Mail Pouch ---> History ---> An Original Barn Painter ---> Narrative pg 4

4	The Barns Remain	"Zim"	Page 1	Page 2	Page 3
	But the Artist Are Forgotten!	Page 4	Page 5	Page 6	Appendix
In more than 35 years, Maurice and his crew painted 12,000 barns. Neither rain nor snow nor ill-tempered barnyard beasts could stay them from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Their signs became one of the hallmarks of rural America. "The old Model T Ford truck chugging through a northeastern Ohio snowstorm 58 years ago was quite a sight. "Irish" Joe Fitzgerald, one of many painting partners, would have been wearing his five-buckle artics to stave off frostbit, his "store bought" aluminum teeth chattering in the cold," Zim remembers. He worked through out the mid-west. "We once worked in Maryland but we had to abandon that because the signs were taxed and we needed a license to operate. The same was true in New Jersey and Kentucky." Back in the 20's and 30's not only did he paint the Mail Pouch sign on the side of the barn but would even paint roof markings for airplanes. "One summer I wanted to save some money. I bought a tent, and my wife, Lola, and I with two babies "roughed it" like gypsies. During our stay around Lehighton PA,, Lola canned 70 pints of blue berries while I worked, quite a chore on a three burner stove. "I raiscd my family on Mail Pouch; one son, Norman, three daughters, Jean, Maxine and Pauline, and yet I don't smoke or chew anything stronger than Wrigley's spearmint," says Zim. Since a barn sign would remain in good shape for only three years, Zim often returned to a particular farm several times during his career. Once on a return trip the farmer had built a fence so close to the barn that he had to paint three fourths of the Mail Pouch sign through the fence. One time a man asked me to paint a sign on the side of his house. I later found out that the man was a bootlegger and this is how customers recognized his house. The farmers and their families knew him by name and with each visit they would bring him up to date on the events of the previous three years. He would be told how the harvest had been, which son had gone off to war, and what was going to be planted in the next spring. He has cherished each one of these friendships.