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Show Dawdle Dell Data THE HEN HOUSE that sign painter Frank Nutchell uses for a studio is so small that he has to paint with his elbows close to his sides. Naturally he has no place inside to hang his finished signs to dry. So he hangs them all over town misplaced messages. Like the time he hung the sign he painted for the bus station on the screen door down at Riley Skull's barber shop. It was a rush job. He thought the eternal swinging swing-ing of the door would set up enough breeze to dry the blooming thing in a hurry. The door swung more than usual that day with female traffic. Riley thought it was queer because women have little business in his shop. When they came in, they rushed out flustered. When he locked up that night he saw the sign. It said LADIES. But talk about your riled females. Never was a .woman with -feathers ruffled as much as Frowzy MacFlirt the day Frank hung the QUARANTINED MUMPS sign he painted for old Doc Shakewell on a tree in her front yard. She was all night trying to figure out why that fellow who sells chicken croup elixir didn't show up for the date they had. Frank hung the sign he painted for Virgie Walters and Abner Johnson John-son on the back of his car and drove up to the city: JUST MARRIED. MAR-RIED. Them persnickety law officers offi-cers up there jugged him on suspicion sus-picion cause he didn't have a bride. "You either dumped her in the river riv-er or stole the car," they said. When he got back, Frank said it wouldn't of done him no good to of had the missus along for she don't look like no bride. Once he hung a sign he painted for Sam Steep's general store on the gate of the Toadhopper spinsters. spin-sters. The sign said FRESH PEACHES. Another time he hung ABSOLUTELY NO LADIES PERMITTED PER-MITTED AT BAR on W.C.T.U. headquarters. And he hung NO MINORS two places: on the school house and on the maternity ward door at the hospital. The doctors and nurses thought it was a new regulation and for two weeks they wouldn't let a woman have a baby there unless the baby was over 21. |