
we should bid the protective headgear up in Walter's name.
 
Oops! We'd have to know his bidder's number to do that. At first we were
stymied, but then we dragged a convention official, also an old friend of
Walter's (nameless here to avoid staining her spotless reputation), just
barely kicking and screaming, into our plot. The Mystery Person obtained
for us the magic number from the registration records and we were in!
 
Alan and I bid the hard hat up and up, utterly losing control in our glee,
and I think the hat went as high as $20, quite a good sum for a table
auction goodie.  Then we settled back to wait for the end of the Silent
Auction and the trap to spring. It's customary to collect all your hard-won
items from the Auction Committee and pay up at the end of the Silent
Auction session, and since Walter always bid on, and won, a lot of stuff --
gifts for friends, items he thought should go for a higher price, etc. --
he wouldn't be amazed at his final tally. Looking inside his winnings bag,
which would be suspiciously bulky, would spring the joke, and we wanted to
be around to see Walter's face when he found his Big Purchase. But the joke
was on us, this time!
 
Walter didn't come, and he didn't come, and we, obligated elsewhere and
greatly disappointed, had to leave. But we elicited from other observers
that when Walter saw the hat, and saw what he had "bid," he said something
unrepeatable about "that blankety-blank hard hat," jerked out his bid slip
and examined it, and quite literally THREW the highly esteemed headgear
across the room, taking his other purchases and bustling away in a huff.
Word also had it that we were in the clear, that he loudly blamed Kevan
Sunderland for the prank, Kevan who was, for perhaps the first time in his
life, innocent of a practical joke! (Sorry you missed it, Kevan, but you
were busy elsewhere!)
 
Alan and I had visions of getting the hard hat and pulling some other stunt
with it, but it had vanished, never to be found again. And it has never
come to light in the years since. Ah, how we miss Walter, since his
untimely death in July 1995! He was a very dear friend, both to us and to
legions of other conchologists and malacologists. And I, for one, often
suspect that he, from his assuredly sainted position on high, is playing a
few heavenly jokes of his own on some of us. Walter -- we know you're
listening! -- WHERE IS THAT HARD HAT?????
 
Lynn Scheu