Chapter 24: Green and Creamed
8 July 2001 The end is near.
| The Beast, in the garage, ready for painting. |
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In the week immedately following the previous chapter, I finally got the Beast painted. Everything is changed, the whole vehicle is completely transformed. But I gotta tell you, getting there wasn't a non-stop barrel of yuks.
This story starts back when I got the Beast back from the body shop in Stockton. I asked what they wanted to paint it, and it was something like $1500. Good. Well, it gave me the opportunity to cast around a bit for a deal. The range of prices I got were typical, from a high of $3000 to a scary-cheap $450.
The problem here is the fact I want to keep the Panel on the road. If I keep tooling around in the Beast in it's naked primered state for any period of time, I could expect a number of bad effects, like scratched paint, fading and rust-through. You just can't get primer, especially filler-type paint, wet at all; it traps moisture and promotes corrosion. In the two weeks or so I had the truck in San Francisco I was seeing it start to happen: the horizontal areas on the roof and fenders were starting to get reddish in spots, which forced me to sand and paint a few problem areas. So I didn't have the luxury of time.
Unfortunately, another thing I didn't have was a luxury of cash. I had to get it done cheap. the first thing I considered was doing it myself. I have the spray gun, the compressor, and a big yard in the Valley to do it in. It would be the all-out cheapest way to get the job done. But as well-prepared as I was, I don't think I'd do a good job, and it's be a hard-core, major league bummer if I screwed up the paint job after so much time and effort. I had replaced a fender on the wife's Cherokee a few months previous; I got the matching metallic paint on just about right, then sprayed on some clear topcoat and completely botched it. So it seemed smart to give the job to a shop, and stick to housepainting. I'm still going to paint the interior, though, because I can do it a section at a time and still have it turn out good.
So I was agonizing about this with my family, as ever sympathetic ears to my caterwauling. Should I wait? Should I just go for it and get it done now? In the Bay Area, or the Valley?
Loni, my mom, finally put it in perspective: "Just get the truck painted now. If you don't like it, you can always have it repainted later."
Yeah. YEAH! Sometimes, a fresh perspective is all that's needed.
9 July 2001 I spent the night getting the Beast ready for an inexpensive paint job. The trick with this, in my estimation, is to take as much prep work out of the hands of the painters as possible. This will allow them to concentrate on doing a good job spraying, and less effort masking and prepping. I assume the place I'm taking it to makes their money on high-turnover business, so it would completely behoove me to take on the prep work. So I removed the grill, headlamp buckets, the bottom part of the front body (the part that goes under the grill), bumpers and sunshade. Each of these parts I marked with tape and a big "G" for green or "W" for white. I also carefully marked the paint demarcations for the sign panel with squares of masking tape.
| How it looked when I picked it up at the body shop. |  |
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10 July 2001 Got the stripped-down Beast to the paint shop by mid-afternoon. When I got it there, I removed the items needed to get it there safely: rearview mirrors, taillights, marker lights, license plates. David, the shop manager, was clearly pleased to have something as unusual as a 1956 Panel in the shop, his typical customers being cab companies and folks who don't mind having thier dents painted over. As uneasy I felt about having the paint done by the proverbial lowest bidder, I felt I had done all I could to make the painting literally fool-proof. We'll see in a few days.
14 July 2001 A BIG day. At 2:00 on this particular day, Eileen and I are hosting The Clambake, our once-a-year house party. (It's called the Clambake in deference to Eileen's Maine roots and my fondness for lobster. The first three Calmbakes indeed featured decapod crustacean as the culinary centerpiece (#1, whole Maine lobster; #2, Dungeness Crab; #3, lobster roll). This year, for a much-needed change of pace, we did iit Tex-Mex style, skipping the seafood for barbecue. We've spent the better part of the week cleaning, shopping, buying stuff, and generally running ourselelves ragged.
In harmonious compensation for this extra work during my off-hours, The volume of work at work totally took off, with more and more to do every day, until Thursday night I actually called my boss and told him I was pissed off and worn out. I guess I was a little tired.
Of course, the night before the party David calls me to announce the truck is done. Come and get it. We close at noon on Saturdays. I got a lift down to Third Street and picked it up.
The Beast was indeed ready to go, parts painted and ready for re-assembly. They did a pretty good job-- All things considered. The body of the panel delivery was done well: good coverage all over, some places a little orange-peel rippled, in other places mirror-smooth. No drips, bubbles, or thin spots at all. The sign panel paint demarcation was neat and straight.
In other places the job wasn't so hot. The grille was heavily oversprayed, with lots of runs and drips. There were hairs in the paint on one of the headlight buckets, and the wheels (which were not guaranteed, but painted gratis anyway) weren't masked when they were sprayed, leaving a good amount of paint on the tires (actually, paint on the tires is no big deal: after a little bit of driving it just cracks and falls off).. As I said a few paragraphs before, I tried to prep it so thoroughly the actual paint job should be as foolproof as possible: I'm a little bit impressed they could find a way to screw it up, even a little.
Don't get the impression I'm dissatisfied, though: Overall, it came out better than I thought it would, considering the cost.
So I get it home, and for some fleetingly sensible reason, I back the panel into the garage.
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The boo-boo. It looks worse
than it is, because of the housepaint.
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SCRAAAPE!
I jumped out, checked the garage door side: nothing obvious. I looked the truck over, and sure enough, on the right rear corner there it was: a shallow crease, a quarter-inch deep, four inches wide and about a foot high, frosted with white house paint. I looked at it, and looked at it, and looked at it, and I started to laugh. I've been told when I screw up this badly I usually release a blood-curdling stream of profanities, not unlike the dad in "A Christmas Story." Not this time. After a few moments, I began to wonder why I wasn't feeling more murderous. I came up with five reasons:
1) I've driven The Beast for two years, with the worst paint job imaginable, and never put so much as a ding in the body. But sure enough, as soon as I get it finished I finally nail it. It's just too damn ironic; in fact it's a damn funny thing, a tale worth telling... here, in fact.
2) It's not that bad. I just crunched up the Bondo already there. (I already asked around, and it'll cost $240 to fix and repaint the fender)
3) I was a little relieved, for I had now hit something. Statistically speaking, I'm not due for another collision for quite a while.
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A few quality phots of the Beast taken on Pier
2 in San Francisco and Treasure Island. For the first time ever on this
website, the four images below can be viewed as either a normal 500-pixel
close-up or as a 1200-pixel REALLY HUGE picture. (Dial-up readers: it
might take about 30 seconds or so to get the big 'uns downloaded)
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4) I didn't pay much for the paint job. I agonized over it before, now I'm profoundly glad I went for cheap. If I had popped for a $3000 two-stage metallic paint job and bashed the fender right out of the shop, I probably would have vented my anger by, I don't know, killing a defenseless animal or something.
5) The Clambake was set to start in three hours. No time to freak out.
So I closed the garage, went upstairs to the kitchen, and started in on party preparations. It turned out to be the best Clambake yet. Guests were very impressed by the Beast, even in it's still-dissassembled and slightly dented state.
15 July 2001 Karen and I spent a good part of the afternoon bolting the Beast back together. Delightfully, we were finally able to add those trim items that have been languishing in boxes on my workbench for many months: The hood ornament, the side spears, the sunshade, the door handle and filler door scratch guards.
When it all finally came together, and we stood back and took it all in, the overall effect was dramatic. Awesome. The dark green body color and creamy white trim balanced and complimented each other perfectly. The intended evocation of a nostalgia through the utilitarian finish worked even better than on the metal model.(The cream-and-green combo wasn't picked totally by chance: They were the livery colors of the San Francisco Municipal Railway from the 1940s to the early 1970s. The late columnist Herb Caen mentioned many years ago how cool and dignified these colors looked on the city's streetcars and trollybuses, in contrast to the current red-and-orange, better suited for at food chain. Even as a kid, I had to agree.) The chrome trim sparkled, just enough of it to keep the emphasis on the clean beltlines and sensual fender curves without dripping in 1950s excess. it looked balanced, dignified and... complete.
Oh, but we ain't complete yet: the interior, windows, upholstery, and wooden bed are still waiting for renovation. There is work to be done, chapters still to be written.