Back in the Saddle Again

Though happily retired, I've been doing some painting lately. The landlord asked me several weeks back if I'd be interested in doing some maintenance-type painting. It's always a good idea to keep the landlord happy, so I said yes. He assured me that there was no pressure to accept nor to hurry through the jobs should I accept. I'm pretty damn good at it so I didn't run the risk of screwing anything up and jeopardizing my welcome here. Everything was outside too, the garage doors of rental properties he has in town. Nothing was more than two minutes away from my home! Why not? 

I finished up the garage doors last month. They were pretty rough. In fact, as I drive the streets here, I see a lot of sorry looking garages, and I amuse myself by wondering if Tom owns those properties. The reality is that a lot of people let their garages go because, why spend the money? That's where you store the junk that won't fit in the basement. Maybe you put a car in there. The garage doors were rough, but uneventful. A LOT of scraping. My power washer would have come in handy, but it was still wintering at my late brother's house, and I hadn't noticed any outside faucets on these rental properties anyway, so hooking up might not have been possible anyway. That's water (or lack thereof) under the bridge now. He bought the paint (Behr) and paid me a good hourly wage and- again- implored me to take my time. So, nothing to really blog home about. With Fall coming on, I thought I might be done for the season, but he came up with one more so far. 

This was an entire 2-car garage, peeling like an m-effer. By now, I had my power washer and access to water. I needed it. I've yet to meet Tom's daughter, but this was one of her properties in town, and I took it that she and her husband had painted the house and had to get back to Wisconsin before they could get around to being intimidated by the garage, which was probably beyond their skillset (and desire set) because of all the scraping. I totally get that. I'd rather powerwash for five hours than scrape for five times that. Work smarter, not harder, as they say. 

It was a big help. Almost killed the job though. Tom called me up that night telling me he was done with the job himself because the tenant had complained that the power washing had scratched his beloved car. BULL SHIT! It was the first time I had heard Tom cuss. He said the fucking guy was an asshole, and he was done with him. Damn. Evidently, he had been difficult before. Well, I'm here to tell you that soggy paint chips are not going to hurt your car. The bulk of my painting career was in the commercial field, and we had our share of Karen's over the years. We also had big, multi-million-dollar companies behind us that weren't in the business of taking shit from Karen's or Chad's. It's funny that people think they can get over on working people but are quickly intimidated by the very notion of management. I learned this in the restaurant business when dining customers would air their grievances to me, the humble, uninvolved bartender and immediately back off when I told them I'd get the manager to solve their problem. They would recoil at the suggestion. It got to be very predictable. Not too many people want to talk to the boss, perhaps because their grievances are frivolous or it just harkens back to dealing with mom and dad or other grownups when they were young.  

I think Tom called me the next day and told me the job was on again. I honestly don't know what further conversation he had with the Chad and don't really care. At this point in my life, I don't have the fight in me that I used to have. When I later met the young tenants, they were pleasant enough and I reciprocated that. There was no further discussion about cars. After all, I wasn't working for them. And I made that garage beautiful again. 

Until recently, it had been a couple years since I had wielded a paint brush in anger but work still interests me and brings back memories of a thousand past jobs, good and bad. I had brought tools with me with the intent of buying a house to fix up in my retirement, but the wrong person got elected president in 2024 and like millions of Americans young and old, we can pretty much forget about that old American notion of home ownership. Workwise, we'll see what the Spring brings We'll see how I feel. I'm not getting younger, you know. I like knowing that I can still bring it though. And I'm still better than the last guy.