Gimme five minutes

I am a combat ready painter. I can be dropped behind enemy lines with one or two good men and nothing but a brush and a PO number for Sherwin Williams and I will get the job done. Men who have been wise enough to know this have hired me to work for them. Others, who could not see this, did not last long with me.

Donnie Silver was one of those who could not see this. Donnie already had a crusty old combat veteran in his employ, Old Sam, and he did not acknowlege the genius and talent of Sam who was a legend in Memphis. Sam had worked for everyone as I seemingly had and it was odd that though we had worked for so many of the same people and knew the same painters, our paths had only briefly crossed once. My buddy Kip had introduced us a few years earlier.

"THIS" he said proudly, "is Sammy R!" Kip might as well have been introducing me to the Prince of Bulgaria. I didn't care. Neither did Sammy. Whatever he was doing at the time, he stuck his head up just long enough to say "hey" and went back to doing whatever he was doing.

Sammy hung vinyl for Donnie Silver. Donnie was the biggest vinyl hanger in Memphis and lest he or anyone else forget this fact, he would mention it six or twenty times a day. Silver was branching out into painting and he needed me to help Sam help him become the next biggest commercial painting contractor in Memphis. Part of the deal was, with me being well known in town, I needed to keep my employment on the QT since most of the companies I had worked for knew me and hired Silver to hang their vinyl. Donnie was plotting to take all their painting business away from them and he didn't want to tip his hand and endanger his vinyl hanging business.

The idea of being a top-secret, ninja painter appealed to me for about 3 seconds. The idea of a good paycheck appealed to me a lot longer. I agreed to keep the secret.

That evening, Kip and I were drinking beer on my back porch.

"I've got a new job" I said, "But, it's top secret and, if I told you, I'd have to kill you".

Kip didn't even look up from his Budweiser. He said "Okay".

So, I told him the details.

"You know he's a fucking idiot, don't ya?"

I knew that. I agreed. Kip told me that Donnie had asked him on a job once, while Kip was rolling a wall out, why painters didn't roll side to side. Why do they roll up and down?

This wasn't merely a stupid question. This was insanity. Anyone who has ever painted a wall knows you roll up and down. It is, how you do it. Nevermind there are reasons 'why'. To cut to the chase, rolling sideways is just plain stupid. Try it if you don't believe me. Do it all day. I hope you know a chiropractor and have deep pockets. Next you can check the level of gas in your tank with a cigarette lighter.

Donnie wanted to re-invent painting even though he never exactly said so. He told Sam how to do things. He told me how to do things. Sam had learned to be patient with him. I had not. Bosses in the past had tried to tell me the wrong way to do things and then been kind enough to go away and allow me to do the job right. Donnie intended to be more hands on. The first night I worked for him (Sam could not work nights because he liked to be drunk by supper) Donnie handed me a bag of 5minute quickset, a mudpan and a knife and a map of 20 offices on four floors that had pin-hole divots in them that needed to be filled. I told him that we needed spackle for this. He told me this was "faster". But, it's not, I protested. Humor me, he ordered.

I should have figured out that night that humoring him was what I had been hired to do. He was as serious about tilting at the windmills of commercial painting as Don Quixote but about as prepared for it as well. Five minute mud sets rock hard in five minutes, ergo, the catchy name. It's a powder that you mix with water until you get it just right and then you hurry your ass to use it before it sets up...inside of five minutes. I should have left the building that night and never looked back. The guy had just so complicated a simple task in his quest for speed. He was a nut. And, though it drove me nuts, I got the job done. Donnie was one of those "time is money" guy's that was always looking for a competitive edge to save money no matter what it cost him. I was one of those guys who just needed a paycheck.

I think I lasted two months with him. He continued to have insane "fast" ideas about things that took time to do no matter what. Most of them seemed to be about five-minute mud.

"If they sold one minute mud" Sammy said "Donnie would buy it".

He knew Donnie was an idiot. Sammy knew that quickset dries by a chemical reaction. He and I had both tried to explain this to Donnie but, what did we know? Though we both were experienced painters, neither Sammy nor I were the biggest vinyl hangers in Memphis. Who were we to talk? Donnie always wanted to put box fans blowing on his five minute mud to make it dry faster. Sigh. Until they invented one minute mud, that would have to do. Until then, quickset would not dry by chemical reaction but by fans.

So, I put up with Donnie's insanity because it was like a bad movie that I knew sucked but was still curious as to how it ended. The bad movie ended one night on a job at a bank. Donnie was his usual scatter-brained self. He had two more of his non-painting vinyl hangers on the job and both Bo and The Other Sam were longtime employees of his and thus, over me. Donnie couldn't make up his mind about what he wanted me to do. he had given me 3 different assignments inside of five minutes. You could watch mud dry in that time...

Bo had his ideas as well. Sammy was home passed out. The Other Sam was smoking a joint or slamming a forty. Maybe both. I got a little cranky.

"Hard to believe you've been divorced twice, Ferrerman!" Donnie snickered.

"I don't get along too well with bitches", I replied.

I thought we were gonna go at that. I kinda hoped we would. But that went right over Donnie's head. He was talking marriages and I was talking him. He finally lined everybody out and went off to see a play he did not care to see, with his wife. I'm sure he took the director aside and edumacated him on how to streamline his play. I'm sure he explained to the director that he was the biggest vinyl hanger in Memphis.

Later that even, Bo laid me off, as per Donnie's instructions. I was not unhappy about this. It was the price I needed to pay for not quitting that night two months earlier. I stayed for the end of the movie. I should have listened to the reviews and never walked into the theatre.

Last I heard of Donnie, he was back on crack and booze. His wife had kicked him out. I don't know if the crack or the divorce happened first but, it was all over for him. He had been a bad drunk and drug addict for years before getting straight and becoming the biggest vinyl hanger in Memphis and he's one of those people who are either/or when it comes to vices. Either he stops completely or he goes all out. My buddy, Tim, saw him at his company Xmas party. Donnie was pointed out to him by another painter. The crack diet had cost him some 80 pounds as well as his home and family.

"That's Donnie Silver!" the guy said. "He used to be the biggest vinyl hanger in town!"

This doesn't please me to know this, even now. I couldn't have helped the guy even if I had been there to try. Some people just won't listen. They get too big for their own damn good.

I need to get back into combat soon.