Fifty Years of Framing

Part One

On this very day in 1969 I began what has resulted in a most satisfying and creative journey of fifty years (and counting).

I was 23 years old, and other than babysitting in high school, selling my own artwork at outdoor art and craft shows, as well as a brief stint as an unenthusiastic purveyor of Parklane jewelry at home parties, I had never been employed in a real job.  I was bored.

One day I found a classified ad in a Buffalo paper – it listed an address on Allen Street and stated “Must be artistic.”  Figuring I would be a shoo-in, I strolled into the little gallery at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  I was greeted by an overenthusiastic Weimaraner (I believe his name was "Get down, Axel!") and the quintessential grumpy old man.  I told the man I was there for the advertised job.

“You should have been here this morning at 9 o’clock!” he shouted, “I already hired someone.”  I was a bit taken aback by his outburst, but the place seemed interesting, so as long as I was there, I began looking around.

The ad had only mentioned the street address, not the name of the business, and I had not noticed the name when I had entered.  As I was nosing around I found business cards which read “Buffalo Picture Frame & Mirror.”

“This is Buffalo Picture Frame?” I blurted.  The man looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

“My uncle works at Buffalo Picture Frame,” I continued lamely.

He started, and then in a voice dripping with suspicion, growled, “Who’s your uncle?”

“Bob McPherson,” I replied.  Uncle Bob had worked there for many years.

“Bob didn’t tell me his niece was looking for a job!” he exclaimed.  He took a few seconds to reconsider the situation and then  then asked me for my phone number in case his new hire did not pan out.

And that is how I met the inimitable Jason S. Natowitz – Army sharpshooter, pharmaceutical salesman, accredited inventor of department store Santa photographs, and the founding father  of the Allentown Art Festival.  He was a man of many talents.

Kramer the Framer, original Artist Proof by Charles Bragg.  This is the first frame I ever bought from Jason (it had been an "oops" frame) and I still love it.  And aside from his bushy moustache, Kramer has always reminded me of Jason (Jason's moustache was always neatly clipped).  The rest of the details of the image are spot on for Buffalo Picture Frame in those days.

Jason phoned me the next morning and instructed me to report for work the following Monday.  Turns out the woman he had hired had never even gotten off of her bus when she saw the old boarded-up building on William Street.  Not exactly the trendy Allentown address where either of us had expected to be working.

I started at minimum wage, $1.55 per hour, and I envisioned being able to spend this small fortune on expanding my horse collection.  My first week’s pay did indeed go to the acquisition of a beautiful Italian alabaster horse head that I had spied in the window of a cluttered little antique store across the street from Jason’s gallery.

From then on my wages went for household expenses and new horses were few and far between.  I barely noticed, however, because as the horses were shelved, the love of picture framing took over my life.

The first mystery I was initiated into was how the picture is installed into the frame.  I was put to work at the fitting table.  There I learned to clean the glass, use the ancient Red Devil diamond point driver to fasten the framing package into the frame, and apply paper and screw eyes and wire to the back. 

It still works and I use it when no other tool will do the trick.

Soon I was cutting the backing boards, and then dry mounting was added to my duties, and finally the Holy Grail – mat cutting on the Keaton Kutter and the Springfield oval cutter.  I was also taught how to cut glass by hand and eventually how to cover mats and liners with beautiful silks, linens, and velvets.

Jason had bought the business in the fifties and in those days framers did not deign to share trade secrets so he was pretty much on his own, making things up as he went along.  When he encountered a problem, he engineered a solution – he was a creative genius and even with the non-archival materials available to us back then, a great designer and picture framer.  Granted, some of the techniques he devised would cause a modern framer to faint dead away – but he tried his best.

Jason S. Natowitz and Darryl's predecessor, Jay, early 70's.

I still use many of Jason’s techniques today.  Fifteen years ago I attended a fabric workshop presented by our industry’s top fabric guy, and I was astounded to be shown Jason’s exact process, step by step.  The only difference was modern fabric glue instead of generic white glue, and rag matboard instead of wood pulp board.

Despite the dank windowless firetrap we were working in, the gang of us got along remarkably well.  Ceil, the previous owner-turned-bookkeeper guided us when she could in the front and provided delicious cakes for birthdays and holidays.  Helga was the other fitter, Lance (aka “Sinus”) was our often-absent Manager, and my Uncle Bob worked upstairs restoring paintings alongside the talented but color-blind Bruno who gold-leafed and finished length moulding.

There were several guys who worked in the back room, cutting and joining frames.  They came and went but after Lance departed, Darryl became the Manager, and we had fun almost every day, especially when Jason was not fussing over our shoulders and stinking up the place with his disgusting cigars.  Fortunately, he spent most of his time on Allen Street and only came to the workshop to pick up and drop off orders.

I worked there until the end of 1971 because, thanks to the glass guy, I was recruited away to work at Bond’s in Williamsville.  But that is another story.

. . . to be continued . . .

We Always Know

(For Grandpa Mason)

We always know

That awful day will come

When we have to say goodbye.

But we try,

Oh, how we try

To pretend that day

Is ever so far away.

We watch faithfully

For the signs

We do not want to see.

Are you eating?

Can you walk?

Are you still happy?

Are you in pain?

Sometimes we stroke you

In your sleep,

To see if you are still breathing.

And when the signs

And the tests

And the numbers

Fail to add up to

"Quality of Life,"

All we can give you is our final gift -

A peaceful transition

Into the next world.

Thank you, Grandpa Mason.

Your life mattered.

Train of Thought

Few sounds are more able to evoke a sense of nostalgia in me than the high lonesome whistle of a distant midnight train.  On a still summer night with the window cracked to let in a faint breeze, the wail of a faraway train takes me right back to my childhood.

I am snuggled into the comforting depths of the ancient featherbed at my grandparents’ home in Elma, NY.  As the nightly train blows its whistle at the crossing about a mile south of us, I awaken briefly and then drift back to sleep, feeling warm and secure under one of Grandma’s hand-stitched quilts with freshly ironed sun-dried linen sheets, and crochet-edged pillowcases.

My family had a love/hate relationship with trains.  When Grandma Pearl was sixteen years old in 1903, her dad was killed by a freight train.  He had been wading through deeply drifted snow along the tracks, gathering pieces of coal in an attempt to keep his family warm.  It was the day after Christmas. 

 

Because of this gruesome tragedy, Grandma was forced to end her schooling and help her mother to support her five younger siblings by taking in laundry and mending.  She was afraid of trains for the rest of her life.  She rode them when necessary (Grandpa never drove) but I remember how she used to flinch when the train roared past if we were out for a Sunday drive and dad was forced to stop too close to a railroad crossing.

On my dad’s side of the family, however, his father worked for the railroad between his many attempts of trying to make it as a baker.  He moved his family back and forth across Canada from St. John’s to Saskatoon, Halifax to Winnipeg, and a dozen towns in between - no doubt implanting his wanderlust into my dad’s DNA.

My Grandpa's tool chest with his initials on one end

Grandpa wrote V for Victory in Morse code on the other end

Dad could not abide sitting still or even living in one place for too long.  He was infamous for racing across tracks to beat an oncoming train.  Of course when my mother was in the car we had to sit and watch the train go by; I always pointed out Chessie’s image on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway cars and waved at the caboose. 

Chessie the railroad cat, sleeping like a kitten.

For some unknown reason, when I was really little I used to love drawing trains.  I remember sitting on the kitchen floor and turning out page after page of drawings - locomotives, coal cars, passenger cars, box cars, and the caboose.  Mom would tape them all together for me and then try to find a place to display them.

When I was in kindergarten my class went on a brief train ride (probably on the Attica and Arcade Railroad).  I remember the trip was loud and sooty and I came home clutching a souvenir - a clear glass locomotive filled with hard candy.  As I recall, neither the train ride nor the candy impressed me very much.

This came with hard candy inside

The Silver Lake line of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg Railroad (a branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) played several roles in my family’s history.  As youngsters, my grandmother, my mother, and I each attended the Methodist camp in Silver Lake, NY.  Grandma told the story of falling asleep on the train from Buffalo so she missed the Epworth Inn station.  The conductor discovered her several miles later and the train actually backed up all the way to Silver Lake to let her off.  Grandma was mortified.

The Epworth Inn, Silver Lake, NY

When I attended camp there, I liked to sit on the little grassy bank above the dock below the ramshackle Inn, and wave to the engineers when the little train chugged by.  They were always kind enough to wave back. 

The dock below the Epworth Inn

The other memorable train ride I went on was when Paul and I first moved to Canada in 1968.  We, and the black flies, were camping in North Western Ontario, and we decided to take the train from Sioux Lookout to Armstrong and then back again.  We figured it would be an adventure and we could walk around the town or sit in a restaurant or the train station for a couple of hours until the return train arrived.

 What we did not realize that the train we were on was the “milk run” and for the entire 130-some miles it stopped and started seemingly every ten minutes to let someone on or off or deliver groceries to people who just appeared out of the trees.  Then, when we finally arrived in Armstrong, there was no real station, no restaurant, not even a town - just a lot of cabins tucked into the forest – little pools of light dotting the night.

 

We were lucky there was a bench on the platform for us to sit on.  We got a lot of strange looks from the locals, and we were too embarrassed to try to interact with anyone (such idiots we were back then!).  We sure were happy to be back on that train to Sioux Lookout!

Another Canadian train story came about a dozen years later when a friend and I attended the Northern Lights Borealis Folk Festival in Sudbury.  George was a bonafide train nut (he used to travel all over to photograph trains and he was also a model railroader).  He booked our lodgings for the weekend - an old rattletrap hotel right across the street from the rail yard.  All night long the trains shunted and squealed back and forth, coupling and uncoupling engines and cars.  I barely slept a wink all weekend but George was in train heaven.

All in all, I have come to the conclusion that I prefer songs about trains to actual trains.  From the Chattanooga Choo Choo(which inspired one of my all-time favorite shaggy dog stories - punch line beginning with “Pardon me, Roy . . .”) to Down By the Station (when my mother forced me to accept the prom invitation and she attempted to teach me at least one dance, the cha-cha, to this record - dear Lord!) and then there was the Stan Freeberg parody of Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line.   I still love both versions.

Next came the Great Folk Scare of the early sixties and many train songs I still love to this day.  Here are my favorite recordings of these popular train songs:

City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman.

Daddy, What’s a Train? by Utah Phillips

Freight Train by Elizabeth (Libba) Cotton

Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash

The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot

Life’s Railway to Heaven by the Amazing Rhythm Aces

Orange Blossom Special by Seatrain

And lately I have been listening to a lot of Fred Eaglesmith - he has a couple of really stellar train songs - I Like Trains and Freight Train are my favorites, especially with Washboard Hank doing the percussion.

To add to the nostalgia about trains there are the famous train scenes in various TV shows and movies.  Due South’s epic episode All the Queen’s Horses combined trains, horses, Mounties, music, and romance.   What’s not to like?

The Musical Ride from All the Queen's Horses on Due South

My favorite train movie is Silver Streak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor,  although Antonio Banderas’ Legend of Zorro comes in a close second with its thrilling yet humorous train sequence - especially since it features his talented black stallion Tornado who assists Zorro in outwitting the bad guys. 

 

Odds are I will never ride the legendary Trans-Canada across the Great White North or travel to NOLA on the City of New Orleans.  But I can still crack that window on a still summer night to hear the lonesome whistle of the midnight train.

Keep Calm and Carry . . . a Purse?

When it comes to the carrying of purses, there are four kinds of women* (at least among the various women I have observed throughout my life).

  

In the first category are women who carry teensy tiny little purses that allow room for a tissue, some keys and, what—lipstick, cash in the old days and nowadays a credit/debit card, and a driver’s license?  If you are fortunate enough to accompany one of these women to a movie or a restaurant or a concert, chances are she will ask you to stick something into your purse for her because it won’t fit in her minuscule reticule (“Hold on to my sunglasses, will you?”).  I do know one woman with one of these miniature marvels, and she clips and hangs all kinds of accoutrements on the outside of it. It is freely festooned with keys, loyalty cards, hand sanitizer and even a pill bottle.  One could almost call this a chatelaine—although the ladies who carried chatelaines never had hand sanitizer but they surely could have used some in those germy days of yore.  But I digress, back to my friend.  It is a rarity to see her with any purse large enough to contain everything she carries.

The miniscule reticule

Type number two carries what almost amounts to a suitcase.  Everything they seek is to be found within its shadowy deeps.  They hear their phone ringing—“It’s in there somewhere!”  How about a pen? “I know I have one. Let me see if I can find it!” “I think my checkbook is in there!”  Within these gigantic satchels they frequently carry massive wallets with every credit card and piece of identification known to womankind.  Plus coupons, receipts, ID—and who knows what else? Oh—and a beauty salon’s worth of make-up and hair products.

I fall into category number three.  I call it the Goldilocks purse, not too big and not too small:  just the right size for what I need to carry with me on any given occasion.  My current purses are usually either black or red.  I have medium sized ones and several smaller sizes. They must come equipped with pockets (some with zippers)—although not too many pockets, thank you very much.  I spent a good twelve hours one day hunting for a coin purse which I knew I had just used the previous day, yet that morning at the bank I could not find it.  I hunted all over my shop on and off all day, searched in my car several times, turned my house upside down in the evening—and where was the elusive coin purse?  In a pocket inside the purse (hand-me-down L.L. Bean cross body sling bag) that I missed during the two times I thought I had emptied it!

Mind you, I have not always been in the Goldilocks category.  In the seventies I carried a Guatemalan knitted wool shoulder bag that had no interior pockets so I just chucked everything in there and it kept expanding and expanding.  A customs officer once remarked that that bag could be classified as a lethal weapon because it was so heavy.

I must have a shoulder strap on any kind of bag—otherwise, why bother?  Clutch purses are ridiculous—do you really want to go around with that thing in your hand all night?  I made myself a macramé clutch purse for a special formal evening out but only used it once because it was so stupid to have to actually carry it around everyplace.  But then again, that is how everyone totes their phones around.  Maybe they should carry a purse, which brings us to category number four.

And what is category number four?  Some women do not carry purses at all.  Keys in one hand, phone in the other.  That’s about it, as far as I can tell.  Baffles me completely.  But maybe they keep their stuff in their pockets.  I rarely buy any garments without pockets; in my humble opinion garments without pockets ought to be illegal.

Speak softly and carry a big purse

Women on television and in movies rarely carry purses.  From soaps to sitcoms, dramas to documentaries—how many purses have you seen?  One of the rare exceptions to this observation was also one of my favorite women on TV—Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (played to the absolute hilt by Kyra Sedgwick) on The Closer.   She fell into in purse category number two—at one point in the show she was even carrying her late cat Kitty’s ashes in her purse and she always had an ample supply of cookies, candy bars, and sweets.  It was her favorite prop in the interrogation room—no one ever quite knew what damning evidence she might dredge forth from its deeps.  When she marched into the room and flung that thing down onto the table, the suspect’s eyes would widen in dread.  I cannot remember seeing an actor have so darned much fun with a single prop (with the possible exception of Tom Baker and his versatile scarf in Doctor Who).

Kyra Sedgewick and the Tote

Brenda Leigh’s handbag (they called it a tote) was a Michael Kors designer original in leather but it proved so popular with fans of the show that a knock-off (I suppose they called it a replica) was created and sold on QVC.  That bag should have won an Emmy for a supporting role!

My grandmother always made sure to carry a roll or two of Lifesavers in her purse, because she knew they were a treat for me.  My mother, in addition to wadded shreds of Kleenex, carried a small tin of tiny hard licorice pastilles called Helps.  She was an uneasy rider so these settled her stomach on car rides.  And until just before she died at the age of ninety seven, my stepmom never went anywhere without her precious lipstick (Revlon Persian Melon) and her vital compact (Cover Girl Translucent Light).

No matter what size purse I am carrying it will contain these items: lip balm, a tissue or two, Band-Aids, nail clipper, a few business cards, a gel pen and a mechanical pencil, and a 3x5 spiral notebook, and appropriate ID.  When I am carrying a larger bag it will also contain at least one camera and extra batteries for it, one dumb phone (turned off unless I need it), maybe a small tripod, a larger (4x6) spiral notebook, pocket calendar, coin purse, ID, and perhaps a hi-lighter or two, a thumb drive or three, Neosporin, Tylenol, Rescue Remedy, and Gin-Gins.   And rocks—I always carry a few mineral specimens, including a Zuni horse fetish, and the Labradorite disc which I inherited from my late friend Barbara (she carried it with her everywhere she went).  Sometimes I also carry a small refillable water bottle.  And maybe even a hairbrush.  And a flashlight.

 

I only carry a credit card if I intend to use it that day.  It always astonishes me when I see women who reveal a library of dozens of credit cards in their wallets—I believe they are the ones who complain the loudest when their purses are lost or stolen and they have to spend all day on the phone cancelling all those cards.

Purses, foiled again!

There have been times when I have gotten a hankering for a particular kind of purse and have been unable to locate one that meets my style, color, size, and price criterion.  That is when I have made my own purses—either sewing them out of fabulous fabric or knotting them with macramé.  Once in a great while I have found the right bag in the right size but the wrong color so then I have dyed it.  I had a great cotton bag in dark olive (a color I loathed), so I used RIT color remover to get it down to white so I could dye it red.  I was really pleased seeing the horrid color disappear, but when I took it out of the solution and it began to dry—to my amazement all of the olive returned.  I ended up having to use chlorine bleach.  Yuck.  But it dyed nicely and I was pleased with the outcome, despite the extra steps needed to achieve it.

Some of the purses I have made over the years.

Purse with color removed.

One day I found a nice black leather bag at the thrift shop.  It was a Giani Bernini (never heard of him, mind you) designer bag worth hundreds and I bought it for $5.  Unfortunately when I got it home and looked at it carefully in good light, I discovered it was dark brown.  Not acceptable!  So I stripped off the finish on the leather and dyed it black with leather dye.  Figured for $5 I could live with the hideous brown interior.   Oh, and the price of the leather conditioner and dye.

 

Another time I found the perfectly sized bright red nylon LeSportsac on eBay.  Unfortunately upon its arrival I discovered the rubber coated waterproofing in the lining was deteriorating and had turned into a gooey mess.  With a bit of experimenting I discovered that isopropyl alcohol dissolved this goo and for the cost of a couple of bottles from the drug store (enough to soak the bag) I was able to restore it to its original non-sticky state.  So what if it is not waterproof.  I don’t care and the vendor refunded me the cost of the isopropyl alcohol so that made me very happy.

One of my recurring nightmares is always that I have somehow lost my purse.  My ID!  My keys!  My stuff!!!  I awaken in a cold sweat.  But whew!—it was only a dream.  Maybe women who have never carried a purse are never cursed with this particular nightmare.

Dogs and cats have an insatiable curiosity when it comes to the innards and contents of purses.  I was taking a shower at Kim’s house one night before we went out to the Continental, and when I came out of the bathroom I grabbed my purse and started hunting for a Kleenex.  Kim sheepishly admitted that Tarot had rifled through my bag and had eaten all of the tissues he could find.  Her dogs were always famous for eating weird things out of her own purse.  Dillie once ate her diaphragm (she asked her vet if that could be dangerous to him and he replied, “I don’t know—no one ever asked me that question before.”)  On another occasion he unearthed and ate a batch of special brownies, tin foil wrapping and all; they did him no harm—he mellowed out and slept really soundly for a couple of days.

  This is Mama Lucy investigating one of my purses.

Another night out with the Regular Gals found me at my Sweet Cousin Jackie’s apartment; we were getting ready to meet Barbara, Pamela and John and go out to dinner with another friend—to meet his new girlfriend (and impress her with what a wonderful bunch of friends her new man had).  I was sitting on the sofa with my purse on the floor at my feet.  I glanced down to find sweet little calico kitty Cupcake crawling into my bag.  Without thinking, I reached down to grab her and extract her when she turned on me like a mountain lion and clawed the living daylights out of my arm.  I had completely forgotten that adorable little Cupcake was the devil in disguise.  Of course Jackie did not have any first aid supplies (not even a Band-Aid!) so I ended up at dinner looking like some junkie with massive bruises and puncture wounds all over my arm.  This incident may well have been the beginnings of my determination to carry Band-Aids and Neosporin with me whenever possible.  (Wouldn’t I have made a great Boy Scout?)

So, whether you call it a purse or a handbag or a pocketbook, a clutch or a tote or a messenger bag—we are all fortunate that these wondrous things have been invented and are available in so many sizes, shapes, and colors.

 

Carry on!

*Men also carry purses but of course they would rather die than call them that in public.  They call them briefcases, backpacks, shoulder bags, satchels, sporrans, pouches, camera bags, or even saddlebags back in the days of the Wild West. They also carry their stuff in gym bags and golf bags.  Just big purses—nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more.

Do you carry a purse?  Small, medium or large?

What is the weirdest item you have ever carried in your purse?

If you don’t carry a purse, how do you carry anything with you?