Good neighbors come with all colors

The last time his house was painted, Joe Verduzco did it himself. He scraped the peeling wood, caulked the holes, sanded the rough spots and slapped gallons of shiny white paint from roof to foundation.

But that was more than a decade ago.

This time, Verduzco sat helplessly in his dark living room, huddled in a green wool sweater, barely able to move from his chair. All he could reach were a pack of Winston 100s, an ashtray, a glass of water, some bananas and a telephone.

“I am willing to donate whatever I can to help,” the 77-year-old retired truck driver said, his hands folded on his legs, which were crippled by a stroke 10 years ago. “I am very grateful for this.”

Outside, several of his friends and neighbors in northeast San Pedro brushed gray paint onto the three-bedroom Elberon Avenue home, which Verduzco bought in 1941 and shared with his wife, Mary, until she died just months before his stroke. The wood-frame house sucked up the paint like a child devouring a Popsicle.

“I have known him for years and years, and when you think you are helping him out it makes you feel very good,” said Birdie Edney, one of the painters who has lived around the corner for 44 years. “He is a person who needs our help.”

Edney and about a dozen other volunteers spent last Saturday painting Verduzco’s house and one several blocks away on Oliver Street where Anita Mante lives. Verduzco and Mante, a 76-year-old widow who worked 20 years cutting mackerel and tuna at the Star-Kist cannery on Terminal Island, have neither the means nor the ability to paint their homes themselves.

“It makes me feel real good,” said Mante, whose two-bedroom house has been painted once in 40 years. “So long as they don’t send me the bill. I don’t have the money. I live on Social Security, and use the money to pay for the utilities and what I eat.”

With paint donated by Wickes Companies Inc., which owns Builders Emporium, the neighbors began painting the homes at 8:30, breaking only for lunch. The group was organized by Barton Hill-San Pedro Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization set up in 1985 to help upgrade homes in the neighborhood. They still have paint and are looking for eight more houses.

“It is the old-fashioned approach,” said neighbor Connie Rutter as she stroked the wood siding at Mante’s house with a thick coat of blue. “Help someone else out, and someday they will help you out.”

Doug Gary, an elementary school teacher in South-Central Los Angeles who lives next door to Mante, said the neighborliness of San Pedro is unusual in large cities like Los Angeles.

“It is a lot like a small town here, with little, old, friendly neighborhoods,” said Gary, speaking from Mante’s roof as he brushed white paint on the eaves. “The only reason people leave here is because they die.”

For a week before the painting, members of the California Conservation Corps, recruited by the neighborhood organization, prepared the houses, scraping off the old paint and applying a coat of primer. The “Paint Your Heart Out” program, as it is called, was repeated in five other communities in the Los Angeles area where Neighborhood Housing Services groups operate, including Inglewood.

“The idea is to get the residents to take an active part in helping to bring up the quality of their neighborhood,” said Barbara Finkelstein, director of the San Pedro organization. “It is not a giveaway program. It is a self-help program.”

Both Verduzco and Mante qualified for the free painting under county low-income guidelines. Mante lives on Social Security, while Verduzco receives Social Security and a small pension from Star-Kist, where he spent most of his truck-driving years.

Despite their meager resources, the two homeowners did their best to keep the painters happy.

Mante had coffee cake and doughnuts spread out on her kitchen table. A case of soft drinks sat on Verduzco’s kitchen counter, out of his reach but easy for Edney and the others to grab. Verduzco had asked a friend who does his shopping to pick up the refreshments.

“They have done a very good deed, and I thank God for it,” Verduzco said.

But as the shadows of two painters slipped across his front window and their muffled laughter filled the lonely room, his heavy eyes glistened. “I used to do everything myself.”