Time

By WR Jones

   This is the grandmother (on the mother’s side of the two Shahandeh boys shown in posts Work Ethic and Fishing.   When I gave the drawings of the boys to their mother, grandma remarked she would like to have a drawing of herself.   Her daughter, rather cruelly I thought, said she was too old.   I did this drawing of her in charcoal and sepia on watercolor paper.   I much prefer drawing older people.  Their faces are so much more interesting.

    Time has passed since this was drawn.  She is dead now.  I wonder if her daughter has this drawing.  Does it mean anything to her or was it long ago added to a land fill?

    When I look at this I’m reminded of a woman who ran me off the road when I was driving a motorcycle.   I was ready to unleash a torrent of potty mouth when she smiled at me so demurely saying she was sorry, but she did have her turn signal on.  I pointed out the signal was turned on after she turned into me.  Oh well, I just couldn’t stay mad at her, she was getting along in age.

    This, of course, starts a series of motorcycle memories that I bring up everytime I think of buying another one.   I had a motorcycle in Japan.   A Marine captain took it away from me (as he could do since I was not yet 21) claiming he had a responsibility to see I got home safe.   He actually took it away as a punishment for having a big mouth (Oh – I know – you would never believe that of me, huh?).

     Turns out, he very well may have saved me injury.   A week later my room mate lost his leg in a motocycle wreck.   I was visiting him in the ward as he came out of surgery.  The corpsman was not real sympathetic as he ask how he felt about being such an idiot as to lose his leg.   The entire ward of this navy hospital with perhaps 20 patients was all motorcycle injuries.

     I came back to civilian life where an office mate lost his leg as he was pulling his motorcycle out of his driveway.  His 3 yr old son was on the back.   I was in the hospital the day he was to lose the leg and the day his 3 yr old ran into his father’s room yelling, “daddy daddy, I was in the hospital and you didn’t even come see me.”

    Recently a gym instructor of mine broke her wrist while dirt bike riding and an office secretary damaged a thumb.

    I’m going to the cafeteria now; think I’ll walk. 

 

 

 

Dead or Alive

by Lisa

       You know, I realize it’s not always convenient to get your portrait done before you die, but if you don’t want a bad rendition of your likeness passing through the annals of time, for the love of God get it done now while you’re still toe-tappin’. I recently did a posthumous portrait. I have done a number of them now. That’s a barrel of laughs, I’m here to tell you. As a painter, any time someone in my family dies, or a friend dies, it is automatically my job to whip out that little masterpiece of the dearly beloved. I have been paid a few times, but the guilt is crushing.

        The one I did last week was for a guy who was so beloved that 800 people turned up at the services for him. The portrait I did was from a photo of him (I only had time to do a charcoal sketch–a little heads up would be nice, people). I didn’t really know the guy, and it is SO hard to capture the character of someone you don’t really know, and to do so from one single photo that frankly wasn’t at all like my memory of him the few times I met him. As it turned out, the photo was everywhere at the funeral. There was a big framed print at the reception table, it was projected on a huge screen for the audience, and it was on the playbill or whatever it’s called. Now imagine, here comes my measly little sketch, and a potential 800 people could stand there and compare it to the damn photo. I can hear it now, “Ahhh, she’s a little off on the eyebrow”, “I think his teeth should be smaller”, “She didn’t get the curls right in his hair.”

       When I work from photos to do a non-posthumous portrait, nobody gets to see those photos. Sometimes I even destroy them for the principal of the matter and for the integrity and the sanctity of the work of art itself. So here’s the deal. When I die, I don’t want any corny portrait done of me from a photo. I have a little 8 x 10 portrait I did of myself years ago from LIFE, and that will have to suffice.

Work Ethic

By W R Jones

     I’m a hard working guy.    The kind MOST women like to take care of.   For example here is a charcoal drawing featuring the brother of the drawing I had in my last post.   Their names are Jonathon and Michael Shahandeh (the name on the back of the baseball player).  That makes two drawings, are you with me here, Carol?   Two drawings is twice as much work as one drawing.

     I wasn’t always such a hard worker – wow, it just struck me how taken aback you all must be by that statement.  But it is true; in my younger years, let’s say, oh from age 0 to 64.5, I was somewhat of a slacker.

    I had a friend in high school who had a job cleaning the country club building on Mondays when the clubhouse was closed.   He convinced the club manager, who lived in a house next to the clubhouse, that he needed help cleaning since the building was large.   The manager went for it.

    In winter no one played golf (this was Iowa).  On Monday, his day off, the manager and his wife usually went to Omaha for the day.   This left my friend and I alone at the country club.   Turns out, and you do the math here, that with two of us it took twice as long to clean as when my friend worked alone.

    I remember one long day spent trying to coax the juke box in the playing White Sport Coat without requiring a nickel every damn time.    So part of the day went into different methods of putting something down the slot that would trigger the song but could then be reused.   The rest of the day we worked on getting the gum out of that slot so the machine would work at all.  So I strongly recommend against chewing gum on the edge of a nickel attached to a string.

    The clubhouse had a fully stocked bar.  This was a time and place where the bottles were privately owned.   We knew who the heavy drinkers were.  They would never remember how much was in their bottles.   There were also cigarettes and cigars aplenty.   There was a large commercial kitchen.

    One Monday, starting early (as soon as the manager drove away), we entered the kitchen, picked out some good steaks and turned on the deep fryer to make some french fries with the skin  still on the potatoes (so good).   Had a fine meal then moseyed into the bar where we selected a couple of cigars and poured ourselves a glass of bourbon.

    After a sip or two on the bourbon it came to us we had never seen a fire extinguisher work.   Taking one down from the wall we started a fire in a wastebasket that quickly grew big enough to make us uncomfortable with the situation.   We threw the waste basket out the door into a snow bank then went outside to use the extinguisher.

    At this point the manager returned early and witnessed the small blaze, damn near having a heart attack as he drove down the long road to the clubhouse.   We, being the reluctant heros, explained slowly and carefully, and repeatedly how we had saved the clubhouse from being burned down.

    The following Monday he called us into his office, had us sit down and went over the accounting:  “You boys owe me $3.25 to refill the fire extinguisher and 20 cents for cigars.”