Paint Crew

The year after John Kennedy was killed, I was in my junior year of college and being pressured to join the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity (Fijis for short).  It wasn't so much that they valued my camaraderie as they were sick and tired of me eating and sleeping there without paying for rent, board and dues.  The Fiji house, was on the south east corner of where Alumni Ave and Campus Road intersect, directly across from the main entrance to the college.  The college had only four fraternities.  The other three each had a dominant characteristic that applied to almost every one of their members - the athletes, the preppies and the suck-ups.  There were some exceptions but not many.  The members of the Fiji house were best described as the lunatics.

Steve Peters was one of the reasons I liked spending time at the Fiji house.  Peters, a minister's son, had grown up in Burlingame, California and like a great many of Occidental's students had been student body president of his high school.  However, Peters was not enrolled at the college.  He had come down to visit a friend of his who was a Fiji attending the college and stayed at the fraternity house for the weekend.  A smashing good time was had by all.  Years later, Peters never having left, was still living in the house, neither a fraternity member nor a student, while his friend had long since graduated and moved on.  Peters was special, everybody loved having him around.  He had a unique sense of humor, a great laugh, and being in his mid twenties, he often succeeded in redirecting energies to avoid disaster at critical moments.  Peters also had narcolepsy.  You could be having a conversation and his head would suddenly droop and he would be completely out cold.

Peters paid rent to live in the Fiji house and worked mostly at night repossessing cars.  Living in the Fiji house with thirty five other maniacs proved practical as Peters could usually find at least one us who was clamoring to go with him on a repo run at 2:00 am.  Repo with Peters was really exhilarating.  Cruising the streets of Los Angeles in the wee hours made it seem like you were working under cover in a B movie with Mickey Spillane.  It could get tense at times but none of us were ever shot at.  We would get so worked up that when we made it back to the house around sun up, no one could sleep except for Peters, of course. 

A high school kid working door-to-door in Highland Park selling magazine subscriptions, came to the Fiji house, and walked straight into the large downstairs living room as the front door was always left wide open.  Peters proceeded to order just about every magazine the kid had to offer.  Ladies' Home Journal, Life, Reader's Digest, on and on, well over twenty.  Peters never told anybody about it.  Soon the Fiji house was flush with magazines and bills began to arrive addressed to a Mr. Hugh Chardon.  The bills were ignored and the magazines kept coming.  Then one day an envelope with a bright red stripe came in the mail , was ignored and left unopened on the coffee table in the living room.  We all knew what it was but no one had any interest in taking responsibility for it.  A day or so later, Peters walks into the living room and spots the envelope and asks, "what's this?"

Jerry Wilson, the fraternity treasurer, answered.  "That's a bill for all the magazines that some smart ass signed up for.  We didn't order them so I'll be damned if I gonna pay for them".  Peters picked up and opened the envelope and read aloud, "Your account is past due, failure to bring your account current will result in cancellation of your  subscriptions and referral of your account to a collection agency ". 

Wilson groaned, "Like we give a shit if we never see another issue of The Ladies' Home Journal".

Peters said, "I'll handle it".  He took a pen and printed on the bill in huge letters:

I paid this damn bill, Hugh Chardon

He put the bill into the return envelope, licked and sealed the flap shut, tossed it to Wilson and said, "That oughta hold 'em for a while"'

Wilson didn't say a word.  He didn't have to.  He was wearing that Cheshire cat grin of his that always made you slightly uncomfortable.  He could not have been more pleased.

The next letter that came from the magazine subscription firm and apologized profusely for the misunderstanding, deeply regretted any inconvenience they may have caused Mr. Chardon.  They valued Mr., Chardon as a customer, and added two more magazines to the account free of charge. 

The magazine subscription people and Mr. Chardon (Peters and Wison) went back and forth for months.  They rejoiced with each communiqué coming or going but didn't bother to tell anybody else.  If you weren't there when they opened the mail, you'd still be wondering, "What's with all the magazines?"

Having seen such a shrewd display of stealth and anonymity, I approached Peters with an idea that I was pretty sure he would like.  The Fiji house looked like it had once been a large expensive two-story private home that at some point had been renovated to accommodate thirty five juvenile delinquents. The house's foot print was probably 60 X 40 feet.  There was a sun porch on the second floor that faced the street and ran the full sixty feet length of the front of the house.  Serving as a railing for the porch was a six foot high solid wall that ran the full length of the porch and was the house's most striking visual element. 

I recommended to Peters that we pretend to go on a repo run, return after everyone had gone to sleep, paint the wall royal purple (the Fiji signature color), and act as surprised as everyone else when it is discovered the next morning.

Peters went for it in a big way.  We drove his pickup to 50-50 Hardware on York Boulevard to buy the paint and supplies.  The hardware store is still there but the name has changed to Do It Best Hardware which of course for a business name pales in comparison to 50-50 Hardware.  The meaning of 50-50 is unclear.  The store is located between Avenue 50 and Avenue 51 and is next to the hip coffee shop that opened a couple of years ago and is credited as being the symbol for the recent gentrification of the surrounding neighborhood.  The building's address is 5040 York, so nothing appears to line up with 50-50.

Peters was aware that the fraternity had an account at the store and planned to charge everything to the Fiji House's account.  We told the guy that waited on us we needed two gallons of quick drying royal purple paint and rollers.  He mixed the paint for us, Peters signed for it, and we were all set.

We waited for Friday night and hung around until most everybody had gone to bed and drove away to support the repo run story.  We returned about 2:45 am and snuck through the house to ensure that every one was asleep.  Peters took the ladder from the back of the house and used it to paint the base of the wall.  I stood on the porch and reached over the wall to paint from the top down.  We worked quietly and neatly, did a really good job. and finished just before the sun came up.  We put the ladder back, loaded up Peters' pickup and drove up to the art building and parked.  We were 150 yards away from the house.  The sun would be coming up behind us and we had a straight-on view of the front of the house.

When the sun light first hit the house Peters and I were stunned.  The freshly painted wall across the entire front of the house was a definite statement which is what we wanted.  However, the color was not royal purple but rather a ludicrous, blindingly-bright, tear-your-eyes-out lavender.  We had painted at night with never enough light to get an idea of the actual color.  With the morning sunlight directly on it, it looked like a giant 6 X 40 foot neon sign – it was a real ball buster.

The first Fiji up on Saturday morning was Mound.  That was his nick name because he was from Wagon Mound, New Mexico.  I never knew his real name.

Mound had a geology field trip that day and needed to get an early start.  As Peters and I watched intently, Mound walked up to the front of the porch, did a big yawn and with arms outstretched, brought his two arms down and placed his hands on top the freshly painted  lavender wall.  Mound was looking straight ahead and then his gaze moved slowly down until the front of the wall must have come into view.  He immediately thrust his head forward to get a better look at the wall.  Then he began yelling and running back and forth along the wall as he started to realize that the entire wall had been painted this vulgar grotesque shade of lavender.

His yelling brought more Fijis, many of them desperately hung over, out onto the porch as well as out onto the front lawn where they would look up at the unholy lavender stripe, put both hands on their heads and fall to their knees.  No written description could ever do justice to the scene as it proceeded to unfold.  Peters and I laughed so hard we both had trouble trying to catch our breath.

Peters and I never told anybody that we did it.  The monthly bill from 50-50 Hardware had to eventually come to the house for payment.  Of course when the treasurer, Jerry Wilson, saw that Hugh Chardon had signed the receipt, he probably could hazard a guess.