Easterday Lore

I thought I would stick some “Easterday Lore” up here occasionally. Some of this will be history, some of it will be stories, some of it will be tips… ALL of it will be suspect, based on hearsay and things passed down through the oral history of the Easterday Family, blood or otherwise. We also have a page here which is more direct history of the company.

Today’s tidbit may be a tip, but I cannot personally attest to its veracity. In the early days of Russell L. Easterday Construction and Supply Company, we did a lot of construction at the Culver Academies, then Culver Military Academy. That has continued throughout the decades. One of the early projects included some copper work. New copper comes bright and shiny like a new penny. This project was an addition to an existing building and the new shiny copper stood out next to the older existing metalwork. My great grandfather, Russell Easterday, received this as a complaint and was a bit flummoxed. There was nothing wrong with the craftsmanship, but the new addition looked too new… an unusual complaint at that time. As always, there was an event coming up and they didn’t want to wait for the copper to obtain a naturally aged patina.

Grandpa talked to painters, some paint suppliers and finally contacted some old-country sheet metal workers he knew. One older gentleman who had been in the trade forever said, “Ack, that’s no problem. Just douse it down with some horse p*ss!” Easterday Lore is that this worked. I’m sure the Black Horse Troop was the source, but there was no discussion of how it was collected!