Chagal4's Blog

Well, it was forty years ago…give or take. On Sussex Avenue in Toronto. The second floor with a big picture window overlooking the intersection of two side-streets. The city had installed some of those large round concrete planters filled with dubious greenery and intended to provide a little more pause for thought in drivers who blew through the stop signs, endangering the local children and those too old or too stoned to get out of the way. I heard these things called “road furniture” the other day…and laughed to think about the city employee who came up with that. Naturally the city needed to maintain these road furnishings…they certainly need more attention than a stop sign…and they had these two old boys to do the job. I must have seen them a dozen times before I gave them any thought. When I did, I saw in an instant what a gorgeous job they had. They had a golf cart converted with a box on the back for tools and plants and soil and the other things they needed to keep the planters happy. And they dressed like a pair of gentle reprobates. They seemed to talk incessantly as if on a conversation that had started before their first birthdays and scheduled to continue long after they were gone…which they assuredly are by now. I did several sketches of the guys until one day in October that year…the lighting and the weather was just right. It was as if I could finally really see them…

I lost track of this drawing for thirty years…only found it while digging for something else. Since then it has lived in a folio right here…about a foot from my right leg as I write this. I take it out once in a while and think about framing it…but then I smile at the old boys and put them back in the folder. Blues, August 27…2015 

This entry was posted on August 27, 2015 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.