Our Bi-yearly Ritual

Immortalized the House on South Pleasant in the play "The Clown Who Ran Away"

I was supposed to post this last year but, well-I did not.  This one is for William B. and Joe, my comrade and guardian in the Summers of our youth.  Enjoy!

It's been a long time and I think this summer I will try to write and post more.  After reading Kathleen

Choe's and Emmy Potter's Blogs (love them) I am inspired and feeling motivated.

The passing of time is huge in life.  Recently I was occupying my mind while painting the front porch deck, with memories of Summers past when my Brother and I had to paint the house on Pleasant Street.  We both painted that house so many times that every nook, cranny and detail was engrained in our mind.  We had to get our chores done before the afternoon sun and any baseball could be played in the backyard.  Dad usually wanted to paint that house every other year.  He painted at nights, before and after dinner, doing the windows and doors.  Dad was a real skilled artist with that angled-sash brush.  He said that painting Windows was relaxing.  Joe (my older brother) and I did the remaining parts on the house sometimes perched high above the ground on that aluminum extension ladder.  That ladder was a key purchase as we also used it to put up the exterior Christmas lights.  That house had some real tricky spots line the triangular detail above the bedrooms and third floor.  There was only about 2 feet of slightly pitched surface to sit and paint the wall and soffit-one hand on the facing and shingles and the other holding the brush.  We rigged our cans with a coat hanger bent around the handle to hook it on the gutter.  It was like a High Wire Circus act.  Both of us were glad

when that was painted.  YIKES!

We worked in the mornings when it was cooler and played baseball after lunch until we were called home for supper.  We never got compensation for our efforts-we knew that it was awesome that we got 3 meals a day, a wonderful house to live and an awesome family that was so supportive.  There were inserections, like the time Dad chose oil based paint one summer and it was a hot one.  We could hardly get that paint on the house before the darn stuff became pudding.  We added more mineral spirits to keep it viscous; I am sure it that made  the formula of the paint weaker and made it more likely to peel and bubble in the hot Missouri sun.

It was a bi-yearly ritual that I will never forget or regret, as it truly taught me the zen of painting a house.  Which flows into my work as a Set Designer.

#hydrate but not too much mineral spirits.