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Since Blake Koehn thought it funny to meet a customer at a motel, it made me wonder " Where are some of the weirest places sign people have had to meet customers at?" The stinkiest place I ever met a customer at was The DEX Co. The took in old pastry goods and made it into cattle/animal feed. To this day, I cannot eat any store bought cupcakes, HoHos, Twinkies etc. I can smell the DEX Co inside the packaging.
-------------------- Signs by Alicia Jennings (Mudflap Girl) Tacoma, WA Since 1987 Have Lipstick, will travel. Posts: 3812 | From: Tacoma, WA. U.S.A. | Registered: Dec 1999
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I told this story before, but worth the repeating...An early sign pal of mine had a job of making a showcard for a funeral home. It was to be set beside the casket on an easel. They picked it up and took it back to the parlor, but noticed a mis-spelling. They called and he had to go back on the day of the viewing to change the mis-spelling. They told him if anyone came in to view the body, to just go back and crouch behind the casket, out of view. Naturally, someone came in as he was with maul stick and quill, acrouching. He said he could almost not resist to start snoring or clearing his throat, but did not.
The scariest one I ever had to do was a Taco Bell in a rough part of downtown Kansas City, 1990. I had to paint the front three arched windows. I finished it up and walked out to the front where I opened up the door to my van and pulled out my 35mm camera with the zoom lens (back before we had digital cameras). Just as I grabbed the camera I heard some pops, like firecrackers. I looked up and one of my windows had blown out. Two men in ski masks rushed out and jumped into a white 1980 Olds Cutlass 4 door and sped off. They drove right by the front of my van. They were fifty feet down the road when I pulled up the camera, pulled out the length on the zoom lens and started taking pics of them getting away, standing behind the door and with the camera between the side mirror and door frame. They sped off.
The TB was a block from the Cop House! 12 cars showed up in a minute! I walked up to the store to look at my ruined window, all shot out. Inside the small older store was what I thought was a big pool of taco sauce or maybe transmission fluid? Laying next to the wall was an old lady with her sack of tacos, dead. Some kid was coming over the counter who was missing one shoe, dead. One of the women workers in the back was singing some gospel song at the top of her lungs! The 50 year old manager was leaning up against the wall with a red dot on his forehead, motionless. Three people had been shot over $85. The cops were everywhere. I gave them my roll of film and told them I had to get the 36 exposure roll back in order to get paid for all the rest of the stores on it. They agreed and in an hour came back with the pics and one shot of the two killers removing their masks in the car, looking at each other and with the tag right below...all in focus, amazingly. Everyone was still there talking about it and the press and many others were mulling around. I did not admit to the newspaper guy that I had the critical getaway pics. Yellow tape everywhere. The detective supenioed me to the hearing and I had to wait for a couple hours inside the quiet courthouse room for witnesses. In came the detective and the DA, who thanked me and said the two had copped pleas and that my pictures had made them plea guilty. He also told me that my name was never mentioned to either of them as the photographer.
Nine years later, the detective did call me to say one of them that was an accessory to the murder had been paroled at Leavenworth, but he had still had no ide who I was. I sold our house and moved to Kansas, a mile away, conicidentally and never head another peep!
Weird enough?
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1552 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
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when I was in college, I picked up a freelance job for a small medical clinic- they wanted some medical instruments illustrated for a catalog- so I met these people at a weird location- the basement of their house. After talking with them for awhile, and handling several "instruments" that looked like torture devices, I asked them what they were used for- they were colonic machines- shoved up people's butts and spray high pressure water to "clean" them out- they did that procedure in their house's basement, because their was no room to do it at the clinic...
-------------------- Michael Clanton Clanton Graphics/ Blackberry 19 Studio 1933 Blackberry Conway AR 72034 501-505-6794 clantongraphics@yahoo.com Posts: 1735 | From: Conway Arkansas | Registered: Oct 2001
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Did you have to paint topless? How were the tips?
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1552 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
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Sewage plant. While the client ate his lunch in the break room. I fasted for days after that. Still get sick whenever I drive past the place. And I do not have a queasy makeup.
-------------------- Jerry Starpoli Starpoli Signs... since 1952
845-795-2438 Posts: 446 | From: Milton, NY US | Registered: Jun 2000
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Now I remember doing a little job at a adult book store. They needed their business hours changed. I went over to take a measurement off the front door. In the reflection of the glass I see a car pull up and a guy get out. I kinda stalled measuring the door. When the guy got to the door, I said "Oh, excuse me, here, I'll get that." I opended the door for him, smiled and said "Have a nice day"! What a perv.
-------------------- Signs by Alicia Jennings (Mudflap Girl) Tacoma, WA Since 1987 Have Lipstick, will travel. Posts: 3812 | From: Tacoma, WA. U.S.A. | Registered: Dec 1999
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Way back in the early seventies before I got married to my ex I was working a billboard crew down along I-95 somewhere south of nowhere South Carolina,....well we got rained out one thursday afternoon just before finishing up some motor inn sign and had to stay over for an extra day to finish up,.... well,...we got up very early about sunrise the next day and finished it up in less than an hour and went to go eat breakfast at one of the local greasy spoons along the expressway exit,...while eating the guy behind the counter takes one look at our paint splattered jeans and such and asks us what we did for a living,....we told him we were there painting signs and he asked in some sort of amazement as if it weren't true "Are you guys really signpainters? " we told yes we were as we had just stated and went on to finish our meal,...well the guy goes over to a phone and makes a phone call and sure enough he comes back over to the booth and asks if we want to make some extra money that day as it was only about 8:30 and we were finished for that day due to the afternoon storm the previous day. we said sure and he gave us directions to a truck stop about 5 miles away at the next exit on the expressway. we pull up to this ramshackle looking truck stop and it looked as though the signs hadn't been painted in at least a decade,..they were faded and chipping off the old metal boxes and in dire need of repair so we figured we were at just the right spot,...little did we know,...well we went in and there was this guy behind the counter and we told him the guy at the diner sent us and before we could finish he asked us "are you guys the sign painters?" to which we told him yes,....well he sends us back thru this door to the snack room and asks us to wait till the owner can get there as he is about a 20 minute comute and we should make ourselves comfortable at the snack bar,...well the "snack bar" consisted of two pinball machines and a pac man machine and a coffee pot with some nabisco cracker display for a quarter. well me and my partner started playing pinball and as we did these two young ladies came in thru a back door and asked if we were the sign painters to which we looked at each other in confusion and answered yes to the seemingly consistant question we were kept being asked over and over,....well they said they had something to show us and asked us to follow them,...well we did and they split us up and took us to two separate rooms in the back of the place and the next thing i know the young lady that was with me started to undress,....three days later we finished up the signs for that "truck stop" and when it came time to collect this Italian looking gumba with a heavy yankee accent asked us how much he owed us for the sign work we had done,...well he was dressed in these double knit bell bottom hounds tooth pants with a double knit pullover with gold chains etc,....he had what was obvious the outline of an automatic pistol in one front pocket and what looked like a half a beer can in the other front pocket,...well I told him we had shared the company of quite a few of his young ladies and their attention and that we usually charged a certain amount for the work we had done,and that he could figure out the difference as I wasn't about to anger the guy with the obvious hardware in his front pocket,..he says here and whips out the "beer can" which turns out to be a roll of hundreds and pays us an extra hundred dollars more than the normal rate we would have charged and says don't worry about the ladies attention we recieved as that was on the house,....turns out the local sign man was also a part time preacher and refused to do work for the establishment,...they guy invited us back as he had three more places along that stretch of expressway just north of florida and he was always wanting to find a a good sign painter as the locals didn't want to be seen working for him,...we told him we would if we got back down his way but never did as the old metal boxes he had for signs were chipping and peeling fairly badly and I didn't cherish the thought of him becoming an angry customer with paint inevitably peeling off his signs,....I never thought in all my days,I would be able to say because I was a sign painter I could stay three days at a cathouse and get paid for it,...
then there was this "juice bar" that wanted some murals,....seemed they couldn't serve alcohol because the ladies danced in the nude,...but thats another story,.....
[ August 15, 2011, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: Tim Barrow ]
-------------------- fly low...timi/NC is, Tim Barrow Barrow Art Signs Winston-Salem,NC Posts: 2224 | From: Winston-Salem,NC,USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Chicken feed processing plant. The place is out in the middle of nowhere and the directions included the statement "You'll smell it before you see it" It was the foulest, rottenest smelling place I've ever been. I threw up on the loading dock (much to the delight of the non-english speaking employees) and fought back tears the whole time I was there. Got the measurements and could not leave fast enough. Went home, threw my clothes in the washer and took a long hot shower. The smell wouldn't wash out of the clothes and I used a whole bar of soap washing it off of me.
I refused to go back and do the installation.
[ August 15, 2011, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: Patrick Whatley ]
-------------------- Pat Whatley Montgomery, AL (334) 262-7446 office (334) 324-8465 cell Posts: 1306 | From: Wetumpka, AL USA | Registered: Mar 2001
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