Painting Memories

Charming Cousin and I were hanging out recently. I call him Charming Cousin because everyone loves him. He's charming. Anyway, we were reminiscing about childhood moments when a funny one came up that I hadn't thought about in years. 

My great-grandparents lived in Jacksonville in this tiny, two-bedroom wood-frame house. The house was small, but the yard was big and in it, my great grandparents grew vegetables year-round. (Now Florida is full of zero-lot line neighborhoods where you're lucky to have room for an azalea bush). They were hard-working people. 

My great-grandfather had an old Ford truck. I asked Charming Cousin if he remembered the time granddaddy gave the truck a new coat of paint - with a paintbrush. 

Charming Cousin reminded me that granddaddy had painted that truck several times. 

"The last weekend I spent with great-grandma before she died, she told me 'We're gonna need your help this summer. We've got to paint the truck and white-wash the house,'" recalls Charming Cousin. "I don't even know what white-washing is. But I do remember grandma and granddaddy painting that truck with a paint roller. They used Benjamin Moore house paint. If that truck was still around today, there wouldn't be a speck of rust on it. Nothing was getting through the 8 layers of house paint on that truck."