The America Sea
Rale Sidebottom


The way in is strange. I’d never known a way yet; as in ‘living in the way’ of something. At twenty-two, going to live on the road for a whole year with strangers was something I’d dreamt of, ever since receiving Kerouac’s Dharma Bums from my aunt several years earlier. I devoured beat literature and poetry as a teen, and had hit my first Grateful Dead concerts in the spring of 1988. Being young and impressionable, I was eager for experience, and had hitch-hiked around the west coast a bit to get a feel for the flavor. I was proud of the fact I’d slept in ditches, and even jumped the ocean to backpack across western Europe for several weeks, following weird punk bands and noise artists, finding an energy in the road that was to become an underlying theme in my love of the unknown. That stuff hidden around the corner, where no one’s looking. Underground shows, pirate radios and wild-haired people, full of energy and passion. I wanted this. I knew that this was my America.  

Thus came the bus. I was introduced to Adam through a friend who had gone much further down the road than myself, and had returned with ideas and fancies that to this day have not left his head. Adam was a stocky, brillo-haired man from West Texas in charge of the ‘crew’. He talked in nautical terms, and it was hard not to join in. He was about to take on two new players, and he vetted us in the usual ways: drink, smoke, tell some jokes. The Armada we were to sail with was of the type often found following the Dead, but we ventured into deeper waters, looking for something else. Something less druggy, less crowded. And we had the means to the way. To set sails, head for the horizon, a constant unknown.  It was called curb painting. 
It’s weird to get let in on a thing that seems so secret, so smart and perfect that it can hide in plain sight. Curb painting was just such a secret. Armed with the simplest of tools (Spray paint, reflective glass beads, stencils), they were able to cut a path of financial freedom across this great nation for years on end. No going home. No anchors.
                        

Simplicity at its finest. You place a ¼ page flier (four per page, economy) on every front door of entire neighborhoods that look like this:


                                          NOTICE
                                                  LARGE REFLECTIVE
Address numbers are being painted on the curb. Your street will be worked on tomorrow. We are painting straight down the street to help patrol cars, deliverymen, ambulance, etc. better find your home. Statistics show that 78% of our homes are inadequately numbered for night use. We are using numbers that reflect brightly at night like highway signs.
                                   The cost of this service is $8.00. 
If you wish to participate, write your address number on the back of this flyer and place it in a window that is visible from the street.       
                                                      
                                                     Thank you,
                                               The Curb Painters  


 

I don’t remember exactly what I thought at the time, or how it would play out, but I was happy
to be included, while remaining a bit skeptical about the whole thing. A bunch of dirty hippies walking middle-class neighborhoods, painting curbs and then going up to the door and asking for money? Cash? Someone’s gonna call the cops, or pull a gun. This was America. Texas. New Mexico and Arizona. At least they would balk at giving us cash from their front door, right? That was my fear, and anyone who knows how America can operate will empathize. And yet?

We crushed it. It was unbelievable. Cash, cash cash – hand over fist, day after week after month. Usually several hundred a week, but often (San Antonio, Farmington) we were in the thousands. People were grateful for the service we provided, and often expressed their gratitude in a cool soda, some funny constructive criticisms as we spray painted away, sharing some leftover food they had, not wanting to waste. We looked homeless, but in fact our homes were intact. A school bus, a Honda Accord and two econoline vans were our place in the world, the stoops we retired to when the day was over. We ranged in age from 4 to 40, and a campground, some BLM land; even a giant abandoned parking lot with a magic water spout were our offices, our bedrooms, our love shacks, our world headquarters.  We operated out of kindness and service, and it was returned. 

Looking back, I realize the real magic of the work was the delivery. I suppose that’s true for a lot of things, but there was a real zen-like perfection to this work that, if you owned it and lived it, was something special. I want to explain this to you, want you to feel the patterns. To understand the cycles of our seasons. If the world was created in seven days, ours was created in three.

Day one: In groups of two we walked down opposite sides of the street, flyering every house. When we approached a home, if there was a ‘do not disturb’ notice, no flier. Last thing we wanted was unnecessary confrontation. If there wasn’t, simply place the flier on the door with a piece of tape, walk away. Keep maps. Walk all day. Highlight areas you’ve worked so no one overlaps and meet up with others every couple hours to stay in touch. No pitch. If people were interested, they had no chance to get into a discussion with us of any kind. They wanted it, or they didn’t. Eight bucks was a low enough number that no one would balk, the service was real and immediate, and we delivered what we promised. Reflective address numbers. And as artists first, those glittering numbers looked fantastic. 

Day two: Cruise the neighborhood you canvassed on bikes with baskets loaded with paint, stencils, glass beads. Water and apples. Notebook to keep record of all the places and numbers you did. You see a flier in a window with its number written on the back? Boom. Eight bucks. Pull up the bikes, make sure of the number, start painting. Groups of two: one to paint, other to the door. Collect cash. They’re stoked. Ten minutes have passed. Paid and gone. Nine times out of ten they don’t even come out and look at your work. 

Day three: Follow up and try and recollect from those who were not home to pay (a flier reminded them the work was now done, payment was due, leave it in cash in an envelope on the door please). Everyone paid. You want real numbers, we always missed a couple who went out of town, forgot. But when you paint 500-600 curbs in a town and 99% pay, you’re not gonna hang around for that last 16 bucks. 

And I cannot stress this enough: without the internet and cell phones, life was amazingly straightforward in those days. There was a level of connection in our universe that seems largely forgotten now. How quickly we turned our connectivity over to corporations that we now pay for the service. A different world, and not in some angry, post everything type of diatribe. Simply put: we were lucky to not have technology available to us then. It kept the lines open. 
For decades, starting in the early 60s, curb painting was done by a host of civic and youth groups around the country. Some counties did it themselves out of tax dollars. Where I grew up it was the boy scouts, but I’ve heard stories of everyone from Freemasons to city employees doing it. We made it into something different though. We made it into a gypsy caravan, a way to live the American dream.

Of course, even a cursory glance across the web at ‘curb painters’ today reveals a well of insults. Anger, mistrust, slander and fear. People ranting about everything from ‘gangs’ of painters doing all the numbers wrong on purpose, to evil little shits vandalizing and hating as they go, terrorizing neighborhoods, giving the person posting this information the right to return that anger. Alas, almost everything you can possibly research today is so. But that was the future – a future not yet come.

Walking door to door was something I’d never known. You hear of door-to-door salesmen, but there is something that is revealed, something besides the sale, that is gleaned when walking the endless streets of suburban America. With no distractions (rule no. 1: no headphones – always be in earshot), time shifts in a way that the days only know and you are privileged to have the most pleasant thoughts; mental flights of fancy, idealistic crusades of the mind that release themselves around the campfire later. The fire was where we grounded out, put the energy of the day to rest by releasing the stories we had accumulated by engaging the citizens of the towns we now sat on the outskirts of. There it was that I first started writing, about a misadventure that could have gone wrong a dozen times, but instead became legend. A parallel narrative. It was the time we uncovered a nuclear missile silo, and broke in. But that’s for another time, another campfire.

The southwest in the early 90s was a littered landscape of abandoned projects and half-baked ideas: giant housing developments coupled with unsuccessful strip malls and cheap motels that had been turned into small prisons.  A strange snapshot of an uncertain future.
We navigated the straits of Farmington, the tilted neighborhoods of Durango, bright weekends in Mexican border towns. While we worked hard, we also took long breaks at remote hot springs with free camping for weeks on end, no need for anything but life. When you drain away almost all needs of the world, and you’re young, the landscape changes. It seems more intense, more real. An ancient connectivity. It is a feeling that even today, decades later, I have a hard time putting words to. It’s a feeling that burrows deep inside you about this world, almost mystical but I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll say that our country is so full of secret paths and hidden hallways, free land to camp on and in, places unknown and untouched that it would take several lifetimes to enjoy even a slice to its fullest. 

My favorite characters from that time were two kids we picked up who went by the names Taz and Cave Man. We met them hiding out in the back of a dry creek bed, about ten miles outside of Mesa Arizona, living out of their 1973 Nova. We too were living on BLM land for a bit, and knew they were watching us through the chaparral. Two skinny boys, dirty and hungry; their sole life possessions a trunk full of dirty clothes, a loaded shotgun, a five gallon tub of BBQ sauce they had lifted from the back of a truck outside a McDonald’s. Food supplies were about out. 

Always instantly loveable, those young Americans. We invited them to eat, and it was comedy to listen to their tales about living on BBQ sauce for six days. That was where all the good stuff went down – dinner. Meals out in the open under southern stars, campfire cooking like old cowpokes, tales and laughter spilling in and out of us in easy conversation. Living on nothing but sugar and additives for the last week, they ate plenty. 

Fresh out of Kansas, they were actually heading to college, but had run into an old philosophical argument. Should we or shouldn’t we. The ‘I’m freaking out, and I don’t know how to freak back in’ conundrum. They chose to wait out their thoughts in the desert, debating daily the for and against, the why and why not. American Freedom. When you’re young and free, it’s good to have internal moral conflicts over something, anything, and have someone honest to debate it with. It forces you to really weigh it out, talk it through. No right, no wrong, just make your decision and go with it. It doesn’t work out, turn. College could wait, they had decided. It would always be there. There’s a reason for this chance meeting. We invited them aboard, they accepted.  Our crew now stood at fourteen. 

Curb-painting as a job: it’s not for everyone. In fact, few are truly fitted for the loose guidelines, the strict follow through, the off-the-cuff quick decision-making involved. It’s jazz. Example: Cops. “Well, officer, I didn’t know we needed a business license. Yes, here’s my ID (always have your ID on you, cops hate nothing more than possible runaways), yes, we’ll go down to City Hall and get a vendor’s permit.” Then do it. No goofing around on neighborhood streets, be approachable, polite, don’t curse in front of strangers, etc. If you follow the basic rules of decency (one size fits all, kids) you’ll get away with almost anything. Especially at eight bucks a pop. 

And so, with a larger crew than we’d ever had, we rolled into the deep new suburbs of San Antonio, Texas. Miles and miles of brand new subdivisions, full of good Texan people, all without brightly reflective address numbers. Got our business permit, prepared our maps, photocopied and highlighted for each area so no one overlapped. We held a kind of regional meeting that evening at our campground with some other curb painters who had come down to help from the Denver area. We stood at twenty total. Excitement was in the air. We passed a special conch shell saved to share stories for such occasions, tell what you’re thankful for and pass it on. Even the kids were sharing and involved, a special evening that petered out early after the obligatory acoustic guitar, weed and wine. Tomorrow, lads, we march.

San Antonio was, and is, a place of beauty. A true testament to the slogan ‘It’s like a whole other country’. Central Texas is full of friendly folk, and three weeks of painting those neighborhoods was a book in itself. My fondest memory was, after my buddy and I painted the curb, we went to the door and knocked. It was opened by Pete, a six-and-a-half foot tall Comanche Indian, dressed in a three-piece blue leisure suit. “It’s my birthday! C’mon in, y’all” The work of the day needed to be finished, but what the hell. He doesn’t even know who we are. He thinks we’re here for his birthday. And of course, we are.

We wander with Pete into a backyard full of birthday party festivities, Texas-style: BBQ, beer, kids and cake. Twenty people at least. No one bats an eye at us, the only white guys there. Instead, we’re promptly offered brisket and budweisers. The look we exchange says ‘it cannot get better than this – curbs can wait’. We’re there for almost twenty minutes before someone inevitably asks ‘how you guys know Pete?’ We explain we just knocked to ask for money for the paint job, and there’s slight confusion until the owner of the house, Pete’s mom, says OH! I know you guys! And even though we’ve already eaten thirty dollars worth of BBQ and had several beers, she insists on paying us the eight bucks. We try to refuse, but how can we? We did a job, and the positive energy in this place is through the roof. Keep it rolling. 

Town after town, back and forth across the country again and again. Seasons changing. Our group lost some, then gained others. Good workers and bad. Extroverts and lazy people. Random dropout strangers that only lasted a weekend. Months for the hard working Rastafarian from Baltimore. We dropped some off at bus stops, picked up others along the way. Time passed and gave way to deeper, more grounded thoughts.
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In the end, one late November day I realized that my time was up. I wanted more, and knew I needed to move on. The road was ready for new curb painters, and I was ready for my next adventure. Walking to the nearest town through a dry windy southwest dawn, I thought a lot about the people I had spent the last year with. I loved them all dearly, a proud family that had widened my world and still lives in me today. Twenty-five years later, whenever I see a ragtag group of kids or wanderers milling about a market or random gas station, fresh eyed and tie-dyed, on the road, I think about my time in the waters of the American sea. I wonder sometimes where they went, even who they were. When you give up your seat on a ride like that, it has a tendency to vanish into thin air. Will they read this and somehow find me? I’d unlikely recognize them even if they did. And though that thought always makes me smile, I never saw any of them again. 

About the Author:
Rale Sidebottom is a poet, essayist and writer who draws his inspiration from years in the dropout cultures of underground economies, experimental music collectives and puppet theaters across North America. His work has appeared in the Missoula Independent, and he is currently finishing his first novel, about running a fading movie palace in Humboldt County, California at the end of last century.

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