For Father’s Day 2011, “Baron’s Atlanta’s Answer To Italy’s Benevenuto Cellini.”

Anybody in Georgia who has a breakable treasure sooner or later finds himself paying a call to Paul H Baron, 951 Peachtree Street.
 

In the world of restoration, Paul Baron is Atlanta’s present-day answer to Italy’s Benevenuto Cellini. If the cherished object is chipped, nicked, maimed, frayed, faded, rusted or simply has given up the ghost from discouragement, Mr Baron can make it new again. Everything from Doughty birds to iron fountains, from Meissen to fragments of Inca rock ruins, from Imari chop plates to a Yak fat-rendering stove from Mongolia passes through his deft hands as a normal run of business.

With his own specially made glues, cements (guaranteed 120 years), paints, solders, moldings, lacquer, with silks, threads and golden filaments, he takes chips out of crystal, restores antique ceremonial services, reshapes and renews mirrors, reweaves tapestries, brings back old paintings with a matte finish that never checks or blooms, takes cracks out of doll’s heads with an air brush, braises and re-solders silver to mint condition.

Mr Baron’s customers, from two major department stores, once made a path to his backyard garage workshop when his postwar hobby was tinkering with the irreparable. Now his business comes from all over the world, direct from the nation’s principal express service, from international moving van companies, from museums, department stores, jewelers, antique dealers and interior decorators. His services as an appraiser of objects of art are in demand by such companies as Lloyds of London. Indeed, but for a Korean in Washington and a Japanese in Chicago who do mending, his only competition is a woman in Norwalk, Connecticut, who trained in his shop.

“We love nice distant competitors,” he says slyly.

Recently Mr Baron solved the aesthetic impasse between a decorator and his wealthy client who insisted on a television set in his formal French drawing room. Using a Fleetwood chassis, Mr Baron built a set into the chimney above the fireplace and covered its lens with a fine old oil painting. He rigged up a mechanism which moved the painting slowly upward at the flip of a switch, lowering it back gently when the set was no longer in operation.

“I have a field day with this kind of thing.”

Helpers for such a business are almost nonexistent. After trying several European artisans, Mr Baron found his best aides in an untrained man and woman from Rutledge, GA. Now Edna Broughton, her cousin, Ralph Wyatt, and a third woman, Flora Adams, can match any color, grinding it from Japanese lacquer, copy any intricate design, mold porcelain feet, hands, ears to restore crippled statuary – whatever is required. Their employer says they are all marvels of deftness and patience.

The most vital people in the word, Mr Baron says, come to his cluttered shop. The South has more and more collectors every year, some of them with acquisitions valued as high as a million dollars.

The Barons never catch up. “We could close our doors and stay busy for a year. But we don’t want to miss anything.”

…Transcription of an article appearing in The Atlanta Constitution in the early 1960s. It was written by Doris Lockerman. A very long-time reporter and editor, she died recently, on May 6, 2011, aged 101. Her obit is itself worth a read. Undated main photo credited to Paul Robertson.

From GE Trolleys to METRORail Trains, “Carfare” Is Still Required.

This will sound so last century but I do remember when Atlanta replaced its streetcars with trolley buses. The electric trolley supplier, which happened to be GE, advertised about it in magazines like The American City.

My granddaddy, Max Baron, took me on at least one remembered ride on the streetcar that ran down Piedmont Avenue near our house of the era. So there was a jolt of flashback after I climbed onto METRORAIL at a parking lot at Bell and Travis, headed to OTC 2011 at Reliant Center.
 
I started riding the cars again last year for events in the Medical Center and in Reliant Center. Taking the train down to the Offshore Technology Conference this year (as in 2010) was a doddle. (That’s an informal British phrase meaning easily accomplished, a piece of cake.) Drive downtown. Find an easy parking place. Walk half a block to the METRORail stop, get your ticket and climb aboard. Fifteen minutes or so later, get off just 100 yards from the door to OTC. To get back, simply reverse the process.

It’s a buck-and-a-quarter fare one way. And that’s where the flashback comes: I wrote the $2.50 total cost into my expense-tracker as “carfare.” Even when you Google this phrase, you won’t find much about it, or its forebear “streetcar fare.” And I have no idea what mental attic corner I pulled it out of.

I do know that streetcars and trolley cars are gone (mostly) with the wind. Richard Layman, whose blog also supplied the photo of the ad above, is a bit whiny about the subject of public transportation but enough of a good sport to say:

I wrote recently…about how GM, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Firestone led a conspiracy to replace streetcars with buses. The fact is it’s way more complicated and nuanced than that – just how history most often is, nuanced and more complicated than at first glance.

Whatever all the reasons for America’s cities eliminating seemingly more efficient means of mass transit, advertising about it was a staple of certain trade magazines; 50 and more years after the GE ad appeared, I was still creating print campaigns for transit bus motor oils like Exxon’s…and running them in American City and County…the modern name for The American City.

Subways and trains are fun, flashbacks and all. I wish we had more of them. Because despite downtown Houston’s empty buildings, riding the train to and from the center of our city is exciting and easy too. Even a little sexy. Just remember to bring carfare.

Weightlifter Bob

We spent the weekend visiting with Bob and Edith Fusillo in Atlanta. He is the “Weightlifter Bob” of song and story. We spent much of the time sitting on their back porch, talking and eating and drinking…a real getaway.

If you haven’t been following this particular story line, Weightlifter Bob will travel to Kazincbarcika, Hungary in August for the IWF-World Masters Weightlifting Championship:

At 80 years old, I’m reportedly the oldest super-heavy weightlifter in the world. I didn’t start lifting until I was 67. Since then I’ve won dozens and dozens of medals in competitions all over the US. In 1999, five years after taking up the sport, I won a gold medal in the World Masters Championships competition, in Glasgow.

Now I’ve qualified for the World Championships to be held in August, 2007. Few 80-year-olds compete. It’s traditionally dominated by Russians, Hungarians, Cubans and Chinese, but I think I can bring back both a gold medal and a new world record. I already hold three Pan-American records and five American records. To win a Worlds at 80 would be a major thrill.

Read the entire “Weightlifter Bob” story here – it’s a blog we keep up to pass the word about Bob and Kazincbarcika – this oddly named city of 32,000 in the far northeast of Hungary. Barbara and I had a terrific visit with them…always do.

Bob’s wearing a special T-shirt, obtained since the last time we went to Atlanta. Missed out on Nempnett Thrubwell? The entire silly story is here. (Edith is the one not wearing the T-shirt.) Thanks so much to both of them for a wonderful time.