TIN MAN

It’s time to paint the tin man again.  My dad made this years ago for the boys. 

Dad has a large one himself (now also with a tin lady and a tin dog) that he created out of odds and ends found in his pole barn.  It is so distinctive that one weekend in the fall it disappeared and the community was up in arms over it.  So Dad went and spoke to the school’s basketball coach.  “If it gets returned, I’ll not press charges.  But I sure do miss it and would like it back.”  The next weekend, it re-appeared.

My little boys were so excited over the tin man that Dad made a smaller one for them to bring here to western PA.  He grabbed an old metal paint bucket, an oil funnel, a tin can, some plastic field tile, and he whipped up a tin man before you could blink.  It’s beginning to rust and some day we will have to switch to a plastic bucket, but meanwhile I text a photo to Dad every time I repaint.  “Good job,” he texts back.