Frank’s Career as Housepainter
by Frank Macdonald
In the spring of 1967 I arrived in Detriot, a hungry relative who had failed to find work in Vancouver, barely worked in Sudbury and had the idea that I would make my way to Boston. I only had enough money to get to Detroit but I had this aunt and uncle, eh?
So I welcomed into Hughie and Greet’s, offered a bed and since I was looking for work to earn my fare to Boston Hughie offered to put me to work painting his house. We agreed on a price and I undertook the contract.
Unfortunately for Hughie, I also discovered that summer all-night television, so most nights I was sneaking off to bed just as he was rising to go to work. Several hours later, Greet would wake me with, “Hughie will home in half an hour,” and I would scurry to the garage, get the ladder and paint and be high on the side of the house by the time he got home.
The flaw in my deception was that I would be high on the same wall of the house just about every day, and Hughie would count the singles that had been freshly painted. Five or six.
The spring moved along and after two or three weeks one side of the house was almost finished. Eventually, probably fearing that I was there for the winter, Hughie presented me with an air ticket to Boston and a few dollars to feed myself when I got there. I might even have promised to come back and finish the house, but I think he asked me to promise that I would not come back to finish the house because he wanted it painted, all four sides in the same decade.
This was just one of a number of trips I made to Detroit as guest of Hughie and Greet, but on none of those other trips was I ever asked to take up a task.
Hughie: Hughie Ferguson
Greet: Greet Macdonald, Hughie’s wife
Characters • Ferguson, Hughie • Macdonald, Frank • Macdonald, Greet • Stories • Storytellers • told by Frank Macdonald | Dave Ferguson December 18, 2006
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By Rose Abril, December 26, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
This made me laugh out loud, “but I think he asked me to promise that I would not come back to finish the house because he wanted it painted, all four sides in the same decade.”