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A LITTLE SOMETHING ABOUT "THE SOVIET NIGHT WITCHES":
As a child, Popova, born in the Ukraine, liked to dance. “But I was bored,” she said. “I wanted something different.” She got it: in 1937, at the age of 15, she joined a flying club and became a pilot, and then a flight instructor. When World War II struck, women were prohibited from being pilots to help in the war effort. “No one in the armed services wanted to give women the freedom to die,” she said decades later — until things started going badly. On Oct. 8, 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered the creation of three regiments of female pilots. Popova immediately joined one: the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. The women were hardly given good equipment: their Po-2 biplanes were built as crop-dusters, and had no guns, no radios, no radar (and the women were issued no parachutes). But each pilot was assigned a navigator with a map of Germany and a compass. It helped that their planes were slow: their top speed was slower than a Messerschmitts’ stall speed, which made the women hard to shoot down. Each of the wood and canvas planes could carry one bomb, and they flew in groups of three: two took turns drawing enemy fire so the third could deliver their bomb — and then they switched off for the next target. Each night, each team would make around eight missions — sometimes as many as 18. The Nazis hated the women, and dubbed them “Night Witches” — which the women took as a compliment. In all, the Witches flew 30,000 missions; Popova alone piloted 852. “Almost every time we had to sail through a wall of enemy fire,” Popova remembered. She was shot down multiple times, but wasn’t seriously injured and kept going back, wanting to punish the Nazis for commandeering her family home, and killing her brother. She rose to be the deputy commander of the Night Witch Regiment, and was named Hero of the Soviet Union (the USSR’s highest honor). After the war, Popova returned to work as a flight instructor, and said she would “sometimes stare into the blackness and close my eyes. I can still imagine myself as a young girl, up there in my little bomber. And I ask myself, ‘Nadia, how did you do it?’” She died in Moscow on July 8, at 91.
-------------------- Bill Riedel Riedel Sign Co., Inc. 15 Warren Street Little Ferry, N.J. 07643 billsr@riedelsignco.com Posts: 2953 | From: Little Ferry, New Jersey, USA | Registered: Feb 1999
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Thanks for asking......As you can imagine, there are so many stories about my personal experiences, of over 45 years of sign painting, that I just prefer to condense all of them and call them "my great good memories".......Glorious days.....When I had the immense opportunity and the privilege of meeting some of the best and unselfish people you'd ever want to meet in this trade of ours.....
Although I went to Butera School of Art, in Boston, almost everything that I have learned, about sign painting, I owe to those unselfish "old timers" who were, always, willing to share their knowledge with me.....I will be in debt to them forever .....I am, still in contact with one of them, in Boston....The best gold man I have ever met....He is, now, 91 years old.....Unfortunately, most of them are not with us anymore.
I worked for many shops, in different cities, as a freelancer until the end of the 1980s, when the damned Gerber IV came out. That is, precisely, when I decided to continue painting signs on my own, from then on....... Because the shops were beginning, mostly, to stick vinyl everywhere and were killing the market by starting to drop the prices of signs, just to be able to maintain themselves "competitive"...... ( Which, incidentally, did not make any sense, to me..... because, now, that they had purchased a very expensive tool, which helped them increase their production speed and, therefore, amount of signs sold....they decided to reduce the price of the product. )
Those were the days of what I like to call "The Great War of Prices".
In those days ( before Gerber IV came out )we, the sign painters, mostly, worked for a percentage of the selling price of each sign we painted.
Usually, between 35% and 50% of the selling price of the sign.......35% for all the work realized inside of the shop and 50%, mostly, for outside projects....like, for example: a sign on a wall, outside re-paint jobs, boat lettering, truck lettering, window lettering, etc......The pricing of paper signs, showcards, billboards, electric sign faces, neon patterns, etc. was handled separately, because of the so many variables involved.
But, the sign painter, in those days, had to, really, know three things: How to ( decently ) design a sign, how to ( decently ) layout a sign, ( including scale drawing work ) and how to (decently ) letter with the right paint and the proper brush or quill.....Because, every morning, when you walked into that shop, you were on your own and, typically, you were handed a bunch of job orders for hand painted signs, which you, yourself, had to design, layout on the panel and letter by yourself.....Most importantly, you had to be fast......otherwise you were of no use to the sign shop.....Many new sign painters lost their job on their first day, because they were not fast enough to make a profit for the shop owner.
Of course, in those days, the sign painter was not occupied with any other tasks, in the shop, except the ones I mentioned before.....so, you did not have to worry about carrying or cutting panels, fabricating, installing or coating backgrounds, etc.....The shops, I generally worked at, had personnel to carry out those other tasks.
I did travel a lot and lived in some fantastic cities, while having fun painting signs on almost anything....Along the way( between 1970 and 1983 ) I got to own three sign shops ( Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and San Juan, Puerto Rico ).
In 1999, while having lived in Orlando, Fla, for 9 years, I accepted an offer from Six Flags, to work in their corporate sign shop, in Oklahoma City. I worked for them for 5 years and, then, retired, when the company was sold to a new group of investors, who bought the company and moved their headquarters outside of Oklahoma......It was fun and, also, a great experience, for me, to be able to work with so many talented people in the creation and fabrication of themed signage from different periods, cartoons, murals, props, etc....for all their parks.....At that time, they owned 39 themed parks.......Seems like the new owners had to sell over 20 of those parks, to be able to rescue Six Flags from bankruptcy and, I think, they only have 16 or 17 parks, at the present time....I am not sure.
So, I decided to stay in Oklahoma and for the last 14 years I have been living in Edmond.
Oklahoma is a great place to live and the "Okies" are wonderful people.
Kent, I imagine that you, also, have many stories to tell, having been around, like I have, for quite some time, too. So, let's "hear" them.
Anyway, I can honestly say that I had a great ride and I am very grateful for it.
Yes, Kent, I am enjoying my retirement.
RD
P.S. -- Kent, just out of curiosity.....Why would a 67 year old sign painter, like you, be interested in knowing, now, which are my favorite paints or brushes?......or my experiences, against the glass, while doing splash ?
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Did most of what you spoke of and my favorite was getting out on a swing stage after tucking the bricks nicely and throwing down a great poster on a wall... I also did a lot of work in churches, murals, gold leafing walls and gilding pulpits and all. A favorite was lettering and striping antique buggies, wagons and sleighs... Oh, and decorating inside doors of elevators for a hotel chain, while stopped between floors. There are so many things a painter could do for the right shop or the right client that made the days worth while...
-------------------- Jack Wills Studio Design Works 1465 E.Hidalgo Circle Nye Beach / Newport, OR Posts: 2914 | From: Rocklin, CA. USA | Registered: Dec 1998
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-------------------- Bill'n'Annie Davidson Heathcote, NSW, Aus. my Aussie wife, a Toohey's Old, my Holden Ute, Retired from the rat race! Posts: 309 | From: Heathcote, NSW, Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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I think she'd be a hero to any pilot who had flown a bomber in WWII. I was ground forces, not a pilot in Korea but I always had a high regard for Bed Check Charlie, a "commie" who flew the same sort of plane and bombed our base repeatedly while we fired at him with small arms.
-------------------- dennis kiernan independent artist san francisco, calif, usa Posts: 907 | From: san francisco, ca usa | Registered: Feb 2010
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