Page 27 - A Visit with Bill Daye, Painter

ISSUE : Issue 30

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1981/12/1

patch here and there. And he used to come occasionally, 2 or 3 times through the sum? mer with his little monkey. He'd play the little orgah tunes, and the people would give him a dime, or whenever the monkey came up to the door they'd give him a few pennies or something. That's the clothes they wore those days. And they had long hair hanging down. And there was never a railing on that front step. That was the way it was made, the way it stayed. It's marked on the back where each house was lo? cated and who built them. n This is the Constantine School, up at Ash- by Comer. This was where Jimmy Moore used to drive the Butternut bread wagon. And there was a water trough at the corner, right where that is, and the horses used to stop there to drink. And all the school? children used to have a drink. I often had a horse on one end and me on the other. The horse and the water was clean, circu? lating and going down all the time, run? ning through. This is going to be de? stroyed any time now; they re going to tear this down. It isn't safe--there's something wrong, something the matter with it. Maybe not big enough or something. So when I heard that I said, I've got to go up and paint that. And I went out to see this Jimmy Moore--he lives out by the K- Mart--and I got a photograph of his horse and wagon. And he was getting in the wagon, and you couldn't see the horse, only part of him, the sun was shining, I could hard? ly see anything, but I got enough of the wheels--and I've seen the wagon so many times--to finish the wagon. But this was on it, this fellow with the bun of bread, the Butternut Boy, and Jimmy there. Now this one, the horse and coal wagon, the dump cart they called it--you ever see a dump cart? Well, now I couldn't find one and being's how I hauled coal myself, I said I've got to paint it. And I went down Number 20 mine and I made a painting of the coal mine. There was nobody around with a horse, a wagon'like that, so I found out that a man out in Dutch Brook, a MacSween man--I mounted a double-headed calf for him one time, calf bom with two heads--and he said, "I had, Billy, one of those dump carts," he says, "and it's years and years," he says, "and it's up at . • ,-'??'?' 'Simk wm the end of the farm there over the fence." He showed me where. "And it's likely to be buried in moss today," he said. And I found a few sticks of it, and I raked away all the moss and found the spokes. I counted the number of spokes in the wheels. I had a tape measure and a tablet with me and a pencil, and I got the description of the whole cart right to the inch--from pieces. And that's how I got the picture of the dump cart. Boats and wharves and lobster pots and all that--I don't care for that. I've got to paint something that really exists and has got something behind it and that's worth painting, you know. (A lot of people do paint....) That's all they paint; a flower, or some roses, or a lake or some trees or some lobster traps and fishing boats--you see that everywhere. I could paint that all day long. I've got no interest in it. Timmons Barnyard. (I guess this is the one that really shows where the taxidermy came in.) It sure does. You take all those birds. They all have a different posture, you know. There's one sort of beast, there's another sort of beast--there's two roosters going to fight, here's two goats, those are sheep, and there's a pigeon-- and there's a blue pigeon there some- wheres--and that's ducks, cows--that's a sheep and that's a sheep--and that's a ram--and two.more sheep, and a pony, and a crow. And when there's a crow on the

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