This is a very funny vid about a friend from ancient times, Charles Edmunds (the one in the red Elmer Fudd hat) and his eloquent buddy. Charles is now Charles of Charleston, OR. I didn’t even know there was a town by that name in Oregon and I haven’t seen Charles since the Sixties. In those days he happened through Browning -- as did so many people -- an optimistic kid -- as so many were. He had converted an RV into a rolling gallery and studio which he called “Chuck’s Wagon.” He had a zany sense of humor, like this vid, but he was also an excellent artist.
For a few days he hung around, had supper with us, and painted the animals in the museum -- swapped some art for some of Bob’s work. His modus operandi was supposed to be stopping alongside the road somewhere to paint a big oil that would sell for enough to pay his expenses for a month. That didn’t work, so he converted to selling many smaller watercolors and that was enough to keep him going -- barely. He got ripped off in Kalispell as have so many. In the end he worked as a school janitor to pay the bills and never started a family. I think that the price for being an artist was a little high, but he doesn’t really have regrets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTAjIzvIpkA Here's his philosophy of life and a glimpse of the way he looked when he was in Browning.
The work itself is clearly local: he wins prizes and makes sales in Coos Bay, OR. There’s quite a streak of arty stuff along the Oregon Coast. One of my friends, whom I’ve known even longer than Charles, is an actor/director who lives in Yachats and, in fact, it was his success in finding a little town with a little house where he could settle for quiet study that persuaded me I should do the same, except a little farther inland -- like a thousand miles or so.
For a look at some of Charles’ paintings, try these urls.
http://marinepaintings.homestead.com/GALLERY.html and http://charlesofcharleston.com/ He’s a careful draftsman with a dynamic sense of composition and a gift for delicate color and texture. I don’t know enough about boats to explain them, but they are clearly accurate. There’s a lot of love in this work. “Love as process,” you know. Not a state or a goal, but a “way.”
In the Sixties a lot of people came through Browning and we were a stagecoach stop. It was the time of the wanderjahr and women’s lib, so some of the travelers were female. One German woman, middle-aged, came cross-continental on a bicycle -- all alone -- with a deep tan and remarkable leg muscles. She refused our sofa and went out to sleep in the old fairgrounds horse stalls. Said she never had trouble with interference from hostile folks. Another young woman was in a small old car, mostly occupied by a huge inflatable boat. She wanted to float down rivers. She accepted the sofa. We never found out what happened to most of these folks.
A young couple showed up wanting Bob to marry them because he was the city judge and a Justice of the Peace. They were from Eastern Montana, on the run, eloping, because the woman was under the legal age for marriage. Her father was hot on their trail. As it happened, the highway patrolman and a local cop were in the shop over something else. The youngsters were clearly in love and not to be discouraged, but there was some legal glitch that prevented Bob from marrying them. The three men conferred, decided not to interfere with true love, and took up a collection because the kids didn’t have enough money for gas to make it to Idaho where they could legally marry. In a couple of hours the father showed up and was sent in the wrong direction.
Sometimes I wish for a particular young man to find my blog and get in touch. He walked in the door and there was a vibe of sympathy, right off, just like that. He was a gangly guy with specs, about my age, and stayed several days to help us build the studio/house for Bob in back of the Museum. He put the stone fireplace together and did a super job, finding a big diamond-shaped piece of red argyllite to put right in the middle of the top of the fire hole. This was 1962 and Bob’s eye was infected with herpes simplex. He almost lost it. He and I were involved, but not committed. I didn’t expect it to last.
I can’t even remember the traveler’s name but we talked philosophy and he said I thought like Spinoza. His uncle had died and left him a turkey ranch back east which he ran for a few years, then sold. He was headed for Stanford to get a Ph.D. and he asked me to come along with him. “Dump that old man,” he said. “Don’t waste your mind!” I didn’t go. I wasn’t even tempted -- much. But I’ve always been grateful to have someone I truly liked make an offer like that. He gave me his name and phone number on a scrap of paper, but after saying goodbye I made a ceremony of letting the scrap fly away on the wind.
In about the same time period a friend of mine, female, also got an offer like that, but she was in Portland and they were just going to San Francisco. It’s about a 24 hour drive and she went to sleep in the van. (You knew it would be a VW bus, didn’t you?) They got to where they were going in the middle of the night and she barely was awake enough to climb a ladder -- hardly knew she was doing it -- and to roll out her sleeping bag. In the morning she woke up in pouring sun (for once in San Francisco it was neither raining nor fogged in) and slowly realized she had been sleeping on top of a garage with a flat roof. When she sat up, she looked out over the neighborhood and saw that there were people sleeping on roofs all around. In time, after many adventures, she settled into a third marriage, had terrific kids, a fulfilling career, and is now a grandmother. But that moment was magic, worth the risk.
Charles is sort of playing the straight man in this video about him and his buddy painting. He said when he found my blog and read about Bob, all the memories came back and he cried. I know. I know.
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