Paint The Shop Jun 2004

Hello, New Paint – I’m Headin’ to Stanwood……..And now – for something completely different – Tamers painting a building! Gary Yates’s place of business, Stanwood Tire and Muffler – was starting to look a little – shall we say, well utilized? To say that he had an a-peeling place of business, would be correct on both ways you could interpret that sentence. And like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence, in Mark Twain’s recounting of Tales of the Mississippi, Gary offered us a chance to truly express our artistic selves in exterior acrylic latex (oh baby, oh baby….).

But getting started was probably the hardest part. As life imitates art, hear the first few lines of chapter 2 of Tom Sawyer’s considering what it would take to paint the fence…..

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash, and a long handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree box discouraged…….

Well – it wasn’t quite that bad – but first thing in the morning, that sure was looking like one big-ass expanse of building to scrape and paint. However – Gary’s unfailing, determined, double-dog-dare-you-stick-to-it-tiveness has a way of shaming a person into action, and it was no time at all before I came to find my perch on the snorkel lift, scraping, hammering, nailing loose shakes, blowing loose paint chips off the cedar shake canopy, and finally laying on the first of many coats of screaming pink-drying-to-deep-red paint on what was still looking like a fairly large building. Throughout the morning, other Tamers did the same, stationing themselves around the building with ladders, buckets of paint, scrapers, brushes, rollers, and no end of teeth gritting determination to get the job completed before the rains came.

And come they did. Fortunately – it was a little past mid-afternoon when it became obvious that the tiny splishes and splashes of droplets that had been merely pestering us from lunchtime on, were now going to combine to provide sheets of water that would make further painting impossible. However – the previous coats of paint had set enough to hang on, and stay put, regardless of the increasingly steady shower that gently beat upon the freshly painted surfaces.

Yes – there were many Tamers present, keeping progress moving forwards. While the majority of Tamers were pressing onwards from the ground, there was an odd sight of a flying Moose hanging from the snorkel lift with a roller on a pole, and Terri was seen to be keeping abreast (or possibly even more than one,) of progress from the roof level.

By the end of the day, the appearance of Gary’s building had become much improved. It was still in need of a blue stripe, to complement the white field, and the red canopy over the entry – but thanks to a stalwart and hard working band of Tamers, much had been accomplished. Thanks to all who came out to paint, and thanks to Gary for his contribution in return to the Tamer’s treasury.

After lunch – the dessert of choice was Advil …….