Little Brothers

Jeremy and David,  1967

It is The Job of an Older Brother to teach a Little Brother The Ways of the World.  Virtually everything a Little Brother knows, he learned from his Big Brother.  It is the Way.  Furthermore, it is decreed that The Older Brother will play a Dual Role:  He is both Protector and Tormentor.  It is also The Way of the World.  I didn't create these rules, I simply abide by them.  I like the Protector Role, and I do a good job of it now.  I don't want to think about the Tormentor, but occasionally David reminds me that I was very good at it.  He says I kept a Rolodex of Tortures to use on him, once the parents left for work, and we were left alone.  He says I was especially fond of "Temple Torture," "The Typewriter," "Knuckles," "Monkey Bumps," and worse.  I have no idea what he's talking about.  I think he exaggerates.  He shows me the scars.

Anyway, the Protector:  Yesterday I spent most of the day creating new Sales and Marketing tools for him.  A leave-behind one-page brochure, new business cards, magnetic door signs, and yard signs for his painting business.  Here are what me and Vista Print came up with:

I won't post his one page brochure, but it makes him sound like a painting god.  Which he actually is.

Anyway, I got 250 biz cards, two magnetic door signs, and two double-sided lawn signs ordered for just over $100.00 bucks.  He thinks I am a whiz.  He could never do that.  But I could never scrape and paint a multi-story, multi-color house or building.  We both think the other one pulls off the impossible.  I think I have taught him well.

Dirty Jobs

A REAL WORKER

David is one of the hardest workers I have ever met.  He's like Mike Rowe on that Discovery channel show called  "Dirtiest Jobs."  There's simply nothing he won't do when asked.  He's a commercial and house painter now, but he spent his youth washing dishes in a diner, then graduated to mucking out horse stalls and corrals, but went on to train polo ponies and work on various ranches.  One of his more interesting jobs was assisting the horse breeders.  His job was the "line up man."  I'll leave that up to your imagination, but yes, it is that gross.  Still, David doesn't shrink from any assignments, and even goes so far as to tell the bosses to give him the worst job, while the rest of us pansies either wail and moan or disappear altogether. 

This picture above is one of my favorites, take a few years ago in Port Angeles, WA.  Here David is as a "Tunnel Rat."  We had been hired by our sister to help remodel an office building for her.  Since that day were pulling Cat 5 network cables, David drew short straw and had to go into the crawlspace underneath to pull them from the network cabinet to each individual office area.  I let him borrow my insulated coveralls and sent him in.  It was not a nice place.  He finally emerged, hours later, filthy and tattered, and told me of squeezing through spaces that a cave spelunker would shrink from.  Where the crawl space was tightest, he said he had to do the "alligator death roll" just to move around.  He looked like a coal miner's daughter's worst nightmare, but we "gotter done." 

After doing the dirty work, David would change into his painter's whites and produce the finest interior and exterior paint jobs you could ask for.  His nickname is "Michaelangelo." 

If I ever have a dirty job that is too tough for me, I know I can count on him to do it.

He's a worker, that Dave

Words and Pictures

Facebook is nice, but it doesn't have the flexibility for posting an image and text together, at least like this blog format does. I have pictures and words to share, lots of them, so I'm thinking I will do that here.

This is my brother, David. He's holding his dog, Bonnie, or Bon Bon. She's a Manchester Terrier, one of those "Honey, I shrunk the Doberman pinscher dogs."

Bonnie used to have a brother, Clyde, a litter mate, but one night, the two of them threw a big ruckus in the kitchen and David let them out.They went out into the dark, barking wildly. A yelp, then silence, and a terrified and trembling Bon Bon came home, traumatized by whatever was out there in the dark. Clyde never came back, and for a while after, neighbors reported that their pets and livestock had been attacked by a cougar. Part of the peril of living in the woods.

Now Bonnie lives in town with our mother, and sleeps on a pillow under the covers with Mom, who strokes her ears every night as they drift off to sleep. If mom forgets, Bonnie will take mom's hand in her mouth and remind her. She still barks wildly at passersby, especially if they are walking a dog, but she does it from the comfort and safety of her rocking chair, behind a big double pane glass.

David has other dogs now, big dogs, like Britta, a German shepherd, and Mollie, a Rottweiler/Mastiff cross, I believe. The big cats avoid those dogs, preferring poodles and bunnies and lambs. Still, I love this picture of these two characters. David is one of my favorite subjects and I have a wide variety of shots of him going back many years. I will post more pictures of David, and stories of our life together. There was a time once, in our life, when I was so mad at David I could have killed him, and nearly did. But today he is my best friend, most ardent supporter, and I can't imagine life without him. He's not heavy, he's my brother.