Mail Pouch ---> History ---> An Original Barn Painter ---> Narrative pg 2

2	The Barns Remain	"Zim"	Page 1	Page 2	Page 3
	But the Artist Are Forgotten!	Page 4	Page 5	Page 6	Appendix
When Zim first started working for Harry Herig, the first of three contractors for whom he would paint, the men did their own "leasing." The crews were assigned a certain territory and they would go to a town, maybe stay for as long as two weeks, and work that area. They would select their own locations or barns. "We'd use our judgment as to how much we'd pay for the lease," Zim recalls. They would pay anywhere from $2 to $10 and as little as $1 and some of the farmers thought they were getting rich quick in those days. "Two men would do a sign in half a day, but you had to learn to work into it and develop a speed which would make money for your contractor," "The equipment, including the truck, was provided by the tobacco contractor, but the expenses were our own. We put a lot of miles on that old Ford. I still wonder how the truck stayed in working condition. Often the Model T would just barely make a hill. I especially remember the St. Clairsville hill when it was snowy and icy. I don't know which was worse, going up or coming down. But we always made it." Zim remembers. The paint Zim used was Dutch Boy white lead which came in 100 pound kegs. "We opened untold hundreds of those kegs - those steel kegs of white lead." They stored their mixed paint in 5 and 10 gallon milk cans. He said the paint was a "heavy paste and we mixed it with linseed oil to a think consistency. Then we thinned it with gasoline. That was our paint thinner - gasoline." For the black paint, dry lampblack would be mixed with the Linseed oil. "We put it on just as heavy as it would go on. You couldn't make your paint thin because some of those barns would soak it in. It was like painting on a blotter sometimes and they were very rough," Zim said. The whole side of the barn was not painted, he explained, and a process of "spotting on the letters" was used. "That's where you work the letters into the space where the lettering goes. Then take a brush and make the shape of the letter. Then you "spot" on that color, white or yellow." Then the message that he painted was "Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco, Treat Yourself to the Best."