Disappearing sign painters a sign of the times
In the mid-80s I saw a job ad in the newspaper for a billboard artist. It sounded pretty good, certainly more enticing that the job I had moving plywood, shingles and gravel around a construction site. I pictured myself on a billboard like a captain on the prow of a ship, a master of the sky with colorful palette and admiring fans on the ground below.
"Your work is exquisite! Maestro!" they'd shout. Yes, this was the job for me.
They hired me on the spot when I applied at the shop. I later learned they hadn't been able to find anyone else, and that the ad had been in the paper for weeks.
In no time, I was aloft on a billboard, wearing a safety belt that tied off to the structure in case I slipped and fell. That way, I'd only have to change my breeches instead of going through rehab to relearn to walk.
Two immutable laws of science that I was not aware of regarding billboards are that in the summer, you end up on the sunny side of the board and in the winter, on the shady side. Now, in the winter, of course, wasps aren't around to pester you.
But in the summer, the spacing between the panels of a billboard is ideally suited for wasps' nest. I'm talking wasps' nest the size of golf bags. And all it takes to disturb them is a bump on the billboard. Once they swarm, you can't swat at them. You can't jump. All you can do is be still and hope to be stung only once.
Looking back, I suspect it was the heat and the wasps that always made drinking cold beer so appealing when hanging on a board. Whatever the case, it seemed a natural fit to drink.
Now, there are a couple of different kinds of billboards: The in-town ones and the ones way out in the sticks. The ones in town are often high-tech metal jobs, whereas the country boards may be cobbled together old wooden signs.
I always preferred the remote ones, especially the ones in the mountains. Because you were left to your own devices and it was scenic, at least. And often, some of the strangest folks would stop by to chat.
Once a toothless man and several floozies in a pulpwood truck stopped to visit. After some small talk, they asked if we'd come up to their house to "party."
"I guarantee you'll get lucky," said the old man as a passenger with a wallet-sized hickey on her neck leaned around him and winked crudely.
"Maybe next time," we said, shuddering.
I painted boards for three years – depicting lots of people, cars, buildings and lettering. It was pre-computer and you still ran into old-time painters, so it was a great education. But it was also an odd time to be in the business, as public support wilted under the giant boards that seemed to be popping up everywhere. There was a growing anti-billboard lobby afoot. That made the industry nervous, and they tried to stem the tide by launching their own campaign.
"Billboards are the people's gallery," argued one passionate industry leader. Without this common-man’s gallery, he explained, there would be a terrible void for folks, who, unlike him, didn't attend art shows. Even if they could, they'd probably just be confused and traumatized by today's art (who isn't, after all?) and in their confusion, possibly get drunk and drive the family pickup into the river or shoot innocent bystanders as they weep in confusion and fire random shots from the town's clock tower.
The people's gallery prevented all this, you see. It gave the common man a new car picture or a gas grill to look at that he might grasp without going crazy. Plus, when skies were scary from lightning storms or dark clouds, the billboard acted as a pleasant backdrop that prevented the driver from seeing it. Plus, it broke up driver monotony on long trips.
I never heard how the battle ended up, as I left outdoor advertising and never returned. Too many enamel fumes, I suppose.
But I did get to brush shoulders with a couple of great painters in the business, guys who showed me the ropes, guys who could take a six inch brush and paint a six-foot eyeball looking right at you.
In addition to painters, there were paper-posting guys who plastered paper sections on boards using sticky brown goo. Once a guy got some of that goo on his boot sole and slammed into the building when his foot slipped off the clutch. The whole building shook.
The old man of paper posting was less than forty, but with decades of experience. He offered advice to a friend of mine who took a job as a poster.
"I don't care what happens, if you go down, STAY WITH YOUR LADDER!" he said. He'd fallen from great heights both with and without his ladder, and he was here to tell you that riding the ladder into the dirt helped minimize the impact, although the temptation is strong to push the ladder away as you fall.
"You hang on to that ladder, boy," he said, winking.
The tricky thing about painting a large billboard is that drivers will usually see it from a hundred feet away, and only for a few seconds, and only with partial attention. That brief shot, coupled with heavy production pressure, meant a minimum of time was open to paint the thing.
In the beginning, I tried painting 14 x 48 footers with a one-inch brush but noticed the veterans were using whopper brushes instead and moving like greased lightning. I finally got the idea. Up close, there was a certain fuzziness to the art, but it sparkled from a few feet away. We used a reducing glass (or cheap binoculars turned backwards) to gain distance on the board without having to walk across the room. Of course, if you were up in the air on a metal stage, held by ropes and pulleys, you couldn't move at all. So the reduction glass was vital. I still use one when I paint.
Today, very few billboards are hand painted. Most are digitally produced on paper or plastic sheets and stretched onto the billboard. So what happened to the old painters?
I know of one very good painter who, in his 50s, found a second career after billboards. Today he has a thriving business as a mural painter. You might've enjoyed a meal beside one of his restaurant pictorials, or danced beside one at the local country club. He seems happy, and that ain't a bad way to end up.
Me, I painted a few signs now and then over the years, but I mostly drifted away from the business and the folks in it. My favorites were always the sign painters, the crusty ones who took no guff and carried themselves with a swagger. They lived to pull a brush, whether lettering, painting a steaming biscuit or a smirking used car dealer. The sign was the thing, first and last.
Their kind will not come again.
Note: There's a picture of a billboard I painted on this page, if you're interested.