“Lenny Had Friends!” One of Lenny’s friends was a guy named Mickey Messina. The Mick had a restaurant and we did signs for them once in a while. One day I was taking a phone order for the restaurant and asked how do you spell “Messina?” The guy said “I don’t know, I’m not looking at the sign right now”. I said “Who is THIS?”, he said “Mickey. Mickey Messina.” Figures.
One of his other friends, his “Lucky Buddy”, lucky because he was a welder and “Most of the stuff he welds sticks together”, (though I can vouch that not ALL of it does) drives a 50 year old truck. Once he got it repainted and he wanted the tailgate letters painted and I caught the phone call. He said “I want to make sure this doesn’t get screwed up - I want Lenny HIMSELF to paint it.” O.K., sucker. It took about a year for him to finally do the job and it’s every bit as bad as you may expect. I saw the truck yesterday, and it’s still like that, 17 years later.
He had a buddy from Norway or one of those frozen tundra places, who was a carpenter and he made a bunch of stuff in the sign shop, none of which was on the level. I call him Bjørn Yestørday. Lenny was adamant that the guy was strictly professional and wouldn’t make some thing crooked but I would place an aluminum can on the top of the cabinets as I walked by and they always rolled off onto the floor. Bothered the Hell out of Lenny, too. Hee hee. This guy ate sandwiches made of bread, jelly and sugar!! And I mean a PILE of sugar. Yucko. Roll, roll, roll, roll . . .clang! clatter clatter. Ha ha. Yah, shure - yooo betcha!
Stan was another Polack and in the construction business. Mostly Monkey Business. He bid $30,000 on remodeling the new shop for Lenny and wound up charging him $130,000 for a basically shabby job. It was required of them to put some handicap bars in the restroom, so begrudgingly they screwed the pipes into the plasterboard. They wouldn’t have held 10 lbs. of weight. Lenny was SO lucky that NEVER did a handicapped person ever come to the shop and have to rely on those bars. For Christmas that year Stan gave Lenny a Polish Sausage Christmas wrapped , and Lenny was happy about that. We all told Lenny “That’s TWICE he slipped you the Polish Sausage. A fourteen inch one - and now THIS”.
Max. This Max’s name was really Mack, and Lenny had known him and worked with him for years. As convoluted as everything was in Lenny’s head we never knew which one he was talking about, if he told us something about “Max”. Lenny named his dog “Dirty Max” after one of them.
Max. This guy’s name might actually have been Max. Or maybe not. He was a neon sign guy and had a habit of wetting his finger and sticking it into the outlets to check for juice. I understand electricians and neon guys do this. (?) He was called out to fix up a big neon can at a shopping center where I was doing some painted board signs and the secretary asked me if I knew him, because his truck had been parked under the sign for 4 days and Max was nowhere to be found. Well, yes, he WAS! If one cared to go inside the can and watch a 4 day old clunk doing the St. Vitus Dance with his finger in a socket.
We eventually inherited a real pounce machine at Lenny’s old shop and he was using it once when the phone rang. He always used it cranked up to 10. Lenny put the stylus down on his chair to go answer the phone and cautioned us all not to touch it. When he came back he had forgotten what he’d been doing and sat on it. “WOW!”, he said and reached his hand underneath his butt to find out what caused that and grabbed ahold of the live wire and jumped for joy once again. What a comedian, anything for a laugh! So that’s how the pros check for continuity.
Jimmy Korsatt. Lenny had coffee 6 mornings a week with this guy for 26 years and called him Mr. Korzini. His FRIENDS, however, called him Jimmy. He was in the heating & air conditioning business and would not in a million years ever come out to the shop and fix the A/C & heater for us. He went “hunting” with Lenny every October. Supposedly with live ammunition. I know none of these guys could shoot straight because Lenny came back every time.
Bobby Ray. Worked for some big company for 35 years then they dumped him. Hung around the sign shop for 6 weeks while Lenny paid him $600 per and never did a thing except cut 2 boards once. Went on the only double-Lenny “hunting” trip which ended when Son caused a head-on collision. Had been in the Navy and his favorite food was “Red Lead” and yellow Jello. Ground hamburger with tomato sauce; looked and tasted like red lead primer . This has to be the only guy in naval history that could digest the stuff. Close competition to S.O.S. - Creamed chipped beef on toast - it’s enough to make a maggot puke. Anyway the head-on left him really jacked up, permanently cross-eyed and brain damaged a little more than before and of course Son only got a nosebleed out of it.
Son. Lenny’s own creation. He is an absolute terror on the streets, and has caused a lot of damage but never to himself. Almost never; he has a permanent case of road rash, and landed on his head once in a motorcycle accident without a helmet, but it didn’t cause any discernible brain damage. No matter what havoc was wrought by Son Lenny would say “You can’t always blame the boy.” Once I made a 2 foot square sign for Son’s work - it was beautiful! 10 coats of Candy Apple Red Lacquer, air brushed, gold leafed, a few coats of clear over that. When Son called to tell us it was installed and looked great I went over with my camera to take a pic for my files. Son had torqued down 4 half inch diameter carriage bolts through the middle of the sign and sucked them down into it about 1/4 inch, shattering the lacquer and the MDO surface. Yeah! Looks GREAT!
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"If it isn't fun, why do it?"
Signmike@aol.com
Mike Languein
Doctor of Letters
BS, MS, PhD
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You know what BS is, MS is More of the Same, and it's Piled Higher and Deeper here
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