A chapter from “An Artist’s Story,” the life story Lee wrote in his eighties. In his words, as he wrote them.

The artist’s existence is a mosaic of memories: He lives in the hope of becoming a memory. I would like to dedicate this work to all those who tolerated me, encouraged me to write and paint. One person in particular, Lois who afforded me eighty-three years of comfort and understanding and helped me to have a richer awareness of life.

I have to apologize to the reader who knows that I have an old age habit of repeating myself even as I paint and write. I have painted a thousand barn scenes and I hope to do many more.

I believe that art should involve remembrance and I like to make paintings of these memories. I truly hope that people will enjoy what they see and read.

I have seldom put a date on my paintings it’s not because I am careless, I just have a feeling perhaps when I ignore time it’s my secret method of delaying aging. I am thankful for having lived so long.

Many of my 50 years of painting old barns I have a feeling about them that is better put by Eric Sloane in his book called, “American Souvenier”. He wrote that, “he has a spiritual feeling about his subjects even after a building is in ruins there seems to be something still looming above a dead foundation”. He said that, “places can assume character, certain old barns can have a haunting historic quality”.

I know what he is saying in his writings, I have felt this way time after time. I have walked into an old barn and smelt the rotting hay like a perfume in the air. Seen old farm equipment long in disuse and they have a beauty all their own. When I paint I like to paint a mood, not just a thing, and sometimes I can find beauty in strange places. In clouds and skies, even storm clouds and yes in an old outhouse.

Sometimes the unusual happens when I am painting, I have heard them called “happy accidents” and sometimes when I paint I am waiting for something to happen beyond my ability. A splash of paint, a slip of my brush, a mix of just the right color, this has happened many times when I am painting in shadows (using Payne’s gray) and I get surprised at what appears on my picture. I love to listen to good background music while I am painting and I listen by the hour to a good symphony orchestration.

I had a good Christian friend who was a farmer that lived near Bryon, Ohio. He handed me a 12x14 piece of barn slate and asked me to paint a picture of his farmhouse. It was fun to do this for him. Ralph Culler raised pigs by the hundreds on a good flat land farm that he inherited from his father.

Ralph was not only a good hard workingman he also loved the Lord. He told me that he never climbed on his tractor that he didn’t say a prayer of thanks for what the Lord had done. He died quite young of cancer and went straight to the lord praising him all the way.

This little piece of barn slate started me on my way to a wonderful world of satisfaction in painting memories. I have had a lot of joy in painting signs for people too and other keepsakes.

I started out painting old barns that Lois and I have taken pictures of as we traveled throughout the U.S. After we sort of slowed down in our travels and stayed closer to our home in Davison, I paint pictures now that are within a short distance of our hometown. I get great pleasure from old pictures of historical buildings that are now mostly gone.

I am not sure if we laugh less in our old age or whether there is not much to laugh at maybe we age quicker because we don’t laugh the way we used to. I love a good story from long ago. Here’s one that I like to tell during my slide presentations that I sometime do to show other people their memories. Here is the story……

Long ago there was a young farmer who went a courting a pretty girl who lived some 8 miles down the road. He would stay beyond her folk’s curfew hour for just one more kiss and thus he left her house very late one night walking cheerfully down the road to his home. He knew when he left her home that it was going to rain and rain it did. It was and old fashioned thunder storm with lightening and thunder a plenty. He was wet clean through even before he decided to take the short cut through the cemetery by the old church. So he left the road and had not gone far, then in the total darkness of this storm he fell into a deep open grave, and for the next hour he tried with all his might to claw his way out of this wet slippery clay pit. No matter how hard he tried he could not reach the top. The rain and thunder did not lessen so he turned up his collar and pulled his felt hat down over his eyes and squatted down in the corner to wait his fate.

Within a few minutes low and behold another guy fell into this same open grave. He had not hit the bottom for more than a second and he started the most feverous effort to reach the top but try as he might he couldn’t make it. Just then the first guy said, “you’ll never get out that way”, “HE DID.”

This story just shows you what a little persuasiveness will do. You sometime just need the right motivation.

I have never taken much stock in art lessons per say. I did take one class at the Flint Art Institute under the tutelage of a teacher by the name of Duvandeck. I was not an enthusiastic student. He had very little motivation in his teaching and I learned absolutely nothing from his instruction. He moved on and became a rage in the impressionist’s art field. Ha! Ha!

When one reaches the age of retirement it’s much easier to become a painter. I now have the time.

Many of my paintings that I first made I would give them away as a present and every once in a while I would run across one that I wish I had destroyed. I am happy to say that what I paint today is nothing like some of my first work. I truly hope that my viewers can see an improvement over the years.

I paint most all of my paintings on slate roofing that I find on the old roof of barns in Ohio. This barn slate is much thinner than house slate and just as durable. This type of slate came from Upper New York State by barge many years ago. Throughout the farm country in Ohio there is an abundance of old abandoned barns that have beautiful slate roofs. Many of them are still standing because the slate roof preserved what was underneath.

After a thorough cleaning and scraping away dirt and loose particles of slate they then become the medium that I like to use. It’s also cheap and not too hard to come by. I have to admit though they tend to become heavier as I get older.

Often people ask me how long it takes to paint one of my pictures and I tell them 83 years. I put everything I have into it. Ha! Ha!

I think that being a painter is more a way of living, to learn art is to learn a way of life. I think one should become a man first and be an artist later. Will Rogers put it this way when he said, “if a man ain’t nothing else, then he is an artist. It is the only thing he can claim to be that nobody can prove he ain’t”.

Many “works of art” are more an invention than art and some galleries exhibit inventions instead of art. I was once asked to judge a show of Senior Citizen art pieces. Out of some 35 paintings I could only find one that looked as if the artist had used real paint and a brush, of course I gave that painting first prize. I found out later that this was the only painting this person had ever made but had submitted it often at different places, hoping for a first place prize. That may have been the reason that I was never asked to judge an art show again. Oh Well!

I remember when I was young there were heroes. The world was full of them. One of mine was Douglas Fairbanks Sr.. Another was Roy Rogers; I think that Lindbergh was one of the last American heroes. Today even the astronauts are quickly forgotten.

Today there seems to be only some seven- foot tall basketball player who children look up to. It helps if he is white or black and makes 10K a game. I don’t think they are good heroes for today’s times. Children need a good hero these days. I have another thing that upsets me no-end and that is the material sent abroad into other countries that is supposed to ‘Represent American Art”. Much of it is very offensive such as junk art and the kind of movies we send overseas. This does not represent the American people as a whole.

Well….there I go preaching again. I should get back to my Life story. Ha! Ha! One last word about this and I will quit my preaching. I strongly believe that the National Endowment For the Arts should have been done away with many years ago.

Once upon a time there was an old railroad station that was located at the corner of Main and the Canadian National Railroad line that runs through our town of Davison. This station was believed to have been built in 1871 but no one seems to know for sure.

The depot had two separate waiting rooms one for women and the other for men. There was a bay window under a tower that the telegrapher could observe the passing trains. During a typical 24-hour period in 1889 as many as 35 trains would go through Davison.

The depot was the hub of the city it was known as the action center. Here the young could watch with excitement, as the passenger trains would fly through town. Some of these trains did not stop on a regular schedule and for passenger service it was necessary to flag the train to stop.

The railroad changed hands many times through the years, going from the Port Huron, Lake Michigan Railroad to the Lake Huron Railway Company, to the Peninsular of Michigan. Eventually it became a part of the Chicago and Grand Trunk and later it was consolidated with the present Canadian National Railway Company.

I became interested in this station some years ago and I have been happy to be able to paint it many times for people’s memories. The picture shown here is my favorite.

There were many large farms around the city of Davison. I think that I have painted most of these buildings over the years. One of my favorite barns has always been the William Sommer’s barn. He was the last farmer to use these buildings and they were very picturesque and had an unusual silo that people would slow down to see. It made me very sad to see this old landmark go the way of all the rest.

This farm was first owned by Alvin S. Austin who built the house and barn many years before, having inherited the property from his grandfather who I believe acquired the land from the U.S. Government as pay for his Civil War service.

When Bill Sommers bought the farm in the early 1900’s he painted his name over the previous owners name and as the years went by the word “Endwell Farm” began to fade away. What a shame. Alvin S. Austin wanted his farm to “end well” but it did not. As the years went by it fell into a picturesque state of disrepair and was finally torn down to make room for some ugly modern poll building that will not outlast the builder who put it together.

Whenever you came to Davison and crossed the railroad by the depot you immediately saw the tallest landmark in town and that was the Grain Elevator. It was built in 1894. It was a tall structure covered with corrugated sheet metal and painted gray. Except for brief periods of equipment failure this elevator operated for 100 years.

The Wickes Corporation purchased the business in 1954. They brought wheat, corn, oats, soybeans, and many beans that were grown by area farmers. They cleaned and graded the grain and beans and then shipped them out by train to other terminals. This elevator handled 100,000 bushels a year. It required 11 full time employees to haul this much produce. Many young men got their first paying jobs at this old elevator.

Many of Davison’s residents still fondly remember this old gray giant. It is interesting to note that many pictures of Davison in the old days look as if they were taken by a photographer flying in a plane, when in reality they were photographed from the highest point in town and that was from a window in the very top of this old elevator.

There was an earlier elevator that sat just south of the gray giant it was built by John Cartwright. It was a smaller operation and was called a “one-horse out-fit” since it was powered by one horse and a very old one at that.

Many women worked at the elevator in those days. There was a small room on the 2nd floor that had a lot of windows where the women could sit around a moving belt and they would sort beans by hand picking out the bad ones as the flow of beans went by. This was all hand and eye work and the pay was the kind that you didn’t get rich on, you just got by. Many women took advantage of this pay even though it was below the norm it did help to sustain many families in town.

All conversation stopped when a train would fly by this grain elevator because it sat very close to the railroad tracks.

Over the years I have been able to paint many of the buildings in our town of Davison. I have tried to gather the recollections of people who lived in or worked in many of these places in town.

There was a small building that was known by most everyone during the early years of our town. It was known as the Hills Candy Store and Library. It was located just north of the depot and facing Mill St. This was one place in town that young ladies could safely frequent. It was a small white building with the door facing Mill St. and a large roof over the sidewalk to the west where people could stop and stand during inclement weather. Just next door to the east was the Harmony House so this was a very exciting part of town. This first library was in operation in 1898 and became a fashionable place to gather on Saturday afternoon.

Dr. Frank Woolley bought the building and had it moved to Mill and Lapeer St. and I remember it very well as it served as an office for Dr. Woolley our long time veterinarian.

Now this little building is part of Davison’s Historical Fourth St. and once again a place where many young people can enjoy the old things of years ago.

Here is a picture of this busy building as it was many years ago. I am sure that many of my readers will know from the way I write that I am an old “Grandfather”. Well that may be true because I do give a lot of thought to the way things were when I was a child.

Some people may call this “nostalgia” and think that perhaps it is a disease but it’s not. I think it’s something like “home sickness” but I don’t want to go into the past completely, I want to remember just the good part.

The way things seem to move so fast these days the past seems to get further and further away. I think that we may have enjoyed ourselves more back then than we do now. We were more content at least I was when I was young and had less. How could this be? I am not sure but I think it has to do with contentment.

We are bomb barded with the printed word, magazines, newspapers, radio and most of all television. I have to confess that I have a secret desire to move someplace where I would be able to do without T.V.

You see the problem is that we are led to believe that we should “eat more”, play more, have more fun, and many people think this is the great recipe for contentment. Well it’s just not true. True contentment has a lot to do with our past and how we look at it. We are the richest nation in the world but we have become the most wasteful, we used to save things that were useful now we “through-it-out-the-window” to liter the roads and streets and no one stops to pick it up. Somehow we always forgive ourselves with the excuse that we can afford this wastefulness. “Let someone else pick it up” is our motto as we speed along the expressway. Well here I go again. I seem to like to get out my “soap box” Ha! Ha! I guess I’m getting old.

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for the good things in this life but there were certain things in the past that were good too, but seem to be lost in today’s busy life. One of those was call “thrift”. We seem to have the universal idea that we can spend our way into prosperity and out of recessions and to “save a dime” is a way of the past.

We live in a confused time. It was interesting to hear some people grope for the words to explain patriotism during the 9-11 catastrophe. It seemed to be easier to explain ones belief in America years ago than it does in today’s “gimme gimme” world. Many of the basic philosophy of our past just seemed to have been forgotten.

My dad always said, “if it’s a quick decision you want the answer is no”. He said quite often, “I should take a back seat and wait”.

Waiting for something is a lost art. We just hate to have to wait for things to “come to pass”. I have to admit that I sometimes have failed to wait until the time was right to do a certain thing. As I get older it’s easier to wait even at a “slow stop light” Ha! Ha!

We have had lots of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and it seems to us that the growing up process of growing up is running at too fast a pace.

Years ago the growing up process was a slow progression from child to adult. Our children don’t seem to have time to do “nothing” anymore. There is always TV in the morning and more TV at night. It’s hard to get them to sit still so they can be read to. One weeks TV can take up the entertainment that a few years back extended over a lifetime. There seems not enough time to be a child. What a shame.

One other thought, I would like to pass on to you all, “Does it seem out of place to you to watch crime entertainment on the Sabbath? Think about it. Don’t give up your dignity to everyday life. There is an art to adhering to “a time for every purpose” and “to everything a season” and be careful what and when you watch on the TV.

I remember that in the past there seemed to be more humor. The funny papers on Sunday were fun to read and to laugh at. Then something happened, the comic strips were no longer comic, they became just pictures featuring cowboys and gangsters and superman. They were no longer funny. Most of the stories told around the cooler at work were not very funny either and many times were just an embarrassment to the listeners. Today there seems to be a resurgence of clean funny stories on the “Internet”. I hope the trend keeps ups we all need a good laugh.

One of the old time stories that was told years ago went something like this. “There was a young farmer who lived on a small 40 acres of bottom land. He had a small house and a hard working wife, and a mule named “Maude”.

He worked this land with the help of Maude the mule for over 5 years and each year he only made just enough to get by. He never seemed to be able to get ahead.

Then one year the Lord blessed him with an abundant crop and he had more than enough. So he decided to load up the wagon and he and Maude went to town to sell the surplus crop. After a long drive they got there late in the afternoon. It turned out to be easy for him to dispose of everything and for the first time in his life he had some ready cash.

He looked down at his old faded overalls and worn out shoes and decided right then to surprise his wife. So he bought a while new outfit. Shoes, socks, under ware, pants and a new coat and hat. He had them all wrapped up in brown paper and tied with a string and he placed this bundle under the seat of the wagon. He and Maude started out for the long trip home.

About midnight he stopped on the bridge and saw the light in the window and knew that his wife was waiting up for him. The thought came to him that it would be a good surprise to show off his new clothes. So he started by throwing his old things over the bridge rail into the river. First he threw his hat in, then his shoes, next went his old threadbare coat and under ware and he stood there without a thing on.

He then reached under the wagon seat for his bundle of new clothes and low-and-behold someone had stolen them. Without a moments hesitation he sat down on the wagon seat, picked up the reins and said “Get up Maude we’ll surprise her anyhow.

Needless to say the name of this story is Surprise and it always gets a hardy laugh.

I like surprises don’t you? Some are fun but others can hurt.

There are lots of surprises in Art today. All you have to do is look at the new school of modern art such as all black canvases, paper cutouts, soup tins, even plastic hamburgers. I guess that “shock and fad” not only sell, but it seems to be respected. The higher the price of modern art the quicker one will buy it.

Eric Sloane tells the story of Victor Hammer’s definition of modernism in art. Victor tells of a shipload of sardines that was sold and resold a dozen times and with each sale the price of the cargo skyrocketed. Finally, realizing that no one had ever tasted the sardines, the current owner of the shipload opened a can, tasted the fish and spat it out, “phooey” he said, “these sardines are not for eating, they’re just for buying and selling”, I think that modern art is like that. I don’t think it represents the view of the “man on the street”. There have been many fine artists in years past who portrayed the American scene so well but as time went by they were replaced by artists who’s only objective was to be different and to shock the viewer at the publics expense.

One of my past times is to look at the cloud formation in the sky. One of the best places for this is out on one of the great lakes, like 10 miles out on Lake Huron. Sometimes the expanse is breath taking as you can see for some 50 miles or even further. Sometimes the sun will be shimming bright overhead but off to the far south one can see the storm clouds many miles away passing off to the east with no sound of thunder in the storm.

Today’s sky is much noisier than it was even in my father’s time only a few years back. Man has changed the sky and you can often see the marks that he puts on it. There is hardly a day that goes by when you can see a clear sky without the contrails of jet condensation. They tell us that the future holds something even more startling than that, in a few years we may well see high altitude transports leaving trails in orbit that will remain as long as two years as they ever expand. The jet trails that we see today seem to be commonplace. If I could have told my Grandfather about these he would have thought it preposterous. I wonder today if what I see in the sky is just commonplace and should we give it no thought? I wonder………….

I remember one day that Ed my son and I were some 12 miles out in Lake Huron fishing and there was no wind of any kind, the lake was flat like glass. A small bird came flying at us just a few feet above the water and he stopped to rest on the stern of our boat. It appeared that his direction of flight was from Canada and he and come from the east this bird had been flying for many miles looking for a place to rest, (so we thought) however in only a short time it continued it’s flight toward land and stopped to rest again but this time it just sat down on the surface of the water a few hundred feet away. It did not stay there long and with a hop into the air, it was off again flying toward the shore of Michigan. This was the only time we had seen this happen and to this day we do not know what bird it was. He was a good flyer and only needed our boat for a short breather.

A year or two later we had another experience on the lake while fishing for lake trout. The water was very calm as glass without a ripple and we noticed a small bug like a beetle, it was orange and had black spots. The startling thing was the quantity of them, the whole lake seemed to be covered with these small beetles. There were millions and millions of them. We understood later that these small “lady-bug” like beetles had come into Michigan riding on a storm from Canada. They were brought to this country from Asia to help decrease the American Aphid infiltration that has been destroying our farm crops across the country. These, ”Lady Beetles” like to eat any other bug that happens to be sweet and they are eating the aphids but in the mean time they have become as numerous as flies.

When you are camping at the upper end of the thumb it is a wonderful place to be a bird watcher. We have seen many different kinds of birds especially in the spring of the year.

One warm spring day we were sitting in our lawn chairs eating lunch and we happen to notice a large number of birds flying from treetop to treetop. They all seemed to be flying south. Some would stop on the tip of a branch high up in the trees others would keep on flying and stop further on their way. The number of birds in this flock seemed to increase as the day wore on. Until the number of birds passing could not be counted. At closer looking with our binoculars we saw that they were our North American “Blue Jay”. The following day they were still flying by in great numbers and all were going south along the shoreline. None of them seemed to be landing on the ground but continued their leap- frogging flight from treetop to treetop. It was a strange sight and one we will always remember on the shore of Lake Huron.

When I was a boy we would gravitate to any place that had a few inches or feet of standing water. We called them a swamp. There was something about them that made a swamp a thing of beauty.

I remember such a place but it is gone today covered over by a huge automobile plant known as AC Spark Plug. It was located just north of the railroad tracks and east of Dort Highway by the James Lumber Company yards. There were red winged blackbirds and herons. Even in the daytime you could hear the toads and frogs. In the spring the warm water was filled with tadpoles. There were often two or three log rafts pulled up on shore because there was a good supply of railroad ties lying, unused, along the tracks. These rafts if handled right could hold up to two or three of us if we kept pulling it along but if you stopped it began to tip to the heavy side and you would get your shoes wet, if you had any on. As the summer continued on the water began to disappear and soon the old rafts were on the bottom in the mud, waiting for us in the fall and the return of fall rains.

It seems that I have always looked for and often found the little used dirt roads an open invitation. I believe that some day we will set aside this kind of road for use, it may require a toll, but people will drive down this dirt road through shaded glens and over a brook on a wooden bridge. It seems to me that nothing has lessened the beauty of our countryside more than the over use of the automobile and the increase of the super highways. In many parts of the U.S. these super highways are a beautiful part of the landscape. They are clean and not littered with garbage, however here in southern Michigan and further east to other states they have reduced maintenance cost and no longer are able to keep up with the mowing of the meridians. I believe that the increase in the number of open pick up trucks has also contributed to the litter along our roads. Truck owners seem to carry a lot of construction residue in the uncovered part of their trucks and it winds up along the highways.

It’s true that you can make fast time on our super highways but we much prefer the back roads of our country for their scenic views. There is always something on our back road trips that sometimes turn into a pleasant surprise. In our travels we have seen thousands of old barns and there is no building that does not develop some unexpected charm with age. It’s these old buildings that I keep looking for as we travel and every once in awhile we find one that has “character”. These old buildings are monuments to a vanishing way of life. They are speaking to us today more truthfully of the past than the modern architectural monuments that lack originality.

Lois and I have traveled together many miles looking for these old barns with “character” and over the years I have taken pictures of some 500 hundred barns and they are all different but they all have character. It’s interesting that each barn has its own style depending on the local culture where it was built. As you are driving through different parts of the country you can often tell what culture you are in by the style and shape of the barns that are around you.

Here is a story that I like……..There once was a young teenager who was pulling a huge wagon load of hay back to the big barn on his father’s farm. He was not to careful of his speed and at one sharp corner the wagon tipped over and dumped it’s load of hay onto the lawn of the farm on the corner. The man that lived there came out to talk to the young teenager and to see if he was o.k. The boy said he was all right but he was very concerned about his dad. The farmer said he should come into the house and rest and they would plan what to do next. The boy answered that he wasn’t sure that he should do that because he was sure that his dad was going to be pretty mad but the farmer insisted. The boy said all right but he was sure that his dad was going to be upset and very concerned. They went into the house and the farmers wife gave him a cool glass of lemonade and sat him down at the table because they were just about to have dinner and after they had eaten they could give more thought as to what should be done about the over turned load of hay. The boy said all right but he just knew that his dad would not like it a bit and he thought he had better get back home.

The farmer said all right he would go out with him on the way and he asked the young lad “where is your dad anyway?” And the boy said, “he’s under the wagon”.

This is a story that should be called “Discernment” because without it we are a lot like this young farmer who tipped over the wagon load of hay. He is somewhat a fool because “he knows not that he knows not”. We all must reach for “Discernment” and develop the skill of reading character. To see beneath the surface and “size up” the situation it’s like reading between the lines. Learn to use the “Good Book” because there is much “Discernment” there. We can learn to distinguish the fools from the children and the sleeping from the wise. I am sure that many of my readers can agree with these truths. I truly hope that they can.