Closing Time

Closed down the pub with the owners on each side of me, the bartender had long since just put the bottle of Paddy Irish whiskey on the bar in front of us and told John he was too busy to pour us shots, a great finish to a great day. I hadn't started hanging the show before Sara came in because I knew we'd change some things, we always do. Sara goes home and visualizes some of the bays looking different, and she's always right: it would look better if we shuffled a few things. So we discuss, and shuffle a few things, all part of the process. Hanging folk art is different from hanging fine art because nothing is regular, nothing is square, the edges are all blurred, things tend to have a relative footprint. Times like this, I can read Sara's mind and we don't even finish sentences, no need to; I can see that TR is perplexed, but he's fast enough and bright enough that he catches on pretty quickly. I'm a savant at this, for whatever reason, how to get the spacing nearly perfect in several dimensions, it's just something I can do. After lunch we hang the front wall, six pieces and two signage panels, in a configuration we've never used before, and I call Sara and Pegi over to the balcony rail to see if that's what they wanted. I can do anything, actually, and I just want everyone to be happy. Happy my not be the correct word. Satisfied. Day two of the hanging and TR is off to Cincy to get the conserved (new ) Carter oil painting, and the two bays I need to hang are are both large, awkward, fairly heavy pieces. Usually we hang left to right, in order, measuring off the previous piece, but I can't hang these pieces alone, and there's no one else at the museum qualified, tall enough, or strong enough to help. So I set all the hardware mathematically, triple checking all the numbers, waiting for TR to return. It's headache inducing, especially as I catch a mistake, and have to redo two sets. Slow going, as one of the walls is very hard bank-vault concrete and requires a hammer-drill (the wall I caught a mistake on) for the anchors. Ten holes and I've ruined a drill bit. Four o'clock and TR gets back from Cincy, Sara, TR, Pegi and I gather around and I unwrap the painting. It's beautiful, cleaned and the old varnish removed, tightened on the stretcher, touched up, re-varnished, even the frame touched up, we don't have anything like it; there had been talk of maybe selling it, to raise money for operating expenses, but we need this painting in the permanent collection. We take down another painting in the Carter gallery and hang it, so we can see it in the correct light, and it's stunning, we all agree to keep it, though the board will be the ultimate judge. While Sara and Pegi are still looking at it, I get TR to go downstairs with me and hang the paintings I've hung hardware for, and I've gotten the numbers correctly, everything is as close to perfect as matters, an eight of of inch in 18 feet doesn't make any difference, I'm outside, having a smoke, and Chris, from the bar next door, asks me what's wrong with my truck, and when I describe the symptoms he says it's the idler arm and if I''ll get the part, he'll change it in the parking lot for a case of beer. On a roll. I never thought I'd be a fixture at a pub. Neither did the owners. What did Dylan say? a simple twist of faith.