Tom Tales: Crazy Joe DiVola and the Flying Toilet

Names and certain identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, and, in this particular case, probably me.

This story starts more than twenty years ago, when I bought a little Trinity house in a Philadelphia neighborhood.

It was about 900 square feet, two bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, and calling it a fixer-upper would have been generous. The place needed a gut job from the beginning.

But I was in my early thirties. I bought it, moved in and basically lived in a habitable shell while I figured everything else out.

And next door lived a guy we're going to call Crazy Joe DiVola.

I didn't call him that then.

That came later.

Meeting Crazy Joe

Joe lived with his parents. He was always around, and he spent an extraordinary amount of time sitting on the front step.

I was an appraiser, so I was constantly coming and going. I also had a lot of friends in the neighborhood, and my house became one of the places everybody would meet before we'd head out to the local bars.

Eventually Joe became part of the scenery.

I'd sit on the stoop and talk to him. Sometimes he'd come over. Sometimes he'd hang around with the rest of us.

For years, everything was fine.

There were clues, though.

Joe was a die-hard Eagles fan. And I don't mean he owned a jersey and watched the games on Sunday.

From what I was told, Joe was one of those guys at Eagles games who would get everybody fired up and start chants.

He wasn't sitting quietly watching the game.

He was part of the show.

One day I was outside talking to his father when Joe came walking out of the house on his way to an Eagles game.

He had his Eagles gear on, but that wasn't the part that got me.

Joe always had a shaved head, from the time I first met him.

And for the Eagles game, he had painted his entire shaved head green.

The whole thing.

Just one big green head.

I looked at him and said:

"Joe, you're crazy."

Then I looked over at his father.

His dad didn't say a word.

He just gave me this evil stare.

I knew immediately that his father did not appreciate what I'd just said.

Okay.

Message received.

I didn't say it again.

At least not in front of his father.

The House

Years later, I was ready to move.

I bought another house nearby. It was bigger and a lot more habitable than the Trinity.

I decided I'd finally gut the old house, renovate it properly and turn it into a rental.

So I made my friends an offer.

Help me gut the house, and I'll pay for our trip to Vegas.

Deal.

A bunch of us attacked the place, including Joe. We ripped just about everything out.

For the demolition debris, we had one of those dumpster trucks pull up alongside the house. It had an open-top dumpster container on the back, and by this point it was already about three-quarters full.

The truck was sitting practically underneath my second-floor bedroom window.

At some point, Joe and I were standing up there holding an old toilet.

This was an old Philadelphia house.

That toilet had been there a long time.

And it was heavy.

We looked out the window.

We looked down at the truck.

The open dumpster was right there.

Why carry this thing down a narrow Philadelphia staircase when we could just send it out the window and land it right on top of everything already in the truck?

This seemed completely reasonable at the time.

The truck driver wasn't so sure.

But Joe and I were.

We figured we could do it.

So we lifted the toilet onto the windowsill and launched it.

And for approximately one glorious second, we were geniuses.

The toilet landed perfectly on top of the debris in the dumpster truck.

I mean perfectly.

We nailed it.

Except the toilet didn't stop.

It started rolling across the top of the load.

And then it kept rolling.

Right up and over the other side of the truck.

There happened to be a parked car there.

BOOM.

The toilet landed right on the back of the car.

Huge dent.

The toilet was ceramic, so it shattered.

And remember, this was a toilet from an old Philadelphia house.

A toilet that had experienced many, many years of service.

Let's just say the contents of that old toilet ended up all over this woman's car.

Joe and I looked at each other.

Then we ran downstairs.

"I Think That's Her Car"

Joe knew practically everybody on the street because he'd spent years sitting outside watching the neighborhood.

It was a quiet little one-way street. There wasn't much traffic. Joe sat out there enough that he knew who belonged to what.

He looked at the car.

"Yeah, I think it's the girl down there."

Wonderful.

So we walked down the street and knocked on her door.

She came outside with her boyfriend.

I told her:

"We dropped something on your car. You probably need to come take a look at it."

I was also trying to tell her that I was going to take care of it.

Then she saw the car.

She went ballistic.

"What am I going to do? How am I going to pay for this?"

"I'm going to pay for it."

She wasn't hearing that part.

Fortunately, her boyfriend was a good dude.

He finally stopped her and said:

"He said he's going to pay for it."

She stopped.

"What?"

"I'm paying for it. Tell me what shop you want to use. Have them call me. I'll take care of it."

And that's exactly what happened.

$2,300 later, the Flying Toilet Incident was behind us.

Or so I thought.

What About Vegas?

Now remember, the original deal with my friends was simple:

Help me gut the house, and I'll pay for a trip to Vegas.

We hadn't taken the trip yet. If I remember correctly, we were waiting until the weather got warmer.

And Joe started getting on me about it.

He wanted his money.

At some point, rather than keep going back and forth with him, I went down to the house and gave Joe a check.

I think it was for around $800, which was roughly what it was going to cost me per person to take everybody to Vegas back then.

And look, for helping gut a little house over a weekend, $800 wasn't exactly bad money.

At least I didn't think so.

There were four or five of us involved, and the whole idea from the beginning had been that I'd take everybody to Vegas instead of paying them individually.

And we eventually did go to Vegas.

Crazy Joe DiVola didn't.

Joe got his check instead.

Looking back, that was another point where things between Joe and me were starting to go sideways.

He'd helped gut the house. He'd gotten paid for it.

But pretty soon, apparently even that wasn't enough.

Because next Joe decided he wanted something considerably more valuable than a trip to Vegas.

He wanted my house.

Enter Butt Property Management

The renovation itself was handled by a company we're going to call Butt Property Management.

That is definitely not their real name.

And remember Butt Property Management, because Butt is going to appear in some future Tom Tales.

Butt was a successful guy. He owned bars, managed properties, did renovation work and had a lot going on.

And I have to give credit where it's due.

For what the renovation cost me, Butt Property Management did a great job on that house.

The plan was simple.

Renovate it.

Rent it.

Keep it as an investment property.

Joe apparently had another plan.

"You're Giving Me Your House"

Joe had helped us gut the place. He lived next door. He watched the renovation happen.

And somewhere along the way, Joe apparently decided that meant he was entitled to my house.

Not that he wanted to buy it.

Not that he wanted to make me an offer.

He wanted the house.

He basically got in my face and told me:

"Yo, you're giving me your house."

"Dude, I'm not giving you my house."

"Yeah, you are."

"No. I'm not. I renovated it so I can rent it."

But Joe kept insisting he was taking it.

And that's when everything changed.

Now I had a newly renovated rental property sitting immediately next door to a guy who was telling me he was going to take my house from me.

When I wouldn't let him, Joe turned against me.

Apparently, I Was Being Recorded

Butt Property Management took over managing the rental.

So Butt was regularly at the property because he was managing it for me.

And who was usually sitting right next door on the front step?

Crazy Joe DiVola.

This was during the period when Joe was trying to cause problems for me because I wouldn't let him take the house.

One day Butt was at the property when Joe approached him.

"Dude, don't trust Tom. All he does is bad-mouth you."

Then Joe started telling Butt all this stuff I had supposedly said about him.

Butt listened.

Then Joe said:

"I got him on tape."

Butt looked at him.

"You got him what?"

"I got him on tape."

Butt told him:

"Go get it."

And Joe actually went and got it.

Apparently Joe had recorded me at some point when we'd been drinking.

I didn't even know he'd done it.

Joe played the recording for Butt, apparently trying to prove all these things I'd supposedly been saying about him.

There was one problem.

Butt couldn't understand what the hell I was saying.

When Butt told me the story later, he said:

"Dude, you sounded like you were drinking. I couldn't even understand what you were saying."

The recording quality was terrible. I was drinking. Whatever Joe thought he had on that tape, Butt wasn't hearing it.

Eventually Butt basically told him:

"Just forget it."

And walked away.

Later, Butt told me what had happened.

Then he gave me some advice.

"Dude, if I were you, I would just never talk to him again."

At that point, that sounded like pretty good advice.

Unfortunately, Crazy Joe wasn't finished.

Big Pimpin'

By this point, Butt Property Management had gotten the house rented and I had tenants living there.

Then came the voicemail.

I was working from home doing appraisal work when Joe called.

I missed the call.

Later, I listened to the message.

Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'" was playing in the background.

And then I hear:

"You F–ked with the wrong one, Tom. You F–ked with the wrong one."

At this point, this wasn't funny to me anymore.

Joe lived immediately next door to my rental property, and now I had tenants living in there.

I'm thinking:

Is he going to damage my property?

Is he going to mess with my tenants?

What's this guy going to do?

Then there was another one.

This time, Joe texted me.

I don't remember exactly what the message said, so I'm not going to pretend I do. But I remember it was threatening enough that I reacted immediately.

I was already in my car, leaving to go do an appraisal, when the text came in.

I read it and thought about my house sitting right next door to him. I thought about my tenants. I thought about what this guy might do.

That was it.

These were Philadelphia one-way streets, so I circled around the block and headed straight for Joe's house.

I was probably at his front door within three minutes of getting that text.

I got out of the car, went up to the house and started pounding on the door.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

"Joe! Better come out, Joe!"

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

"You're not taking my house, Joe!"

There was music playing inside.

His parents were at work.

Then suddenly the music stopped.

Everything got quiet.

Joe didn't answer the door.

I knew he was in there.

And Joe knew I was standing right outside his door.

But after sending me that text, Crazy Joe DiVola wasn't coming out.

He never opened the door.

After that, the house remained a rental and life went on.

Until the sidewalk.

The Pipe

A year or two into renting the property, I was out doing an appraisal when my phone rang.

I was actually inside somebody's house doing the inspection when I answered.

It was Joe's dad.

And I liked Joe's dad. He was a nice guy. I never had a problem with him.

"Yeah, Tom, your pipe broke."

"What?"

Apparently, they were having the sidewalk replaced in front of their house.

The crew was out there breaking up the old concrete with one of those big jackhammers, and while they were tearing up the sidewalk, they hit the water supply line going into my rental property.

They broke my pipe.

Then Joe's dad handed the phone to the concrete contractor.

Now I'm talking to this Philly concrete guy.

"Yeah, yeah, buddy. We busted your pipe."

Then he starts explaining that they can reconnect it right now, before they pour the new concrete.

And almost immediately, we're talking money.

I don't remember exactly how he initially broke down the cost because he was also telling me they might have to dig deeper to see exactly what they were dealing with.

But the number being thrown around was something like $2,100.

He's basically asking me:

"You want me to do it? I can do it right now."

I'm standing inside somebody else's house trying to do an appraisal, thinking:

What the hell are you talking about?

You just told me you broke the water line going into my rental property, and now you're asking me if I want to pay you to fix it?

"Dude, don't do anything."

I hung up and called Butt Property Management.

Butt Property Management was managing the rental for me, so I told Butt what was going on and asked him to get over there.

Butt went over and dealt with the situation.

Afterward, he basically told me:

"Yeah, dude, Tommy, you're gonna have to pay. You're gonna have to pay to get it fixed."

I still couldn't believe it.

The next day, I called the concrete contractor myself.

"Yo, buddy. You broke my pipe, and now you're telling me I gotta pay to get the pipe you broke fixed? Are you kidding me?"

But I wasn't hiring that guy to fix it.

As I remember it, Butt Property Management handled getting the water line repaired.

Either way, I ended up paying about $2,100 to get my water line back in service after somebody else broke it.

The line got repaired.

The water came back on.

The sidewalk got poured.

And that was the end of my dealings with that concrete contractor.

In fact, when I eventually had sidewalk work done at my own place, I made sure I stayed away from him.

Let's just say concrete contractors would eventually give me material for another story.

There's Crazy Joe DiVola

Years passed.

Before I moved to Florida, I remember seeing Joe one day riding down the street in Philadelphia.

Of course, he was wearing an Eagles jersey.

But what really got me was what he was riding.

It was this tiny little motorized bike—something like a little moped or mini-bike.

And Joe was a big guy.

He was way bigger than the bike.

He should have never been on that thing.

I just watched him riding down the street thinking:

There's Crazy Joe DiVola.

And there he went.

Of Course They Found Joe

Then I moved to Florida.

But Philadelphia is still my old hood.

Those are still my peeps.

So I still pay attention to what's going on up there, especially with the Eagles.

Years later, after a tough Eagles loss, I'm scrolling through social media—I think it was Twitter—and I see one of those videos where somebody is interviewing Eagles fans after the game.

It looked freezing up there.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in Florida.

And suddenly I'm looking at the guy being interviewed.

I'm thinking:

No way.

There he is.

Crazy Joe DiVola.

After all those years.

And the best part?

His head was painted green.

Just like all those years earlier when he walked out of his parents' house on his way to an Eagles game.

I don't remember exactly what Joe said during the interview, and I'm not going to pretend I do. It was something along the lines of it being a tough loss, but they'd come back and win the next week—or that regardless of the loss, being an Eagles fan was still fun.

Something like that.

But what he said wasn't even the funny part to me.

The funny part was:

Of course they found Joe.

Of all the Eagles fans in Philadelphia they could have interviewed after that game...

they found Crazy Joe DiVola.

I'm sitting in Florida looking at this guy on my phone and thinking about everything that had happened.

The guy who used to sit on the front step next door.

The guy who helped me throw a toilet out of a second-floor window.

The guy who decided I should give him my house.

The guy who secretly recorded me.

The guy who left me a threatening voicemail with "Big Pimpin'" playing in the background.

And after all those years, there he was on my phone.

Head still shaved.

Head painted green.

Still cheering for the Eagles.

Some things change.

Apparently, Crazy Joe DiVola wasn't one of them.

You Can't Fix Crazy

I owned that little Trinity for about twenty years.

I lived there for several years before renovating it, turning it into a rental and keeping it as an investment property for many years after that.

It was actually a good investment property.

And after 28 years working in residential appraisal and valuation, I've seen just about every kind of residential real-estate problem you can imagine.

Bad renovations.

Broken pipes.

Strange property issues.

Questionable contractors.

And neighbors you could never possibly account for in a comparable-sales grid.

Real estate teaches you lessons.

Some cost $2,300.

Some cost $2,100.

Some involve throwing a toilet out of a second-story window.

And some show up years later on your phone, still cheering for the Eagles in freezing Philadelphia with their head painted green while you're sitting in Florida.

But the biggest lesson I took away from that little Trinity didn't come from an appraisal textbook:

You can renovate a house.

You can replace the plumbing.

You can repair the car.

But you can't fix crazy.

— Tom