Newsie Blues (or Neutral Blues IV)

Hello all!  I've one more excursion into blues/browns/greys before I offer up something completely different.  This is still part of the series, I'd say.

Even though there are no Oxides involved this time, we are back to the Paper Dolls.

The crackle background, created with PaperArtsy Fresco paints and crackle glaze, had been hanging around for a while wondering what to do with itself, so in the end I got out some bits of ephemera and collaged away to my heart's content.

Of course, the unexpected little stories started to bubble up as I was creating...

















This rather dourly dapper chap, buttoned up so smartly and holding himself tightly in check, immediately won my sympathy because he has his dog with him.

I felt there had to be something behind that rather stern expression.  Anyone who cannot bear to be parted from their canine friend can't possibly be as self-important as he appears at first glance.











Clearly he's concerned in commerce, perhaps - given the ephemera which surrounds him - in the trade of advertising, still in its early days.

He's always in search of the authentic, though too often caught up in that old conundrum of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.













But, in fact, he does know about value.  He remembers earlier days, when he was far from prosperous.










He started life in one of the tenements of New York city, making a few cents a day as one of the "newsies".  And Charlie Conlon was one of the sharpest newsies out there.

As a newsboy, you were always in competition with the gangs trying to sell competing newspapers and broadsheets.











You had to look out for yourself in order not to have your meagre day's takings pinched or, worse, the papers you had spent some of the previous day's carefully hoarded money on might be snatched and thrown down into puddles so that you'd be left without the means to earn anything at all that day.











So to have a dog with you, as a companion, as a lookout, as protection, was a huge boon. And the slightly lop-eared street mutt which attached itself to him one day, and whom he nicknamed "Eyepatch", became Charlie's dearest friend in the world.













One of Charlie's best sales techniques, and one which gave him great pleasure, was to make up little rhymes or ditties about one of the headlines in the day's paper.  And it was thanks to that habit that he got a break.

One of the Wall Street gents stopped to listen to him one day as he was selling on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway just opposite Trinity Church - a prime spot won and defended against competing newsies by Eyepatch's ferocious growls.

The businessman asked who'd given him those rhymes to say, and when Charlie replied that he'd made them up out of his own head, the man bought up the rest of his day's papers and took him to one of the new Hot Dog Carts for a frankfurter.













The man's business involved writing advertising copy, and he had spotted the value of this street smart urchin with his scrappy sidekick.  He offered Charlie a job on the spot as an office boy.  From there, it was a short step to writing copy, and becoming one of the most valued staff writers.

But Charlie never forgot where he came from and, for all his success, he was never quite comfortable in the smart suits and natty hats.










Next to all the college-educated chaps who swanned in and out of the advertising offices, he always felt he had to stand tall and defend his patch, keeping himself to himself and not sharing secrets.

Eyepatch had seen him through the tough early days, and after his faithful defender died, Charlie made sure never to be without a canine companion.  His dogs were the only creatures he ever really trusted, with whom he could just be Charlie Conlon, without worrying what they thought of him.

That was authentic friendship.





So those are today's words and pictures.  I hope you enjoyed the journey through the neutral blues series.  Here they are all together - definitely a series, I think, don't you?  An itch that needed scratching once I found myself back in my craft room.  If you missed the details on any of them, check out Part I - the reluctant portrait-sitter, Part II - the pairs of radiant children, or Part III - the miracle of light and dark, for the full encounters.

Thanks so much for all the lovely comments.  It's been nice to be posting so regularly again, and I'm back in a couple of days with - a rarity round here these days - a two-post day.  Hitting the ground running, you see.  Got to make up for lost time!

And you won't believe your eyes when you see what colours are coming up next (clue: no blue, no brown, no grey).  See you soon!

"Headlines don't sell papers. Newsies sell papers. Without newsies, nobody knows nothin'."
From the musical Newsies by Alan Menken, Jack Feldman and Harvey Fierstein

I'm going to make this one final entry at Tag Tuesday, where the lovely Chrissie has chosen My Favourite Colour Combination as the theme.  Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of time to play along - it's just I know I'm taking a break from blue & brown for a bit!