Damn Good Painter

When Dad left the Friden company in early 1969, the family moved from Greenville back to Memphis.  He decided to follow his father into the house painting trade.  He probably worked with his dad and oldest brother some in the house painting trade when he was younger. Being someone who always has to do things his way, Dad never liked having a boss.  He says that he left Friden because he could see the writing on the wall for the electromechanical calculation machine, but I am also just as sure that he didn’t fit in well with the corporate world.

I can unequivocally testify that he was a damn good house painter and he was proud of it.  He always wore white dress shirts and white painter’s pants.  He had mom take his work clothes to the dry cleaner so that his shirts would have a good pressing with sharp creases and just the right amount of starch.  In his later years, when the kind of work that he did expanded to all sorts of repair/remodeling/construction, no one else on the job was allowed to do the painting.

He paid me to work as a painter helper for him part of one summer when I was thirteen. I'm going to use the word, "work" loosely and because after all I was only thirteen.  He was painting the exterior of new Perry Homes houses out in Katy off of Mason Road.  My job as a helper was setup and clean equipment, do the cut in work and scrape the excess paint off of the paint shields as he was spray painting the house.

We lived in Sharpstown near Bayland Park at the time.  We got up and left the house well before dawn.  The idea was to start work at first light.  Summers in Houston are brutal for those who work outside and you want to get work started early and be done by three or four o'clock in the afternoon.

Breakfast would consist of milk and Hostess Fruit Pies.  Dad got white milk and cherry, while I choose chocolate milk and lemon.  We would buy a couple of bags of ice for the small ice chest and just drink the water straight from the chest as it melted. Lunch would be from a food truck that Dad called the Roach Coach.

He paid me $2.00 an hour, which was probably too much.

I learned some skills that summer. I know how to clean a paint brush with just an inch of paint thinner in a bucket.  I learned how to cut in and caulk.  I climbed ladders a lot and learned to fear and respect them.  I got to walk on roofs to paint vents and around chimneys. When it rained, I learned how to walk in slippery Texas gumbo.

I also learned that I never wanted to work outside for a living, especially in Houston summers.

Painting ended up being hard to do as a full-time permanent occupation for a couple of reasons.  Unlike some trades such as plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, painting doesn’t require a license or formal training or certification to be a contractor.  Over time, the house painting trade was taken over by those willing to work for less money.  But also the fact that Dad was operating in the underground and untaxed economy meant that he couldn’t bid on any of the bigger, legitimate work that required a tax ID.

While he did all that other kind of work to survive, he considered himself first and foremost a painter.

I’ve been working on some ideas for his grave marker.  He was an atheist and not very sentimental, so all of those religious and sentimental things won’t do.  The marker will have to say something about him.  My idea right now is to add a paintbrush and bucket to the marker.  I also want to show on the marker to whom he is connected in the cemetery. Dad will be the fourth generation buried there after his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Below is the first draft of the marker.