My professional art career began at the tender age of fourteen, painting Christmas window splashes for local merchants in town. My first window was small, and I was paid an eye-popping fifteen dollars for my effort. It was an immense amount of money for a fourteen-year-old kid in the late 1960’s. The minimum wage was only one dollar per hour, and the window was painted in about that amount of time.
I continued painting seasonal windows into my mid-twenties, and the extra cash always helped out during the Christmas season and beyond. Janis often accompanied me to help out, starting when we were first dating, and this continued even after our kids came along.
I’ll never forget one massive window painting we did for a large auto dealer in our town. The manager was a little indignant that I had brought my family, but I wasn’t worried. We were professionals with years of experience. I did the layout and then quickly painted the black outline. Janis, with baby Becke tucked in a snuggly baby carrier, followed, filling in the colours. Peter, of course, although he was only two years old (almost three), was eager to do his part.
The window design featured a large, seasonal greeting and original cartoon figures, as most of my windows did. I mixed up a small container of black paint and gave it to Peter with instructions to paint in the shoes of the figures, which were near the bottom of the window where he could easily reach them. A little later, as we diligently worked, there was a commotion at the other end of the showroom. The store manager had noticed that Peter had painted the cartoon figure’s shoes down to the bottom of the window, over the window sill, down the short wall and onto the carpeted floor below. Peter thought his joke about the man with HUGE feet was hilarious. I also thought it was pretty funny. I did my best not to laugh, but the store manager didn’t see the humour in the slightest. He came to me and started lecturing me about professionalism and keeping family and business separate.
Janis worked quickly to clean up Peter’s extra-curricular water-based paint. After considerable effort, I had the manager almost calmed down, but right about then, our little puppy, whom we had also brought, escaped from his makeshift crate and did some nasty business on the carpet.
