Paint. It should be easy. My father was a custom painter and a world-class pinstriper. Back in the ‘70s at the start of the custom van days, my dad hooked up with the pot-smoking, cocaine-sniffing son of a guy who owned one of the largest mobile home manufacturers in Elkhart, Indiana. This guy set up his son in business to manufacture “custom” vans using the manufacturing processes that the mobile home guys used. The company was called HeadRest Vans with the logo using a silhouette of a long-haired, bearded hippie.
My dad cranked out some truly custom muralled replicas of Frank Frazetta’s Conan the Barbarian, and any number of desert and mountain landscapes. At first it was one or two vans a day, but once he had to paint 20 vans a day to keep up with production, my dad snapped. In his soul, he was an artist, even if he never quite knew it and could not work under a mass production schedule. But before he left the business, I worked with him and learned how to paint. Lines, colors, how to use a spray gun, clear coat. And perhaps most important of all how to buff out a clear lacquer coat.
My dad spent the last 15-20 years of his life living blissfully in a converted 40-foot bus with my mother, following the motorcycle rallies and muralling and pinstriping Gold Wings. A pure cash business. He was proud that I had finally graduated with a Masters degree, but he was most proud that I was working in the motorcycle business at Cycle World Magazine. I’d show up at a his winter address in Yuma, AZ with a new bike and would get dragged around to meet his and my mom’s buddies. At the time I dreaded those trips, but now that he and my mom are gone, I remember them with increasing fondness.
So when it was time to paint the CB350’s new tank and seat, I missed my father. I would go the automotive paint stores, and the smell of the paint and tape would bring so many positive memories of him right to the counter. So many memories flooded over me. Too many. Too much weight. I couldn’t buy the red or white paint I wanted.
When I smell burning leaves in the fall, I’m transported back to a specific day and a particular place when I was ten years old. When I smell automotive paint or masking tape I’m awash in a tsunami of memories, places emotions and vehicles connected to my father. This simple task of painting a motorcycle tank and seat became a struggle for me that I still do not fully understand.Determined to work through this on a random winter Saturday, I gathered my 15-year-old son (for courage I guess) and drove to the paint store. It was closed. On a Saturday. I took it as a sign that this was a task best solved alone.
A month later I was back. Alone. All was good until I was flipping through the paint chip book, looking for the perfect red. Too many choices and too many reds. Then I heard my father’s voice saying, “Ford Candy-Apple Red.” Perfect. It was as simple as that. It’s probably not the official Honda racing red, but for me, my bike and my father there could be no other color. He had painted so may race cars, motorcycles and even fire trucks that the color is like a ribbon running through his life, into mine, and one day, I hope, through my son’s.
Oh, one other stress point had been the cost of buying the spray gun, at least $120.00. While the paint guys were mixing my paint, I saw a wall-full of rattle cans, so I asked if they had a my paint in a spray can. They said they could put any color in a can. Peace Like A River! I was out the door for $65.00 rather than $200.00. I got the paint, and exercised my fiduciary responsibility to my family to keep the cash out lays to a minimum.
