A MAN AND HIS ART
D-Dunn is what his friends called him when he was growing up. It was a way to distinguish him from his identical twin brother E-Dunn. Darrell and Errol were twins all right, and they may have been identical, but they were a long way from being the same. They grew up in Waynedale in the sixties and they lived in the house that used to sit on the corner of Church Street and Bluffton Road. That spot is now occupied by the WUMC Sign. They went to school at Waynedale Elementary, but that is also gone, replaced by a brand new school that now faces Waynedale Memorial Park instead of Old Trail Road. D-Dunn and his brother used to play tackle football in the old school yard with a bunch of other Waynedale hoodlums. There was an old apple tree by the sidewalk on Old Trail that served as the east goal line and a pair of pines at the west end of the grassy expanse that served as the other goal. The library, which was a converted army barracks from Baer Field, was just behind the pines… and you guessed it, the apple tree, the barracks and the pines are also gone, as wells as the grassy field they played on. They are only a faint memory in the minds of some of the old timers in Waynedale.
It’s funny how the things that Darrell thought were real, and tangible are only a memory and the things he may have thought as intangibles, like friendship and love are the things he still has.
He used to sit in class at the old elementary school and as he listened to the teacher droll on about long division or sentence structure of how to conjugate a verb, the real D-Dunn’s hand would push a pencil across a fresh piece of paper. Before long, the pencil had fabricated a sling-shot dragster, with a full-blown Chevy engine and giant racing slicks. The dragster would be sitting at the starting line with fire coming out of dual exhausts and the tires burning their way towards the quarter mile marker at the far end of the race track.
He grew up fast, and before he knew it, he had a wife and kids. The factory wasn’t his favorite place to be, but Dana was a place to make a good living and a way to provide for a family. He did his time, moving the iron from one spot to another, reshaping it, drilling it, milling it and then passing it on to other parts of the automotive industry. His art, it seemed had fallen by the wayside, but that was just the way it seemed. Every now and then his pencil would scratch its way across a new piece of paper and then the real D-Dun would re-emerge, in the creation of a new drawing. He may have inherited some of that art from his father who was an engineering draftsman, but no matter where it originated, it just kept showing up. It was like an image would form in his mind and wouldn’t let him alone until he put it on paper. He liked western scenes of guns and beautiful women, and somewhere along the line he started adding color to his drawings.
And so it went until abut a year ago, when he went into the factory for the last time. It was a hot humid day and the iron was there waiting for him, just like it always was, but he turned away from it and walked to the personal office and said, “Cash me in”. And just like that, it was over.
That part of his life was over, but then, after he had sat around for awhile, the pencil decided to scratch its way across another piece of paper. This time it traced the curves of a beautiful Hispanic woman, being carried off by a man on a rearing horse. This drawing would be displayed at the Fort Wayne Museum of art and many people would look at it in awe.
His drawings are now insured for thousands of dollars, but he has never sold one, he has given most of them away. They hang in the homes of his children, and they are part of what’s real in the world out there. They arise from an imagination and a heart and soul. The tangible drawings may someday cease to exist, but the real things, the intangible things, like love and heart and soul will live on.
“D-Dunn,” someone will yell at the golf course and the real D-Dunn will acknowledge with a wave and a smile.
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