Color studies, like old photos, bring back memories. Studies of corn stalks take me back to collecting corn stalks from farmers' fields. Looking for those perfect specimens among thousands, hanging them from the ceiling of my bedroom where I painted.

Still in art school I looked for things to paint. Things that were different from bowls of fruit. Broken dolls, dead roses, my dad's vice and table saw. Long before I turned to pretty girls I looked for things I'd never seen paintings of. Painting from life was drilled into my head in art school.

So when I had an idea of doing a large painting of corn stalks, it was either bring the stalks into my bedroom or go out where they grew. No car back then, so when Dad let me take the car for an hour or two I went out and brought things home to “the studio”. Dried up milkweed laid with my sister's broken doll. Pipe wrenches and wild sunflowers fill another canvas.

The gallery in Chicago took them all. When time was short it was color studies I turned to, to preserve the items I had collected. Now I am going through all my little studies and remembering good times, and some hard times.

"JB Reed!" someone would yell out, and we'd put our books down in the snow and grab a handful of it. JB Reeds were semi-trucks that went up our street, and perfect targets for snowballs. Anywhere in the name “Reed” was considered a bullseye. The drivers sounded their air horns and then the sound of snowballs hitting the metal sides of the trailer commenced . Once the semi was out of range, a snowball fight would begin between us kids on the North side of the street and the kids on the South side of the street. Once satisfied and covered in snow, we'd gather up our books and run as fast as we could home. The kids on the South side of the street were bigger and made harder snowballs. Sometimes neighbors made us come back and clean up their sidewalks. They were the same neighbors who made us sing when it was trick-or-treating time at halloween.

In the winter there were the newspapers to deliver, more tossing to do. Some nights, loaded down with papers, you'd get hit by a snowball coming out of the dark - revenge for an earlier hit we made on someone. We delivered the first load of papers and returned home for the second load. Some people wanted their paper delivered to the back door, and it seemed to me they were the ones who never shoveled their walks or driveways. Walt’s Creek marked the end of the route, I would pause there sometimes to take in the scene of snow falling and the almost ink like water flowing around the rocks. Across the last corn field were the orange kitchen windows of the houses on Rural Street. Mr. Walt had planted his last crop of corn, he was now working at the "Q" in the wheel shop with my dad. His corn field would eventually become an extension of Edwards Street put down the middle and new homes built along it. More papers to deliver, but not by my brother or myself. The pumpkin patch would disappear and only empty barns would remain for the next twenty years.

My brother and I would meet up at the corner of Mountain and High St and walk home to our orange kitchen window.

Long Before I Turned To Pretty Girls

Snowfalls in Aurora