It’s A Paint-Staking Job

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I come from a long line of short painters. A few of my kin can actually paint pictures. My dad made a living as a commercial and fine artist, and my middle brother has followed suit. I cannot paint a picture that anyone would recognize. Fact is, I can’t draw flies. But I sure know how to paint a house. That is a good thing, since my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I just bought a rambling abode that will likely require something to be painted every weekend for the rest of my active life.

Man, I miss Jaìme. For more than a decade my compadre shouldered the painting load at the various houses I bought. We made an excellent painting team, Jaìme doing the paint-staking (pun intended) finish work, cutting in a wall where it abuts the ceiling with a steady hand while I handled the trim work around windows and doors. We painted and repainted six different houses over a tumultuous decade. Now he is back in Mexico reunited with his family, which is wonderful for him. But I’m here alone with a house that has more paintable surface area than anything I have ever owned.

OK, I’m not strictly alone. My BMC and our daughter were willing to help, but they are knee deep in packing, pitching and preparing for the Big Move. Unfortunately, I have nowhere near the level of competence that Jaìme displayed while painting. He used only a towel as a floor protector, moving it along while never seeming to exert any energy. He could roll and brush two coats in a bedroom — ceiling, walls, trim and baseboards — in an 8-hour shift with 30 minutes off for lunch. If I could have cloned about a half-dozen Jaìmes, I might have gone into the paint-contracting business.

My dad taught me how to paint, taught all of us boys as my mother ordered changes in colors, both inside and outside. The South Twelfth Street house was green, then yellow, then back to green, then yellow once more. With that type of experience, I painted houses through college at SFA in Nacogdoches. It was a great way to pick up extra money when not working one of the myriad jobs I held — dogcatcher, steak flipper at Bonanza, pizza delivery, sweeping up chicken feet at a processing plant, movie projectionist, janitor, bookstore co-owner, and newspaper photographer. On occasional forays back to Nac, I point to houses and tell my BMC, “I painted that house back in 1976.” I’m sure this bores her to distraction, but I can’t help myself.

So once again I’m painting furiously, 10 hours a day, eight days a week, trying to get most of the heavy lifting done before the movers arrive in a few days. Unlike Jaìme, I am unable to paint without daubing myself repeatedly. Luckily, latex paint washes off easily with soap and water. I wear the same ragged T-shirt and shorts each day, tossing them in the washing machine at night so that they’re clean each day, though more spotted with paint that indicates which room I have been painting: white for the closets, pink in Abbie’s bathroom, green in the spare bedroom. My clothes are an archaeological survey of the progress made each day on painting the house.

Music is critical to successful painting, mainly in that it helps to keep one from realizing that this type of work requires a certain level of skill and care, but is pretty darn monotonous. The hard-driving blues music of John Lee Hooker works well when using a roller on the walls or ceiling, as I dance (badly) across the wall. Jackson Browne is best suited for trim and baseboard work, maybe some Jimmy LaFave. Slow, thoughtful, singer-songwriter tunes work to keep one’s mind focused on not getting paint on the carpet.

As I paint each day, I think about the detours and potholes our lives have experienced in the past several years. My BMC and I are finally buying a house together, the intent being that this will be our home for many years. We fell in love with the park-like backyard and the solitude it provides, ample space for everyone inside, and a great neighborhood for early morning walks with Rosie the Wonder Dog. So painting this house fills me with joy and anticipation of many happy times together in this house, which will soon be our home.

This is the final trip for the U-Haul boxes, which have transported my stuff from here to Kansas to two houses in Austin, then back to Longview again, in the space of two years. I saved the boxes after each move, but not again. I plan to either sell or recycle those 150 boxes.

Lord willing, we’re staying put.

 

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