Mail Pouch ---> History ---> An Original Barn Painter ---> Narrative pg 3

3	The Barns Remain	"Zim"	Page 1	Page 2	Page 3
	But the Artist Are Forgotten!	Page 4	Page 5	Page 6	Appendix
Before starting a job, Zim said, "We'd get back and visualize the barn and picture that sign in your mind. You'd pick out a board or window, or something to use as a guideline, and spot on the letters, like CHEW, and always begin at the top. It's in rough form when you get it done." He never used a stencil to letter in a barn. The words "Chew" and "Treat Yourself To The Best" were almost always in white, and Mail Pouch Tobacco, in yellow. "Sometimes a farmer insisted on a red sign. That was a bother, and more expensive. We had to shade the letters in black so they would stand out. Occasionally I did an oval background for the sign." "It was the only company that I knew of that did that kind of barn advertising," Zim recalled. Other advertising which eventually disappeared included: Fletcher's Castoria for children, Lydia Pinkman's Tonic for women, Bull Durham, Battle Axe, and Red Man Chewing Tobacco. "We called ourselves barn massagers, walldogs or barn lizards," We called our big six-inch brushes 'mops' and our overalls 'skins.' Our skins would get stiff and crusted like suits of armor. When they got so bad we could hardly get into them, we'd throw them away buy new ones," Zim stated. "There weren't many environmentalists around in those days to complain about road signs. Oh, once in a while we'd get some static - usually from women - not about the sign itself, but about chewing tobacco. Sometimes we'd find a lady barn owner, who liked to chew tobacco. "Pay? When we started it was $50 a week, and we had to pay all our own expenses out of that. About 23 years ago I was getting $115 a week, and still had to subtract meals and lodging.,," There were the times too, when Zim and his crew were left stranded with not much money left while they waited for a Western Union money order from the tobacco company to catch up with them "We worked the year around, with just a week off at Christmas, and it was real barnstorming!" Zim recalls.