Starting from Scratch

New year, who dis? 

Fresh starts abound this week, and we’ve all marched into 2022 eating keto-paleo salads, purging junk drawers, and filing our taxes early. Right, gang?

Uggggh, it’s only been a few days and I’m ready to take toxic positivity’s phony cheer and shove it over a cliff like a lame buffalo. 

Can we just be real and acknowledge that the brilliant Betty White has flown this crazy coop, Covid is here to stay like a moochy couchsurfing cousin, the mold in the shower appears to be winning the war, and I’m skidding into 2022 without a single freelance contract on the books? As The Patron Sinner of Pessimistic Glee and pragmatic godfather Bobby Zarem used to say, I’m not being negative, I’m just being factual. 

Somehow I’m still feeling pretty good, what with too many blessings to count (healthy kids, nice hair, friends who bake cakes) and a really durable scrub brush. After a year of frenzied freelance hustle that included writing copy for your favorite organic frozen burrito, creating a game about Savannah’s pirate past, and researching rural media for the National Trust for Local News, it suits me just fine for my castnet to be wide open—better to catch even bigger fish. 

While regular revenue generation remains a challenge, I take inspiration from rebel astrologer and trusty pronoiac Rob Breszny, who reminds us of Carl Jung’s precept that we don’t actually solve our most pernicious problems, we simply outgrow them. 

“We add capacity and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems,” explains Rob, which makes total sense; eventually we die and all our worries disappear anyway.

It also occurs to me that certain problems, like credit card debt and willful idiocy, can adapt like a variant, thereby extending our capacity to create newer and bigger dilemmas. Life’s a real head scratcher, y’all. 

No matter how thrilled or miffed any of us are about starting another year, I don't know anyone with more reason already to push 2022 off a cliff than Scott Stanton. Better known to Savannah and the world as folk artist Panhandle Slim, Scott came home from the holidays to his garage studio on fire, the flames eating up dozens of his signature wooden paintings in various states of completion, incinerating his art supplies, destroying musical instruments, decimating his record collection, melting memorabilia from his pro skateboarder days, and devastating decades of shared memories with his wife, Tracy. 

I found him picking through the rubble a few days after the conflagration, somber in paint-stained jeans and a straw hat as the sun dappled through the branches of a scorched crape myrtle still standing next to the building’s shell. 

“It’s crazy, it just got everything,” he said mournfully, poking a boot-encased toe at a charred album of Donovan’s Greatest Hits to reveal the burnt cuff of a flannel shirt, pearl snaps still fastened. “It’s amazing that the house didn’t catch, and that no one got hurt.”

A few items survived: The large panels commissioned by City Councilwoman Linda Wilder Bryan for one of the area’s homeless camps, his beloved brother’s battered electric guitar, the two goldfish living in the tiny pond under the stone fountain near the fence. The rest lies in a blackened soup from the firefighters’ hoses.

“One real bummer is that I’d been saving my first four paintings to give to Tex and Johnny,” he lamented, referring to his teenage sons who first inspired him as a stay-at-home dad to take a paintbrush to celebrity likenesses and their germane quotes. (#1: Dolly Parton; #2 Jimmy Carter, # 3 Malcom X, #4 Hank Williams.)

Other bummers: A keyboard from cult musician Wesley Willis. Rare vintage skateboard decks bearing his name and trademark freaky clown. The wooden easel given to him by friend, punk rock bandmate, and Savannah forever-and-always legend Robyn Reeder (for you arty weirdos who think this town is a real cool place, suffice it to say you’re enjoying the fruits of her labors.) 

Yet for whatever has been lost, so much more has been given away. Revered for his generosity of spirit and occasionally reproached for his easier-to-get-forgiveness-than-permission attitude towards public art policy, Panhandle Slim is one of Savannah’s most recognizable—and collected—artists, thanks to his prolificacy and pay-what-you-want sales philosophy. His collaborations with the Walls of Hope Project have brought color and inspiration to blighted neighborhoods, featuring lesser known historical figures to educate youth. Local attendees of 2017 Women’s March gathered in a sea of gifted Panhandles in Washington, DC, and donated artwork to the Stacey Abrams for Governor campaign festooned yards across the state in 2018—and will again this November, if her Savannah base has anything to say about it.

Some have expressed concern that the fire could have been an act of arson by a right-wing wacko, given Scott’s penchant for progressive causes as well as for painting Jesus on thrift store landscapes and leaving them in Wal-Mart for unsuspecting shoppers. The fire department’s assessment is far less dramatic than all that—just a sparky wire in a garage built in the middle of the last century packed with the trappings of a highly creative life. 

The details of what insurance will and won’t cover are still unfolding. Unbidden donations have been streaming into his Venmo, and some folks have offered to drop off stacks of new wood and gallons of paint, but he gently points out that there’s no place to put them yet. The comments on his social media posts teem with offers to help, but he’s not sure where to start.

“People have been so kind, it’s been overwhelming,” he said, detritus crunching under our feet. “An old timer told me that I’ve got to learn to let people give back to me, and I’m going to try to do that.”

In the meantime, he’s just going to keep producing brightly-hued paintings that people can afford and take home and admire and be inspired by, maybe even so much so that problems seem a little smaller and we all feel more connected.

“I didn’t start out trying to be an artist,” he shrugged as he shuffled a warped John Coltrane sign bearing “A Love Supreme” in red, white, and blue. 

“I’m a hope-pusher.” 

True to that, the campfire smell of his old studio still in the air, Panhandle Slim set up a table in the yard and started from scratch. Already there’s a Frida drying in the sunlight, a Tupac awaiting its second coat of paint. He plans to sell them at his usual spot this Saturday morning on Bull Street next to the Old Sears Building, accepting your good wishes and whatever you care to pay.

To paraphrase the genius essayist Rebecca Solnit, hope is the belief that what we do might actually matter, and also, according to the sages, probably “the pillar that holds up the world.” Seems to me that one can be hopeful as well as factual, as long as we’re being honest.

I’ll be over here with my empty net, casting for bigger fish.

Here’s to outgrowing all our problems ~ JLL