Winter Painting In Ocean City

Lifeguard stands, freshly painted bright white, are ready and waiting for the summer swimming season.

People do a lot of painting in Ocean City, Maryland, during the winter. We'll paint anything that stands still. My brother spent one long winter scraping and painting all the metal lockers inside Showell's Bathhouse.

I spent many days one winter, more than 30 years ago, standing on a high stepladder and painting discolored parts of the ceiling inside the Boardwalk 5&10. (I think it was an 18-foot stepladder. Maybe it was only 12 feet. Whatever, I did not stand on the top step, or even the next-to-the-top step.)

The ceiling was old-fashioned and fancy, pressed tin, painted a cream color. It was so high that I couldn't reach the ceiling, even standing on the giant stepladder. I had a big paintbrush taped to the end of a long mop handle. Thus equipped, I climbed the stepladder and painted the ceiling. (I am not making any of this up.)

Fortunately, I didn't have to paint the entire ceiling that way, only a relatively small damaged part. The best thing about working high on a ladder in the winter is that heat rises. The store was slightly heated, enough to take the chill off in late spring and early fall. In winter, it could be freezing cold at floor level. But up on a high ladder, it was much warmer.

Another winter, I spent a lot of time on my knees, scraping gray paint off the floor. Layer upon layer of gray paint, applied year after year. Here's what I learned: Painting a ceiling is more fun than scraping a floor. But I would prefer to paint a lifeguard stand.