White washing the world

White washing the fence.

Back in the day, paint and painting had some real “stick to ya stuff.” Similar to the old story of Tom Sawyer, with the picket fence, is a story of my brother (the one just younger than me) and me doing a painting job. It was a wooden three board rail fence and my parents thought that we could handle the painting of it. Yeppers. We had good intentions, but were very poorly skilled workers. It was a hot cooker of a day, so having long pants and a shirt were not happening. I was about seven and my sidekick was about six. Back in the day, paint was not as user-friendly as it is today with the easy wash-up with water variety. With the area we needed to cover, we had been issued large brushes to speed the job up some. In the country setting, the bugs, flies, and gnat's were out in full force and buzzing around our heads. Seriously, what can ya possibly do to rid yourselves of the small pests? Yeppers. As you can fully guess, that large brush was as handy as a horse’s tail. Ya can't really blame someone when those little critters, especially the biting ones, were mean, to say the least. It was turning into quite the show, so much so that even the karate kid would have been jealous. The fence was done and we were also. But what about clean up? This is where it got crazy and wild. Generally, you would have something around called paint thinner or mineral spirits. Nope. We had to improvise. Gasoline it was. Not a good idea of fun, but a gas bath was in order. Thus was the story of the white washing of the fence.