A Little Sunshine

When I was a boy, my Dad would read me bedtimes stories. One such story was about some little boys, who, as little boys
sometimes do, did some mischievous and even mean acts.

The story is set in the 1950s because that is when I was a little boy. It seems a group of these boys found great delight in yelling at a neighbor lady, calling her a witch, and sometimes even tossing stones at her house.

The woman was old, wrinkled, and her house wasn’t as well kept as some because she was alone and aged. The story doesn’t say what she thought about the boys but it certainly didn’t make her life brighter.

One day, shortly after one of their onslaughts upon the old woman’s house, the boys saw an ambulance pull up to the house. Men in white coats rushed in and brought out the old woman on a stretcher. “Is she dead,” they wondered aloud to each other. “Is it our fault?”

Two days went by and the woman had not returned. The pastor at their church said she was in the hospital but would be home by the next weekend. It was quite a relief to the boys, but they still felt bad, as if they might have caused her illness.

And so it was that the boys made a plan together. After school, they met at the woman’s house. They checked the front door – unlocked! (Remember, this is the 1950s when almost everyone in a small town left their doors unlocked.) Quickly and quietly, they slipped into the house unseen.

The house was a mess; dirty dishes, laundry in piles, dirt on the floors, and cobwebs in the corners. It was obvious the woman had been in poor health an unable to keep up the cleaning chores. The boys went to work.

Each day, after school, they met at the woman’s house. They washed the dishes, washed and dried and even folded (the best they could) the clothes and towels. They swept and mopped the floor and cleaned out the cobwebs. They made the bed and straightened things up nicely.

Finally, they picked some flowers from her garden and put them in a vase on her little breakfast table. Then they wrote a note.

The boys told no one, not even their parents, what they had done.

On Saturday morning, the boys hid in the bushes across the street and watched the home they had so often assaulted from the same spot. A little before noon, an ambulance drove up. Two men helped the woman walk up to her house and then they left.

The woman opened the front door and the boys could hear her gasp with delight. She went in to find the house clean and wonderful. The boys winked at each other and crept across the street to peer through her window. They wanted to see.

The old woman spotted the flowers and the note. What would she think?

She opened the note and started crying. It simply read, “Compliments of the Sunshine Company.”

That story made a huge impression on me. Now, almost 60 years later, I still remember growing up and wishing I could be “The Sunshine Company.” I have had the opportunity many times and delight in following through.

Today, I take photographs of people in the streets of Asheville. I shoot drummers, buskers, entertainers, and “just folks.” Then I come home, pick out the better images, and develop them into unique piece of art.

I print each piece of art as an 8x10 color image on high quality paper with lifetime inks. Then I place them into a notebook.

Each week, I return downtown and seek out the people whose image I captured. I give them the 8x10 art print. Free, of course. Their reactions give the same rush of endorphins I got from that story so many years ago; that story that led to my caring clown name and my giving name: Johnny Sunshine.