MY BOOK……….LILAGCS B4 - 24

Friday July 27,2012

continued……..

My College Years

Buena Vista College

Editor’s Note:  It seems like I am taking a long time to get into my college years at Buena Vista but it is because I am getting such interesting responses from my classmate readers who are reminding me of experiences and memories from that period of my life and I want to include them as soon as I can.Most of them are humorous things that happened to me. Just have patience with me and I will eventually get to my years at Buena Vista.

When he read my taking up sign painting it reminded Terry Penniman of one time I was painting one of my first large signs. There was a family food market on the West edge of Sac City located roadside on highway 20. It was owned by a family with the last name of Carnine. The Carnine’s had a very large family (17 or 18 children) and lived in a large house on the main street (highway 20) in Sac city.

Mr. Carnine ask me to letter a large sign that covered the entire top front of the the building.He asked that I paint in Large block letters “CARNINE”S MARKET” and below OPEN 7AM to 9PM. That was all. I set to work positioning my ladder and laid out in light grease pen the wording.

The sign was a white background with Bright re lettering for the “CARNINE”S MARKET” and black lettering for the hours of operation.

I was up on my ladder painting with a song on my lips and feeling very happy to have receive the job.

The traffic was whizzing past behind me as I finished painting when all of a sudden I heard the screeching of tires and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car pull into the front parking lot of the store. I noticed the car license was not Iowa as a man jumped out of the car and came over to me and said,” Boy they must do a Booming business here.” Open 7 AM  to 9 AM” I made a mistake and really started laughing for I knew it was an easy correction job. Before I made the correction, however, I went and had my friend Terry come and look at it.

Terry was always teasing me about my lack of spelling things correctly.  We both had a good laugh as I took my turpentine and rubbed out the “A” and repainted a “P” like it was suppose to be. It is interesting to note that back when signs were painted instead of the computer vinyl cut letters you could make corrections much easier.

I had another spelling incident when I was lettering a pick-up truck for Youll Plumbing and Heating. I had two observers watching me letter the truck as one of them asked me what I did if I made a mistake. I said I correct it. I went on to say that usually the only time I made a mistake was when I was talking to someone and not focusing on my work.  Just as I said that I look at my painting and I had mis-spelled one of the words. My unfocused attention was the cause. I then took my turpentine and corrected it before it dried.

These were two events I remember quite vividly about my sigh lettering