I had a great time painting at Goldsmith's on Friday. It was a productive painting session, and some great visitors stopped by to say hello (and I got a copy of American Brass--great stuff, check it out!). The highlight of the afternoon, however, was Lady Godiva.
About mid-afternoon, a woman came into the store and was in the back talking to Todd for a while. As she was leaving the store, she stopped to talk to me and shared the fantastic story of her 40th birthday and the horse fountain.
When she was a little girl, she declared that she wanted to climb up the fountain and sit on the horse just like Lady Godiva, completely naked. Her mother, not surprisingly, refused to let her do that. Decades later, on her 40th birthday, she was drinking at a bar downtown and decided that it was time to make her life-long dream come true. She stripped down in the bathroom, ran out of the bar wearing nothing but a coat, and climbed up onto the horse with a little help from a milk crate. She was a little dismayed to find the horse's back was covered in bird droppings (and was worried about getting ringworm, so she washed herself off back at the bar afterwards), but she had a great time, whooping and hollering, sitting on the statue of Knight just like Lady Godiva. She had only two regrets: her mother wasn't alive to see this finally happen, and it didn't make the newspaper.
I wondered what Carrie Welton would think, but somehow I suspect she might approve.
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