
This was job #303 in Dad’s work log, and he was hired to do it for $300 on April 3, 1964. That same month he and the family moved from Long Island City to an old farm in rural New Jersey, so The Planet Buyer was probably one of the very first things he finished in the new house (built in 1871 by a Confederate Civil War veteran turned Old School Baptist minister, incidentally - but that’s another story). Before he was able to start renovating the old barn on the property, Dad used a tiny (about 7 x 10 feet) upstairs bedroom as his studio - its low, seven-foot ceiling still bears the scars from the top of his easel scraping against it.