Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1899 — The Sign Painter’s Trinmpb. [ARTICLE]

The Sign Painter’s Trinmpb.

“What was the hardest job I ever tackled, did you ask?’ said the sign painter to a New Orleans Tlmes-Pein-ocrat reporter. “It was an ‘afi’ for smoking tobacco I. painted on the’side of the Grand Canyon on the line of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. I was working for a Buffalo concern that had a contract to put up 5,000 landscape signs for a tobacco company, and a gang of us traveled over the country looking for good effective locations. This place in the canyon was as tough a proposition as any sign writer ever went against. The side there went straight up 200 feet, and at the top there was a big overhanging ledge. It was easy enough* to let down a ladder from above, but on account of the ledge it hung at least forty feet out from the face of the rock. ‘After studying It over for a while I spliced a.couple of fishing poles together and fastened a soft sponge to the end. That was my brush, and by lying flat on the ladder I managed to do a very decent piece of work; at least, you could read it like a book from below, and that was the thing we wanted. When the railroad people found out what I had done they were as mad as blazes, especially the chief engineer, who was an aesthetic sort of a gent from Boston, and he tried for nearly a month to get it off, letting down Chinamen with scrubbing brushes on poles, but they only made it all the brighter. At last he got some brown paint, about the color of the rocks, and smeared it out, but it took at least a dozen coats and cost a heap of money. If they had only let that sign stand It would have been a great addition to the canyon. ”