Once upon a time in the almost mythical place called California
In an almost mythical village called Redwood City
Was an almost mythical music store called Gelb Music.

And it was good.

Gelb Music was the last store owned and operated by the late Sidney Gelb.
Sidney Gelb had occasion to hire one Norm Van Maastricht as his store manager around 1964.
This guy was pure as the driven snow. Noted for his black suit and black tie he was the epitome of that rare species the “happily married family man”. A paragon of Americana was he, clean shaven, a monthly haircut.

And it was good.

And it came to pass that Gelb Music hired a young Kevin Jarvis as an instructor in things guitar. Kevin became a Teacher and his skill with the guitar increased his fame.

And it was good.

Sidney Gelb announced his intention to retire in 1972 and sold the venue to Kevin Jarvis and Henry White, another instructor in the store.

And it was good

Norm, at this time had undergone a major metamorphis. He found himself single and shortly after the change in ownership of the store decided to grow a beard and let his hair grow.
The suit and tie vanished; less fromal garb was worn and he started to wear a black cowboy hat.
With a feather in it.

Was this good? Let us say it was good.

It came to pass that the building was deemed too bland so an itinerant muralist was hired to paint the building and on the north wall he painted a figure of a bearded thief climbing out of a painted window stealing a painted guitar. The figure was wearing a painted Dutch Boy billed cap.

As art it was mediocre but it was eye catching.

And almost from the day the piece was finished the mantra became “The guy on the wall looks just like Norm.” even though it looked nothing like Norm at all. Norm, at this time, wore a Cowboy Hat With a Feather In It and the mural figure still had his featherless Dutch Boy cap. But still the “It looks like Norm” mantra persisted.

It came to pass that Norm left the store. He became “The Norm” and moved on to the adventure of becoming the de facto manager of a roadhouse of some repute, but that is altogether another story we won’t go into here.

But the wall mural remained there for lo, thirty nine years. Still referred to as “looking like Norm”.

It came to pass, in 2011, that Kevin Jarvis, now sole owner of Gelb Music, decided it was time to repaint the building.
And he had an Inspiration! An Epiphany!

A little conference with the involved parties.
A two minute session with a digital camera

And a new mural appeared on the north wall.
A painted figure stealing a guitar and some amplifiers from a painted window.
A painted cowboy hat with a painted feather and a painted beard.
It looks like, no, it is The Norm!

And it was good…

She came in with a more or less country band, one of those that get thrown together by using people of varying skills and no rehearsals..

She was better than a ‘pretty good’ singer… lovely, confident voice…great fun to work with.  She liked cutting up a little bit, enjoying the moment and always sang with a smile.

Beautiful girl…

It was hard to tell how serious she was about her music because she sometimes had to be cued as to when to come back into the song after the instrumental break. 

If she missed the cue she would just laugh and somehow get things back on track with a little help from the band.

Cameras liked her a lot. 

Very photogenic…

She moved away…
 When I heard she was leaving I gave this to her.  I thought it was a pretty good “Lip and Eye” as I called those kind of renderings…

He was a dancer.

Well, he wasn’t really a dancer.  He didn’t dance professionally or anything like that.  He was just a guy who had learned how to dance along the lines of the Western Swing dancing made popular in the roadhouses of the southwest.

Disco music was “in” when he learned and Saturday Night Fever had been a recent hit.  The Bar also booked some country flavored bands that suited the style nicely.

Men who go to saloons would do well to take up dancing.  It gains them many points and gives them a higher profile on the women’s radar.  He quickly found this out.  He had learned some basic moves and was a strong leader on the dance floor.  Women would ask him to dance because swing dancing, when done properly, was great fun.

He likened it to a trapeze act in which he was the ‘catcher’ and the lady was the ‘flyer’ as he led them through his series of moves.

His partners varied.  Some were good and interacted well.  Some were not and did not.

Some women took the words ‘swing dancing’ too literally and would grip his hand as if they were swinging on a rope over a creek.  Some never quite got the trick of how to hold his right hand properly and he would have to break stride to catch them and keep them from falling.  On one or two occasions he wasn’t quick enough and the poor dears would skid across the dance floor on their backs.  Thankfully, the only injuries suffered were to dignity and ego.

“Hang on and pay attention” he would tell them and off they would go, he and his partner of the moment.  He gained a reputation for his ability to dance and women would seek him out because they knew they would look good dancing with him.  His moves were much easier to follow than the elaborate moves shown in John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever movie and some of the women really jelled with his style.

She was not a dancer…

He had seen her sitting alone at a table looking a little sad on a Tuesday night.  She was a dark haired, pretty girl, with a nice figure and pretty legs.
There was a jazz band playing but no one was dancing so he asked her to dance in hope of cheering her up.
She initially declined, saying she didn’t dance well but he coaxed her up.  “Just hang on and pay attention, Honey.” he said.

Like so many before he led her through the basic moves he used and she quickly caught on.  He liked dancing with her because she was an ideal height and weight for him.  She learned quickly and didn’t make an issue over natural mistakes that happen when learning a New Thing.  But best of all it turned out that she was absolutely fearless on the dance floor.  Her trust in his ability to keep her from falling was almost childlike and they spent more and more time on the dance floor learning communication to such a degree that their connection was almost magical.  They incorporated some of the more strenuous moves from the old jitterbug days…in short they became a dance team.  She lived for their dancing sometimes wearing skirts that would flare out like disks when he spun her.

Dancing is a sensual exercise and on the dance floor they were like two lovers in one of the musicals made in the thirties.  Dancers who  convey this kind of intensity are more interesting to watch.

She got so she was quite demanding and he had to work hard to exhaust her so she would settle down and let him tend to his duties at The Bar.  Once the dance floor filled up they would no longer dance because there wasn’t enough room and they wouldn’t communicate again until closing time.
They grew very close and had love for each other but never joined as a couple.

Inevitably, as it always must happen, she left the carousel that was The Bar.  She left the state, actually and eventually got married and had children.

Every year she would call him on his birthday which was in April and he would call her on her birthday which was in January.  Always they would express their special love for each other and his final words at the end of their birthday calls were “Save The Last Dance For Me” after a song popular in the early and mid sixties.

One year he called and instead of getting her or her husband on the phone, he got their answering machine.  Thinking they were out celebrating the birthday he identified himself and said “Save The Last Dance For Me.” as he usually would.
About twenty minutes later her husband called back and gently told him that she had died a couple of months earlier…  “She just didn’t want to live anymore.” her husband said…

… she was almost thirty…

He still thinks of her almost every day.  Sometimes he thinks he sees her out of the corner of his eye, walking next to him…for some reason she is always barefoot in a summer dress… she is always happy…
and of course he always is reminded of her when he hears the song

Save The Last Dance For Me

_______________________________________________

Paper Dolls by Vann~

Kate Moss…

Popular fashion model of the seventies and eighties.

Thin girl, but one who had a yearning beauty that earned her a lot of money.

This is one of two that I did…side by side on the same piece of 20 x 30 illustration board.  One was a scrub because I had botched something and thought it ruined.  So I did an indetical copy on the available space.  Water color is tricky and treacherous but I somehow pulled it off and ended up with two looking so close to identical that you needed to look closeley to tell them apart.  Great hair for me.  Hair was always a problem for me.

A sharp knife broke up the set.  A guy bought one of them and , (gasp) had it framed.  A friend of mine saw  framed painting on his wall.  “That’s a Vann” his friend said…

Good feeling… someone bought a painting…  Even better to be reckognised…

This is Evelyn Nesbit.

A beautiful, young,  turn of the (19th) century lass.

An in demand artist’s model, she gained fame as one of the “Gibson Girls” by modeling for Charles Dana Gibson a noted illustrator of the day.
She had several affairs, most notably with Stanford White architect of Madison Square Garden.

Sweet little fox worked as a model and a showgirl and in that capacity met and married Harry Thaw.
Harry was very rich, very jealous and just a tad nuts.  He shot ol’ Stanny  in June of ’06  and the tabloids of the day had a feast.

It has since been the topic of several books and a couple of movies.

 
I had a page that had been taken from a dilapidated album that had a pen and ink head sketch of Evelyn Nesbit that is a superb example of the genre.

  Looking about to cry, she has a defiant chin thrust out and an amazing pout. 

Amazing what a person can do with just a pen and black ink!

 
Well, I tried several times to run that over to color and haven’t got it right yet. 
This one came out pretty good…
Gave it to a good friend, a lawyer.  I expected to see it in his office and was put out when I didn’t see it so I got on him about it a little.  I thought he had put her in a closet or his garage or something.
He has it at home, hanging on a wall.

It’s nice to know when they make it to a good home…

She came out pretty well even if her proportions aren’t what they technically should be but, y’know, if I’d presented myself as a cartoonist no one would bat an eye.

In any case she is one of my most delightful efforts.  You can’t help but smile at her happy exuberance.

Like the idiot I tend to be sometimes, I gave her away and when I looked into buying her back I found that she was again given away…

                    >sigh<

No idea where it is now…

It was a hard angle for me to catch facially and she ended up looking more like Marlene Dietrich than Barbara Bouchet who was one of “Bond’s Girls” in a James Bond movie of the day.
The face could have come out better but, overall, it’s a nice pose and a fair looking work.
                                                                    

I believe I made at least four paintings of her.  Some came out well… some did not.

I actually sold two that were based on her.  She is the only real person, as in ‘person I actually knew’  that was the subject in any of the paintings I have actually sold to date.

This is one of my most commented on paintings when people see a photo of it.  It is her head superimposed on a model from an ad I saw in a Cosmo magazine.  She did not actually pose for this painting…I’ve never seen her unclothed.  But it’s a good capture, I think… 

                                                     It’s beautiful, to tell the truth…

                           Even if I do say so myself…

I think she may have it now…
 I really don’t know…

I forgot to ask…

Every painting has a story but some have more story than others…

James Cameron’s TheTitanic came out in 1997 and was, as we all know, a huge hit.
I saw it and I thought the visuals were pretty impressive.  The epic special effects chronicled the historical disaster as best it could, being wrapped as it was, around  a fairly standard Hollywood rich girl/poor boy romantic potboiler.

Others, I found, did not share my cavalier impression of the film.  Some got quite wrapped up in it.  ‘Immersed’ might be a better word.  Some people got so enthralled with the movie one would think they had gone down with the doomed ship.

One of these people happened to be a young woman I’ve known for a good part of my life.  She was one of the Titanic survivors in a manner of speaking.   For some, surviving the movie itself and not becoming a sobbing basket case afterward was it’s own form of surviving the sinking .   

There were a lot of things you could buy centered around that movie and she had more than a few of these…  She was definitely into it.

I was painting quite a bit around that time so it was only natural that I would try to paint her.  She was a pretty lady but she was very hard for me to capture with my brush and paint.  I work from photographs rather than sittings and portraiture is hard for me.  It is doubly hard to do if I know the person being painted well.

I had a certain photograph of her she’d let me copy.  It was of her, taken in one of those touristy photography setup shops where they shoot you wearing costumes, cowboys, turn of the century stuff… you’ve seen them. 

She had donned a Scarlett O’Hara/Southern Belle outfit…. hoop skirt, parasol, hat and gloves…  Her face in the shot fascinated me.   It was almost angelic, a sweet serene expression with a vixenish hint of a smile…  But I just couldn’t catch what I saw using watercolor.  I tried using that face as a model several times with no success.  I had turned out enough failures trying to paint her that she may well have thought I’d never succeed making a painting of her.  I was beginning to think the same thing.

               …meanwhile, back on The Titanic…

There is a scene in the movie where Kate Winslet’s character is laying pleasantly naked on a couch and De Caprio’s character is doing a charcoal sketch of her.   This scene and the resulting sketch got a lot of attention in the movie.  It also gave me an idea.

I didn’t have Photoshop but using my scanner and some voodoo, I got that photo of her face maneuvered onto the movie sketch.  I then ‘cheated’ and used an opaque projector so I could trace the result  to help me block it out on a piece of 20 x 30 illustration board.

I worked on that for about a week but I bobbled the “blue jewel”, a central thread of the picture and the movie both…  I had no idea how to make blue jewels.  I’d never tried to make any color jewel, let alone a blue one.   I reluctantly set the work aside.  I even thought of throwing it away but the face was intriguing even unfinished.  All  I’d had done on it were the eyes and the lips and a vague outline.    You can ruin a watercolor by overworking it so I stopped work on it but kept it around.  I figured I might at least save the face as a painting on its own merit.

  On a whim I used a Polaroid camera and snapped a shot of the unfinished painting.  I scanned that and e.mailed it to my friend  to show her what I had done.

                      Well, that got her attention and she begged me to try to finish it.

Watercolor is touchy folks, particularly if you’re trying to do repair work on it.  You can’t just daub over it like you can with acrylics and oils.  You run a very real risk of losing your paper to agressive wetting as you try to draw off some colors and otherwise try to fix things.  I started with the Blue Jewel because if I couldn’t get a sense of that then the rest would not work.  Some fixes work.  Some do not.

How did it come out? 

Honestly, it has problems because of my lack of training, but my friend was thrilled.
She was pleased so if she was pleased I was pleased…

I somehow had managed to rescue the blue jewel and in so doing salvaged the painting.    I don’t think I could do that photo of her face any better justice than what I have here.  My friend has a bit more endowment going for her than Kate Winslet had but that just requires extra attention.  One does what one must do…

             I’ve known her a long time, now that I think of it…  

                 which has nothing to do with the painting. 

                            Or the story…

                 the painting is signed, as they all are…

Paper Dolls by Vann…

                                                                              
                                                          The Great Bengal Pack-In

     When The Bar first opened the surface of the bar didn’t have any special construct at the waitress stations beyond the polished brass stanchions designating each of the two stations or “stalls” as they were sometimes called.  Even those were not original, but “after market” add-ons.

     As on all well designed bars there was a solid strip of molding about an inch and a half high running along the edge of the bar on the customer side.  This was a ‘spill rail’ intended to keep accidental spills from drenching the customer.  This same rail required the waitress lift their trays up over the obstacle as they took out their orders because when Brunswick originally designed those bars waitresses were a rare thing.  No provision was made for someone sliding a trayload of drinks around and off the bar.
     This problem was relieved somewhat by two rectangular trays inverted and laid side by side but neither the bartenders nor the waitresses liked this arrangement.  The trays slid around and the girls still had to lift their trays over an inch of rail to get into the fray.  But that’s what they had and that’s what they had to work with.

     When The Bar first opened T.O. only had your basic television hookup.  Nothing fancy.  A 21 inch television at each end of the bar and a basic cable hookup.  The relatively small satellite dish of today did not exist in an affordable form in the latter part of the twentieth century.

     To generate more business T.O. decided to invest in a big screen and a projector.  He knew very well that most of his male patrons were sport junkies and there was money to be made catering to the NFL broadcasts.  The San Francisco 49ers were just starting their Golden Era under Coach Bill Walsh and T.O. was one of the first to locally put in a projector to capitalize on this. 
     His first projector was a heavy, cumbersome, mobile floor model which proved to be difficult to set up for each use but at the time it was ‘state of the art’ and was an impressive hookup indeed, particularly in a small town bar of the day.  Later on he wisely installed a ceiling mounted version.  This was much easier to operate since it did not need delicate positioning and focusing each time it was turned on and eliminated the shadow block made when someone walked in front of the floor model.  But for this part of the tale, he still had the floor projector.

     It is 1981 and after years of mediocracy, the Forty Niner’s are on a roll.  Bill Walsh has the magic chalk when it comes to diagramming plays on the board and in the field and he has a team made of men that were the stuff of legends.

     I was personally ambivalent about football…I was ambivalent about any major sport actually, having grown up in a home where other things were more important than athletic prowess.  I wasn’t very vocal about it.  Because, in a saloon, sports means an opportunity to make money.  Even a sports know-nothing like me knew that, particularly when it came to football, a certain type of madness descended on the nation and held it firmly in its grip. 

     Sunday football games made good money for the bar on a day when not much money normally came in.  Sunday, after all, was for most, a time to rest and quit what Satchel Paige called “the social ramble.”  The football madness would not be denied, however and T.O. was determined to encourage it and profit from it.  His big screen was one of the few in the area.   The Bar was  ready for Game. 

     It paid off well.  They came, they drank, they ate, the went home.  And the next Sunday they would repeat the cycle.  T.O. had chosen an auspicious year to focus on the football season.

    As the Forty-Niners chances for the Super Bowl improved the crowds got bigger   A taste of victory was in the air.   

    There was a crucial Must Win game coming up for the 49ers that no one would be able to see it on local TV.  It was against the Cincinnati Bengals and, being a local game, it was blacked out on local area cable television feeds in keeping with The Rules of the day.
      What to do?

     Now, as I have said, satellite dishes in those days were not these compact little bowls of today that you can fit on the roof of anything stronger than a cardboard box.   No, they were great, clumsy things that looked like old fashioned WWII radar screens seen in History Channel or the radio telescopes used in astronomy.
But T.O. had an idea…a brilliant idea…

     T.O. lined up a Muscle Crew…an unprecedented four bartenders… plus a bar back and bade me to put four waitresses in the lineup.  Most of the creew, including myself, thought he was going a bit over the top in this but…he was the boss…
     Quick fix foods were made ready in the kitchen… nothing more complicated than a hamburger would be offfered and nacho chips were laid in.

     T.O. rented a couple of long folding tables and put them on the dance floor taking care not to block the cone of light needed by the floor projector.  He rented some folding chairs ‘just in case.’

     T.O. then put the word out that the Niner’s vs. Bengal’s game would be shown on The Bar’s big screen.  He couldn’t legally advertise it in the papers since it was blacked out but he did a big time verbal campaign.  He was hoping to get in under the radar and gambled that word of mouth would do the trick for him.      His competitors (particularly The Other Place), had they known about it would have been amazed at the chutzpa!

   They must have known about it since we shared some customers.  But The Other Place did nothing.  They didn’t have a big screen yet and besides, how could T.O. promise such a thing being that he didn’t have a satellite and the game was blacked out?

     They did not know that T.O. had contacted a satellite company and rented a satellite truck with plans to set up in the parking lot on Game Day.

     By law The Bar had to post a sign of how many patrons were allowed in the place according to the local Fire Marshall.  The Bar was deemed to have a legal posted capacity of 180 patrons.  T.O. figured he might get 200 crammed into the place, maybe a few more…

     On Game Day a light rain was falling.  There was a heart-stopping moment when the satellite vendor was late.  T.O. had some anxious moments.  But the driver had taken a wrong exit on the freeway and arrived in plenty of time to set up. 

     The customers were coming in early.  They started coming into the parking lot even as the satellite dish was being configured.      But before long the tables closest to the screen were filled, the waitresses hauling trays of drinks, the register ringing merrily.  The kitchen was selling burgers and nachos and eveyone was enjoying the pre-game festivities.

     And still they came…

     Now the bar was full, too.  As were all the round tables and smaller cocktail tables.  The Bar Back and I were setting out folding chairs so we could double and triple the patrons at the tables.

     And still they came…
 
     Someone had the novel idea to actually sit on the bar itself. 
     Next thing you know there were tiered seats.
     A row of people sitting on the bar.
     A row of people sitting on barstools
     A row of people sitting on chairs in front of the bar stools.
     People were sitting on top of the electronic games.
     People were clinging to the room dividers.

                                     They were everywhere…

     And somehow, through it all, this mass of sports starved humanity minded their manners and thoroughly enjoyed what they knew to be a very special game and at the same time a risky situation that everyone knew could go any number of ways.   No one wanted to mess it up.

     This was, after all a room full of mostly guys drinking mostly beer and steadily getting more inebriated as time went on.
     But there were no fights.  No arguments.  No macho posturing.  Nothing but people enjoying the moment.  I think they all understood that, to enjoy the game, all must cooperate and mind their manners.
     The kitchen dishwasher was going full tilt all day washing glasses because there was no way the bartender could handle washing glasses and make drinks too.  The Bar Back and myself took turns running racks of glasses to the kitchen and back.
     The Bar Back was kept busy hauling ice, cutting fruit, stocking booze, emptying the trash cans.  The beer was consumed in truly awesome quantities.  I was mother-henning my saucer eyed flock of waitresses, emptying their wastebaskets, giving encouraging words…  At times I wondered, as they pulled away with overloaded trays, if they would make it back to the bar as the disappeared into the happily cheering sea of humanity.
     There was always a line to the restrooms and I had to restock the toilet paper in both restrooms twice before the day was out.  This in a place where each bathroom stall held four rolls.

     Someone did a head count at half time.  It was truly incredible.
     The crowd numbered just over three hundred people!
     No one could quite believe it.
     When halftime finally arrived some of us stepped outside for a little relief.  There was a light rain but light enough that it was almost a mist and quite refreshing to tell the truth.
     Thar I wuz, taking a break when I was approached by a newspaper reporter, a woman, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle.
     “You have too many people in there.” she said.
     “Yes ma’am.” said I.
     “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
     “Do?  Why, I ain’t gonna do anything ‘about it’ I’m just going to try to get through the day without having my crew collapse on me.”
     “Well, it’s illegal to have that many people in there.”
     “Missy, since we’ve been out here in the parking lot  I’ve seen three cop cars and a fire truck drive by apparently disinterested in the proceedings here.  I think they know better than to try to disrupt what you see before you.”     “Now it may be true that we’re in violation here” I continued, “but you’ve seen for yourself that the crowd is well behaved. This is a happy crowd.  This is a crowd that knows that it must be ‘ruly’ to take in the viewing of the game today.  Ergo:  ‘ruly’ is required.  UNruly is out and Not To Be Tolerated”.
      “Lemme tell you something.  This country was founded on people fed up with governmental rules and regulations.  But I’ll tell you what you, as a staunch, law abiding citizen can do.”
     “What?” she asked.

     “When the game starts again,” I said, “You can go pull the plug on the TV.  I’ll even show you were it is. ”

     “Yep.  You go ahead and Do that.  Make your speech about how wrong it is how illegal and immoral it is and pull the plug on that game for god and country.  Of course you realize something don’t you?”
     “No, what?” she asked.
     “You’ll never make it out of there alive.  They’ll git you before you make three steps to the door and tear you to pieces.  You’re better off waiting around and seeing if this turns into a disaster.  Then you’ll have your real scoop.”

   And so the game resumed and to everyone’s great joy, it was the best kind of football….exciting and with no clear winner until the last minutes of the fourth quarter.  It was a Niner’s victory, chiching their shot to what eventually became their first Super Bowl win and the start of the team’s Golden Era of Walsh and Montana.  There were celebratory rounds bought and consumed and the crowd filed out without incident, joyfully exhausted and ready for a nap.  The crew was burnt and battered but happy because the tips spiked in celebration. 

     All of my flock survived little the worse for wear if you didn’t mind the thousand yard stare.
     No injuries, no disasters, and a rarity…a positive article in the local papers about a saloon, our saloon and the resourcefulness, nay, the vindication, of T.O.’s well thought out success..  It was a glorious day in the history of The Bar. 
     Ten days later two faux marble slabs were delivered and installed at the waitress stations, paid for out of the profits of the Great Bengal Pack-In.  Roomy, smooth surfaces replaced the uneven, upside down trays and made solid, non-shifting take-off ramps level with the top of the spill rail molding on the bar.  They were the final touch in making the bar labor friendly for bartenders and waitresses alike.
     After the slabs had been there for two weeks no one could remember what it was like when they were not there. 
 But those who had attended the Great Bengal Pack-In never forgot it.

 It was a memorable day…
                                      …everyone was glad when it was over…
________________________________

Paper Dolls by Vann

This one was an early effort.  The airbrush was off in the future and I was working largely with ink and watercolor pens on card stock.  I had a fascination with yellow eyes.  I had seen eyes so light brown they were golden on one of my guitar students and I never forgot them.  Every once in a while would make some in a painting with yellow eyes.  Very distinctive.  The special ink for lips had been discovered and put to use…

This is an unsigned work since Paper Dolls by Vann had not yet come into being.
But it would…