Lenny had been a billboard painter, or “in the buletins”, as he put it, for several years before he bought the shop. He did ‘boards because he could get away with ‘murder’ if he had a cheap enough client. 300 yards away going 65 mph. nobody’s got their science kit out checking on the quality of the signs. I would always see the runs when I drove past one of his but I’m looking for that stuff. I’d say “I see the curtain’s down - when’s the puppet show?” He bought the sign shop because the hazard of working high is falling. He was a Klutz and fell twice so around age 40 he made a deal to stay on the ground where he could stumble around and bang his head on a post and trip on tree roots and not cause any permanent damage. He made a lot of money - not by being good but by being FAST! You’re familiar with the old “Good - Fast - Cheap - Pick 2”. Well, his list did not include “good”. Not an option. I’ve known him to complete three 14x48s in a day, and have another coated out. By 2:30 in the afternoon! All the time I knew him he talked about “getting back into bulletins”. By about 1990 he’d run the business so far into the ground he had to go get a job.
One of the stories he was willing to tell on himself was “the time I painted the wrong board”. He was supposed to go do a board that was a Vee on a corner lot, and the left and right sides were different clients. He did the wrong one and it mattered which was which so he couldn’t weasel out and just do the other board, he had to paint them both out for free to fix it. The only thing I suspected was off in this story was the claim that it had happened only once.
First he needed another truck. Before he’d used a little Toyota but this time around he was going for the big stuff and wanted a Chevy. After pricing out what he wanted, with lumber racks and such the bill on the truck was around $19,200.00 as I remember. He also needed new planks, ladders, etc. He put the shop up as collateral and got a check for the 19 from the guy he was going to be painting the boards for, (at 19% interest) who had them strung out all the way from San Diego to Boise. Well, any fool would want a gas guzzler for a high mileage job like that.
For a plank he bought a 24 footer, which nobody could lift, let alone haul up onto a catwalk all by oneself, so it became a nice, shiny $700 thing to stand on in the shop, if you needed to get about 10 inches off the ground. He made a box to keep paint in for up on the plank which fit over the sides of the plank and he could kick it along as he needed. The first day up he tripped over it, so that was out. But I’m getting ahead of myself. While he was rounding up materials for his new adventure, which was to be primarily in Utah, because he wanted to go fishing up there, artwork and orders were coming in from the outdoor ad co. and I was making patterns for them. Now that guy started calling to ask how the boards were coming along. Silly man! Thought Lenny was up in Utah painting billboards for him just because he had paid him to. It is to laugh. Ha ha.
Lenny was walking around with the check sticking half out of his shirt pocket so everybody could see it. There were about 20 patterns all ready to go by now and he hadn’t gone to buy the truck yet. When he finally did it took a week or so for them to put it together, racks, tool box, dealer prep, etc. During this time he wouldn’t answer the phone because “you know who” was calling every day. If I picked it up Mr. Big would tell me his clients in Utah were asking about their ads that they were paying for but weren’t up, yet. For a while I would tell him “He must be on his way”, but how many weeks does it take to drive a new Chevy from L.A. to St. George? Nobody else was about to pick up the phone and I quit doing it, too. That’s got to be good for business. Excuse Bob was no longer working there by this time.
After he got the truck and had it all loaded up - and get this; he put a whole cigar box full of razor blades on the truck. What does a billboard painter do with that? And this guy who couldn’t spell, and refused to use a dictionary put 3 OF THEM on his truck. And a cigar box full of pencils! He couldn’t write, he was dyslexic! Nobody could ever make out his work orders, including HIM. And since he was driving a couple thousand miles to go fishing -- no fishing pole, either.
O.K., now he’s got the truck, all rigged up, full of -- get THIS one -- quarts of One Shot Lettering enamels. To paint billboards out in the desert. The worst guy would need the best paint, and he also took all the paint from the shop. Then one day he picked up the phone. Ha! Gotcha! It was Mr. Big and Lenny said “You just caught me, I’m leaving this minute. The first board will be finished by this time tomorrow”. Four days later, (still in town) he was tired of his new toy and went over to see the Toyota dealer about ttraing it in and driving onto the lot he took the front clip off a brand new Toyota car. Since he’d paid cash for the truck he had no insurance. They both had to be fixed. It was three weeks since the day he answered the phone by mistake and told Big he was leaving “this minute” until he actually went.
He wasn’t gone two days before I got “The Call”; “I have to talk to Lenny. He painted the wrong board in St. George!” Well, a guy that’s always in as much trouble as Lenny isn’t about to leave a way of communicating with him. He never called in to the shop. He painted at least one wrong board every time he went out. Now, not all of the following events happened on one trip, but I’ll just include some of the highlights out of 20 or so trips that I was in on. He never left when he said he would. He always hung around for days with his truck loaded up before he would take off, with the phone ringing off the hook. Even after he did leave on several occasions I saw him driving around town in the truck. He wasn’t going home and he wasn’t going to Utah, either. He lived down the street from me, it was easy to check. The only way I could know for sure he was out of town was by the complaints. And he never did go fishing.
One time we got ready artwork from a bank. It said “We’re giving 110%” (of service, blah blah). It was for three boards and all he had to do was enlarge it in the projector and trace. He didn’t think that number could be right so he changed it to 10%. On all three boards. Realize, that since he wouldn’t communicate, every time he went out he screwed up and caused a bon fire in the office, and after driving all the way back down, he had to go back up there to fix the boards. His excuse for this one; “They must have given me bad art work”.
My favorite of all time was a small sign about a 3x5 or so that the billboard co. was leasing to a man up beyond Price. This makes it an expensive way to have a sign done but I guess there weren’t a lot of Letterheads in that area at the time to choose from, or he hadn’t heard of Lazy Edna. It was mounted on the billboard posts out in the boonies, and said “Morgan Pest Control”, and was on two sides. Mr. Morgan decided to forestall one side of the sign when his lease came up, and Lenny was supposed to block out one side and repaint the other. He blocked out both. Phone calls. He had to go all the way up past Price, from L.A. to fix this thing and it’s a ways to go. This town is one of these places about 300 miles from Bumf**k, Egypt that might have a population of about 2 on a hot Friday night. But he begged some more boards to do on the same trip, so he wouldn’t lose money on it. This time he spelled it “Moran Pest Control” and the phone started burning again. Mr. Morgan, this time, hisself, and it was also done on the wrong side. This time they sent him all the way up there again just for that. No $$ this trip.
He had underbid the guy that WAS doing these boards that LIVED up there and had been doing them for this co. for years, even with the expense of the new truck, equip., and travel. The first couple trips he stayed in motels at night. Somehow he’d gotten an American Express Card. You have to pay those off every month. 30 days after he started this monkey business he was in trouble with them, too, and they jerked his card. There was a letter from them every month which he dropped in the trash as a routine, unopened. “They’re begging me to take out another card”, he’d say. He was sleeping in the truck on the road, now.
One time Lenny had come down from a Utah excursion and he had Polaroid pics of all the signs he did. That’s how he got paid; no tickee - no washee. One for Mr. Big, one for his records. One of the signs he had about 30 pics of and they were all blurry, some you couldn’t make out what it was at all, just a smear of color. He picked out a couple of semi clear ones and asked us if you “could tell it was raining real hard and still read the sign?” I said “What did you do - spit on the lens so nobody could tell by the picture how it turned out”? “Well, it was raining so hard and I had to go way into this cow pasture to paint the sign, and I was sinking in the mud, couldn’t get the truck in there and had to carry all the stuff...” on and on. If you aren’t going to do something anyway - any excuse will do. A couple months later I was up in Utah, myself, looking to buy a shop in St. George, and on the way I pulled my truck over by a gas station to check my map and there right next to the road was this UGLY - I mean BUTT OOGLY - “Fugly!”, hand painted billboard right next to the fence, on the ground - and something...about...that...sign...all of a sudden I got it. It was the sign from “spit-on-the-lens”. It looked like Ngagi did it with a broom. There was a variation on cap & base line of 3 or 4 inches on two foot letters and he HAD A MIKE PATTERN for it, f’r cryin’ out loud! I make very accurate patterns. It’s professional advertising, folks!
On this same trip I was about 25 miles past Cedar City when I saw a board advertising a business “...in Cedar City, just 25 miles “. Wait a minute. Didn’t I just PASS Cedar City? Oh oh. Wrong side of the highway. Guess who?
One time his temp. gauge went way up on the way to a remote board on the way to Vegas. He had to turn off at Henderson and drive several miles along the fence to get to the board and that’s what he did, with his gauge maxed out. After the board was done the temp. was back down, of course, so - problem solved - he headed for home. He made it to Jean or Stateline, I forget which, before he decided to pack it in and get it fixed, but there was no mechanic there so he drove all the way back up to Vegas and went gambling. We’re talking 200 miles with a known temp problem. It was night by now. It was also Memorial Day Weekend, and when in the morning he took it to the Chevy dealer (the only guy open) they told him it needed a new engine. He insisted they do it right away so they told him $3600.00. He flew home, I suppose to beg some money from somewhere and flew back up to retrieve the truck after the weekend. I looked at the engine and being a pretty new truck (it was maybe a year old by now and had 20 or 30 hard K on it and had been in four wrecks) it was kinda hard to really say whether they’d put in a new one or not. It didn’t look all that fresh to me. It wasn’t running too well, either, so he took it to a local mechanic, here in Ontario, and told him what had happened. That’s the guy that called to say the only thing the dealer in Vegas ever did for $3600 was put in a thermostat. This other guy put in new plugs. I told him “That ought to be good for a couple grand”.
My favorite Lenny quote; “My eye hurts and it’s a pain in the ass”.
Posts: 1859 | From: / | Registered: Nov 1998
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Oh my freaking GOD Mike!, My sides are splitting and my eyes are watering. What a characterization. If Lenny is not a real person, please never tell me, because you have made him dispicably real in these anticdotes. Why the hell you're not a professional writer is beyond me. I love your style. You've got material here for a novel easy. Any subject, any time brother, I'll buy your books.
SONGPAINTER Original Sign Music by Sign People NOW AVAILABLE on CD and the proceeds go to Letterville's favorite charity! Click Here for Sound Clips! Posts: 1974 | From: Orleans, MA, Cape Cod, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Hey man, your being unbelievably generous with these Lenny stories, sharing them with us like you do. The readers of this BB are sure being treated to some wonderful story telling, and I for one want to thank you. The best part for me is the total beleivability of the stories. I can just picture some of those things really happening! I,ve known a few Lenny types in the past (Not as colorful as your Lenny)....they did stuff that's funny years later, but at the time they were doing it, all you wanted to do was strangle them or something, all the while shaking your head and wondering how in the world could anybody be so stupid!?!
Hope you keep 'em coming, Mike !!
-------------------- Jeff Ogden 8727 NE 68 Terr. Gainesville FL, 32609 Posts: 2138 | From: 8827 NE 68 Terr Gainesville Fl 32609 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Mike, these stories are the best! You can just imagine these scenes in your head as you read them. They remind me of a few characters I've known in this biz...
My Dad ran an auto body shop when I was growing up and there was an old local sign painter named Ernest who would come to our place and letter race cars. (watching him paint was where I first got the itch!) He was really one of those guys that had the shakes until he started pulling a stroke(really) and he could make some nice letters. He only had a few basic letter styles he would use and was real grumpy if you tried to throw something new at him or tell him to outline, shade etc..
Ernest liked the bottle and based his price on how bad he needed cash that day. He also had never learned to spell very good, so he had his wife go along with him on jobs as spell checker and backup driver.
They drove an old Cadillac around for a shop truck and once, after a little too much sauce, Ernest rolled the car and although he was only roughed up a bit, the Caddy suffered a crushed top. What did he do? Ernest drove it home and cut the top off at the windshield posts with a torch and made a "convertible" out of it! They drove that old car around loaded with brushes and paint come rain or shine for a long time after that.
You would see them in the cold, all bundled up in blankets, in this old boat with the top cut off and a 4x8 strapped on the trunk... heading out on another sign painting adventure.
posted
See - that's what makes it a good thread when other people add their own tales to it. And every area has their own character sign guy. Thanks, Mark, that's a good one - Rick Sacks has some great stories, too, just to mention one guy. I know some of the lurkers could put a few laughs in here...
Posts: 1859 | From: / | Registered: Nov 1998
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One early morning about 20 yrs ago, my old pinstriper buddy, SLIMBO, left on his daily early morning jaunt to Watkins Lake in Prescott to do a little fishin'. If there was a puddle in the road, SLIMBO would fish it! When he got to the Lake, he noticed down near the mud line, an old Chevy pickup with a tall shell on it, which displayed a sign that said in a poor knockout script..."SIGNS". No phone number.....no address....just SIGNS! Slimbo heard quite a bit of activity coming from the camper (remember...it's 6AM), so SLIMBO knocked on the door. It slowly opened releasing the odor of fermentation,etc. and 2 old guys playing cards and drinking beer. SLIMBO introduced himself as the local pinstriper, so the 2 guys invited him in to join the "party"! During the course of playing cards, drinking beer, and talking SIGNS & FISHING, the subject came around to the 2 guys and where were they from and what were they doing in Prescott. Well.....long story short, they did their annual trip starting in Florida in January, and travelling west to their final destination...Las Vegas. On their trip they would stop at the same 5 baseball parks every year and repaint the billboards. They told SLIMBO that after they learned "THE CONCEPT" life got much easier and things made more sense. SLIMBO replied..."The CONCEPT? ...What's the CONCEPT?" The 2 ol guys in unison, loudly exclaimed "NOTHING!"
If you don't find that funny, you probably had to be there.
[ February 10, 2003, 01:13 PM: Message edited by: Bob Burns ]
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a'nuther good one Mikey...... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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