In the late seventies and early eighties Bob Meadows lived in the W.D. Taylor house just south of the church.  At that time, the house was a rental and was not in very good repair – a fact that bothered Bob not in the least.  He, being one of those jack-of-all-trades kinda guys, fixed the leaks and other annoyances and spent his days doing odd jobs around the community in exchange for remuneration that could involve money… or not.

Once, when the Wiegardt boys got carried away up at the Point and shot way more than their quota of ducks, my dad came to the rescue and took their overage.  (They had knocked at the door, afraid to go home with the extra bounty.)  Mom, not wanting to dress out the dozen ducks, asked Bob if he would do it in exchange for half of them.  He was delighted and later – much later! – brought six beautifully cleaned ducks back to mom with the remark, “I don’t know if I’m a-flappin’ or a-quackin’” which became another one of those words-to-live-by phrases in our family.

Quinn Crain, Self-Portrait

It was also Bob (“Old Bob” my folks called him, until it was discovered that he was born in 1911, the same year as my mom) who coined the phrase “one of them arty fellas” when referring to a painter who had set up his easel in the lane.  I thought about that the other evening when I saw a young painter hard at it in the churchyard across the street.

I walked over to take a better look and we had a short conversation.  “Do you know the Crain family?” he asked.  I said I didn’t think so.  He said he had an uncle and aunt by that name who lived in Ocean Park.  His aunt had recently died and he was doing the painting of the church as a gift for his uncle.  Her funeral was to be next Saturday and he could not attend.  He said he was from Portland.

From the Quinn Crain Galleries FB Page

About then, Nyel rapped on the window signaling dinner was ready and I went indoors.  “Do you know a family in Ocean Park named Crain?” I asked.  “Only Jon Crain,” Nyel said, and the penny dropped.  Nyel occasionally works with Jon at the high school and he had mentioned that Jon’s wife had died a few days previously.

That “arty fella” was packing up his brushes and easel when I went back outside to provide a little closure to our earlier conversation.  As I headed home once again, I asked his name.  “Quinn,” he said, “Quinn Crain.”  Later I looked up young Mr. Quinn Crain on FaceBook and discovered the Quinn Galleries site in Portland.  No mistaking the self-portrait pictured there! And what an impressive body of work!  I wish I could tell Old Bob all about it.