On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Gray, Tom wrote:

> The seafoam is used in So. and Central AR, also (in addition to the standard
> blue).  Any reading on the prevalence of these (or other) colors up north?

As a child in East Lansing, Michigan, in the mid-1960s, living on a street
lined with circa 1927 houses with front porches, I was amazed to notice
the varied pastel colors of porch ceilings, including their lack of
relationship to the color of the house itself, the porch columns, and
other normally visible items.

It seems to me there was at least one which was blue and at least one
which was the sea-foam color.  As I recall, no two were the same (except
those which, like ours, were simply painted white), and I assumed it was
an expression of each owner's eccentricity.

On these houses, only the board ceiling itself would be the interesting
color; the trim around the porch ceiling, the soffits, etc. were all just
the same color as the rest of the house trim.

I tried to persuade my father to paint our porch ceiling a color other
than white, but he patiently explained to me that it would require buying
a whole can of a different color of exterior paint, and wasting most of
it.

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com