Paper Bag Diva

"Paper Bag Diva" Watercolor & Ink © 2022 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

I was that precocious child who was thoroughly obnoxious, but one couldn’t help smiling when you watched me, so they tell me, anyway.  My own child turned out the same way, which delighted my mom to no end, and would comment gleefully, “You so deserve her.” It wasn’t a compliment.

            It was the mid 1960’s. I was six years old, and we lived in a little duplex on Griffith Park Blvd. in Silverlake, Los Angeles, right next door to the “cerulean blue house,” as it had later been named in my memory.  But that’s for another story.  Those were the days of turquoise sofas and olive-green shag carpets. I noticed things like that even then. My Los Feliz great grandma's piano stood in a corner of our small living room.  I am not sure why, since none of us ever learned to play it, but it did have its uses.

            I loved the fancy shopping bags my Silverlake grandma would bring home from her trips to her favorite stores, Imagnin’, Bullocks, and Saks 5^th. They were thick and shiny, and I would cut a scallop hem and holes for arms and my head, turning them into beautiful dresses, which I accessorized with costume jewelry.  Hand me a brush and a piano bench and I was a paper bag diva.

It was 1966, when Nancy Sinatra’s song, “These Boots are Made for Walking” came out, and I just loved that song, or rather, the catchiness of that one line, especially the way her voice lowered at the end, so I worked hard to sing it just like Nancy.  I remember being very upset that I couldn’t have knee-high red patent-leather boots like the ones I saw on a lady imitating her in a shopping mall performance with my grandma. Still, not much deterred me then (or now) when I have an idea and am on a mission.  I found the container of red tempera paint under the kitchen sink.  In those days, tempera came in a powder that you mixed with water. Ever conscientious, not wanting to get paint in the house, I went outside, and after mixing some up with water, I painted my feet and legs bright red, all the way up past my knees.  It took several applications to achieve the bright red I was determined to have.  Just like Nancy’s boots.  I impatiently waited for it to dry, my red toe tapping on the concrete, leaving little red sucking sounds, which momentarily distracted me from my impatience. Then I ran inside. 

In my glorious and shiny paper bag dress and grandma’s costume jewelry, with the piano bench my stage, and my microphone brush, I stomped up and down that bench belting out, “These boots are made for walkin’ and that’s just what they’ll do…One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you!...OK boots, start walkin’!”

My little sisters stood at the bench, laughing and yelling, their arms raised like concert-fans.  Demanding that they too wanted a turn, I ignored them and kept on, not yet ready to give up my limelight.  Dad came in and yelled at me for being a “show off” and for “getting red paint all over the house,” while mom stood in the doorway and laughed.

Finally, she told me to give my sisters a turn and to get outside and “scrub that paint off” my legs. Through the screen door, she added, “and the concrete too!”  As I hosed off my legs, I watched the rivulets of red run down my calves and form into a river of red flowing over the concrete into the dirt sloping down the hill, and I felt quite pleased with myself. If I got in trouble, it would be worth it I felt.

As it turned out, I only got a good scolding, and I had to wear those red-stained legs to school for a week as punishment enough, which pleased my sisters to no end, who made sure to point me out to all of their school friends. The story circulated Micheltorena St. Elementary School like wildfire, all before the end of lunch.  That was the year I learned that red paint really, REALLY stains, and little did I know then, that bit of knowledge would serve me well in my chosen profession in the years to come.

As an art teacher many years later, I’d found an old cardboard can of powdered red tempera paint under my classroom sink, and every time I saw it, I would think of this day and giggle to myself, thoroughly appreciating the memory and precociousness of childhood.

 Come to think of it, I never did use that can of paint, which sat under my sink for years until the day I retired. A week or more of wearing those red-stained legs as a child had left more of an indelible imprint on my brain than I’d first imagined!

…and that piano?  It became a source of family drama for decades to come, one uncle stripping and refinishing it to a beautiful gleam, arguments between other aunts on who should get it, cousins having to move that unwieldy instrument to one aunt’s home, then another, then another, until finally, it falling off the trailer in its last move, only to be destroyed in the street…a tragic end to a 100 year old piano that had a lot of stories to tell of its own.

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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".