Ever since the day I bought my little house in Martinsdale, I’ve wanted to paint the garage.
Cracking, peeling paint bothers me to the core. I think it’s hereditary; Grandpa Land was a devout Catholic, a fireman and a house and church painter. He believed in paint. Paint revives the old and scarred, making all new again.
A few years back, I helped my Aunt Dot clean out the home where she’d lived with my grandparents for 50-some years.
My grandfather lived through the Great Depression, and like many folks from that era, he saved and stashed everything - bags full of bread ties and bottle caps, tobacco tins, license plates, Burma Shave jars crammed to the lid with nuts and nails and anything metal.
Of all the areas in the house, I could still feel my grandfather in that basement. Decades worth of paint brushes dangled overhead from wooden beams. My grandfather, tying strings to the handle holes, hung each one from a nail in the ceiling. Most of the brushes had bristles worn to less than a few inches long. All were carefully cleaned, the void of any paint, as if they’d never been used.
Dozens of odd jars full of liquids in varying stages of cloudy gray reminded me of a mad scientist’s workshop. My grandpa hadn’t worked down there in years, yet the air still smelled thick of lacquer, oil paint, mineral spirits.
Oily rags tossed into milk cartons and buckets packed tight with every paint stir stick he’d ever used in his life acted as mementos for every paint job he’d ever completed. I pulled a stir stick, dipped halfway up with a hard layer of bright red oil paint, from the bucket. I couldn’t help but wonder just what he’d painted so red so many years ago.
I pick through the box of brushes, trying to find one with enough life left in it to paint my garage. My grandpa would be proud, knowing I am painting my garage with some of the brushes I took down from his basement ceiling. I think about Grandpa as I pop open the lid of the can with his opener and stir the thick gray latex exterior paint he never would have used. Oil was the best back then.
I don’t have much time for daydreaming though. My window of opportunity is slamming shut. I was gone from Montana all summer, and now I am trying to catch up on every outdoor project I wanted to complete before winter hits.
A few days earlier, I scraped and primed. And now, I am up on a ladder, applying the first coat of gray. The dry wood drinks the paint as quick as I lay it down. I immediately know I’ll need to drive to Harlow for another gallon.
Ranchers, hunters, fishermen, road workers, neighbors drive past my house and see me up on the ladder. Many slow their vehicles to a crawl and yell similar versions of the same thought, “Better paint fast! Just two more days before the weather change...”
I know this, but I just couldn’t resist. That garage has been bothering me for the last year. I can be 2000 miles away and hear the paint peeling.
“Temperature’s dropping Sunday!” a voice yells from an old blue Ford pickup.
“I gotta garage that’s been asking for a fresh coat the last 10 years,” an old man wearing hunter’s orange, riding on an ATV tells me. “I’m so old, I don’t have the energy to procrastinate.”
It’s still plenty warm to paint, but the wind is picking up. My dogs are napping at the foot of the ladder, sprawled out in unusually green grass.
I lift my paint brush and I’m slammed by the first 20 mph gust. The wind blows the paint straight off my brush and right across my face. I blink and spit. I wipe my face off with a rag, thankful I am not using oils, and proceed.
The wind whips and lifts and twists at random times. I try, but can’t predict when it will hit. I attempt to shield my brush from the gusts as I work from the can to the wall, but the wind blows where it wants to - everywhere.
My vest and jeans are sprayed with paint. I don’t bother wiping my face clean anymore. I look down - my dogs asleep in the sun are dotted steel gray. I’ve got to keep painting if I’m going to get it done.
And then a song comes to mind.
“The answer, my friend, is painting in the wind...”
I sing through the whine and scream of wind, “The answer is painting in the wind...”
A neighbor strolling by hollers up at me, “You wanna come over and do mine when you’re finished there?”
“Sure!” I surprise him.
“You’re only saying that cause you know it’s gonna snow this weekend.”
“Got me on that one,” I say. “I’ll do wind, but no white stuff.”
The garage is done.
I sit in my kitchen and sip hot coffee as I watch the Little Belts turn a new coat of white out my window. Grandpa’s brushes dry in the sink.
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