"Many Would Be Cowards If They Had Courage Enough"

In the late 80's, Mom began wishing she had the money to have all her farm buildings painted but she worried about the cost. Even if we kids volunteered our labor, the paint would be quite expensive.
Then something truly amazing happened - back in the 60's Dad had been persuaded by some smooth talking salesman to purchase some shares in The Nodaway Valley Company at Clarinda. When he died in 1978 and Mom was settling his affairs, she learned those certificates of shares in the strong box were practically worthless.
She put them back in the safe, however, and pretty much forgot about them. Then early in 1989 she received a letter from The Clarinda Company offering to buy Dad's Nodaway Valley shares. If she sold them, she would receive around $2000. She asked me what I thought she should do. I suggested that amount of money would probably pay for the paint she needed, so she sold the shares and bought many, many five gallon buckets of paint.

And her kids organized to scrape and paint during a long 4th of July weekend. Here Andrew, on ladder, Linda and Carla work on scraping the south side of the wash house.
While trying to learn more about the Clarinda Company and or Nodaway Valley Company, I found an interesting book entitled Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost Four Million Dollars by David Silverman. He was the new president of The Clarinda Company in 1989, so I assume Mom's $2000 from them might have been part of that four million.
The book really does sound interesting and tells the tale of the end of the printing industry as it had once been. I plan to read the book if/when I can get a copy of it.

Lorrie and Ruthie working on scraping the west side of the wash house. The first day of work, I foolishly would not take breaks along with everyone else. They would stop, re-hydrate, eat, etc. I felt like we had to keep going in order to get as much done as possible.* I thought they were slackers for taking time to rest. That night I paid for it with horrible leg cramps - up and down ladders and lack of water. The next morning I had such a bad headache I was worthless.
(*Mom always told me: "You go at everything like you're killing snakes with a stick!")

Our goal had been to at least get the house painted. So while I recuperated the second day (and became the real slacker), the others got the house done and started on some of the other buildings.
Another memory about The Clarinda Company - I applied for a job there in 1979. I remember being tested for both typing and proof reading. I wasn't a fast enough typist for them, but I came very close to being good enough as a proof reader. I think they allowed three misses finding errors and I had four so I didn't get a job - which was probably a good thing. I would have hated driving that far to work each day.

Most of 'the motley crew' after a couple days painting: in back Ron (barely visible), Christine, Ian, Andrew and Lorrie. Front: Bud, Ruthie, Gene, Carla, Linda and Les.
"You know I'm a dreamer, but my heart's of gold; I had to run away high so I wouldn't come home low." (Home Sweet Home lyrics by the Motley Crue)

Over the next three months as often as any of us could, we spent a weekend painting. I think Gene was the one who did the most. Eventually, we got everything but the back side of the chicken house, the back side of the lawnmower shed and the very top of the back of the corn crib. We were out of paint and no one was going to see what we had missed.

We were also very tired of painting! The one building Mom did hire painted was the barn - thank goodness! None of us was too gung-ho about tackling that job. Mom's volunteer paint crew had painted: one house, two garages, one each wash house, toilet, lawnmower shed (actually another garage), chicken house, hog house, granary, milk shed and corn crib.

"Many would be cowards if they had courage enough." (Thomas Fuller 1608-1661)

The buildings had always been painted white in our memories although we could detect some hints of red paint underneath on the outbuildings. We questioned painting everything yellow - especially the barn. Some of us had a faint memory of a yellow barn being the sign that a coward lived there. We thought it came from the WWII era, but it actually dated back to WWI when the barns of some conscientious objectors and people who didn't buy War Bonds had their barns painted yellow by neighbors to mark them as cowards.

Mom had her own nostalgic reason for wanting everything painted yellow, however. She remembered moving to that farm as a bride more than fifty years earlier. "All the buildings were yellow", she told us. "I always liked them that color, but your Dad wanted them white."
I had to admit I thought the yellow paint looked good and really made that corner of the countryside look very cheerful. Mom got to live with her yellow buildings almost fifteen years.