More Rodvogen

Harry Rodvogen was a very interesting person. He wanted to practice driving so he could buy a car, so we went out in my car with him driving until he was ready to try for his license. I was working the afternoon shift and did not go to work until 4pm, so it worked out fine.

He baught a Chevy, four door, and the first thing he did was to start decorating it. He got some brass bells of Sarna, and hung three from a knob on the dashboard. He said they were his "Bumpmeter." It was a one bell bump, or a two bell bump, and a three bell bump was a severe one.

He also built a diaorama on the top of the dashboard, and one on the flat space behind the rear seat. He colored in the pattern on the seats with markers. Under the hood he painted a nude woman, so the gas station attendents "would always check the oil." It was a work in progress as long as I knew him.

Some of his abstract paintings, I discovered, were his psychoanalitical catharsis.
I would look at one of his paintings every day, and would comment on it. That what he had painted refered to something that had just happened in his life. The next day that area would be worked on, hiding the event more in the abstraction. I realized I had to stop interpreting the painting so he could get on with it.

The same process is the basis of psychoanalysis. The rich have their Physcoanalists, the Catholics their confessional, the poor their bartender. It is all the same thing, you tell your troubles to some one else to get them off your chest, but the one you tell them to must not repeat them to anybody else. And so it was with Harry's abstract paintings. It was his confession, but it was hidden, just between him and the painting. It was there for everybody to see, but it was hidden.

One of Harry's enjoyments was to sit it the lobby of the Light House Inn smoking a Turkish ciggarette. These stunk terribly. And to laugh to himself when the desk clerk would put the dog outside.