I thought after shaving my beard that this question would stop being asked but at every market when someone takes a look at our logo or sticker it persists. While I am certainly aging into looking exactly like the gentleman in our logo it is not me. It is, however, a real person and I love the story of how the logo came to be.
A few months back, on one of my picking adventures, I came across a treasure trove of pearl snaps. I brought them home and was ironing them after washing them when I felt something in one of the front pockets. I reached in and discovered about 20 business cards--the majority belonged to a dude named Tyler Golightly and the rest seemed to be for nursing homes. I did some online sleuthing and thought Tyler looked too young to be going into a nursing home himself but maybe he was looking for a place for his dad. I took some stabs in the dark and stumbled upon an obituary for a Delbert Golightly from January of 2018. I dug a little deeper and discovered that Dell was a retired Boeing engineer and also a devoted contributor to a forum dedicated to vintage tractors. When I say dedicated, he was one of the premier personalities on the forum. I got a chance to read through some of the threads he was on and he sounded like a hoot.
He talked about 20-20 paint jobs where things look good at 20 feet or at 20 mph. There was a tribute thread shortly after his death with 8 pages of remembrances from his friends, telling tales about how Dell would travel to meet them and hang out and just shoot the poop. He was clearly well loved by his friends and I now had his shirts that he was wearing in some of the pictures. I figured using his image as the inspiration behind the logo would be a nice hat tip to the type of old timer I hope to be as I grow older. As one of this friends said upon his passing "I shall remember Dell as a mountain of a man, always with a joke however inappropriate, and an effusive and generous spirit ... and as a man who always always always lent a helping hand."
My brother helped bring the logo to life and while I'm pleased to be mistaken for Dell, I've got a few more years to go before my beard is completely white.
