Chet Ball was painting a wooden chicken yellow. The wooden chicken was
mounted on a six-by-twelve board. The board was mounted on four tiny
wheels. The whole would eventually be pulled on a string guided by the
plump, moist hand of some blissful five-year-old.
You got the incongruity of it the instant your eye fell upon Chet Ball.
Chet's shoulders alone would have loomed large in contrast with any
wooden toy ever devised, including the Trojan horse. Everything about
him, from the big, blunt-fingered hands that held the ridiculous chick
to the great muscular pillar of his neck, was in direct opposition to
his task, his surroundings, and his attitude.
Chet's proper milieu was Chicago, Illinois (the West Side); his job
that of lineman for the Gas, Light & Power Company; his normal working
position astride the top of a telegraph pole, supported in his perilous
perch by a lineman's leather belt and the kindly fates, both of which
are likely to trick you in an emergency.
Yet now he lolled back among his pillows, dabbing complacently at the
absurd yellow toy. A description of his surroundings would sound like
pages 3 to 17 of a novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward. The place was all
greensward, and terraces, and sundials, and beeches, and even those
rhododendrons without which no English novel or country estate is
complete. The presence of Chet Ball among his pillows and some
hundreds similarly disposed revealed to you at once the fact that this
particular English estate was now transformed into Reconstruction
Hospital No. 9.
The painting of the chicken quite finished (including two beady black
paint eyes), Chet was momentarily at a loss. Miss Kate had not told
him to stop painting when the chicken was completed. Miss Kate was at
the other end of the sunny garden walk, bending over a wheel chair. So
Chet went on painting, placidly. One by one, with meticulous nicety,
he painted all his fingernails a bright and cheery yellow. Then he did
the whole of his left thumb and was starting on the second joint of the
index finger when Miss Kate came up behind him and took the brush
gently from his strong hands.
"You shouldn't have painted your fingers," she said.