A Painter Stresses Clarity of Vision--From Three Stories and Less

Ken M. Daggett always seems to have a clear view.

“I don’t quite know how to explain it, but when I’m out looking for a scene to paint, I seem able to get a clean and clear picture of it in my mind,” the Costa Mesa resident said.

His Beach Window Cleaning business, he believes, is the catalyst for that.

“When people ask how I put painting and window cleaning together,” said Daggett, 34, “I tell them I give people a chance to see what’s on the other side of their glass, and my paintings give me a different picture. I see a connection. Both take a certain amount of perfection and clarity.”

But it really doesn’t matter what others think.

“Painting is my first love,” he said, “and I just keep at it and keep amazing myself. Sometimes I’m amazed I’m doing what I do. It’s very challenging, and there doesn’t seem to be an end.”

That goes for his window cleaning business too.

“I started when I was 18 and now, here I am at 34, and I’m still cleaning windows,” he said.

Daggett looks forward to the day he’ll drop his thriving business and do nothing but paint. Don’t get him wrong. He doesn’t hate what he’s doing, but he would rather be putting paint brush to canvas.

“I have a lot of unexplored painting to do, and one of these days I’ll do it full time,” he said.

But that time hasn’t arrived yet: “The reason I wash windows is because I like to eat and have a roof over my head.”

But when he’s out looking for landscape scenes, that means exploring the Southwest in such locations as Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah and sometimes the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

“It’s kind of a dream to travel to all these exciting places,” said Daggett, who credits his grandmother for starting him painting and art classes at Orange Coast College to help him form and define his style.

To get those images, “I take pictures with a camera and with my mind. And when I come back, I try to combine them both.”

He has a big audience. “The people I work for seem to like what I do,” he said. “and I’m swamped with work”--even though he restricts his window cleaning to buildings that are three stories or less.

Daggett said one of these days he’ll get rid of his squeegee.”That’s my next dream.”

Picture a cow jumping over the moon. Then you’ll understand why Hannah Merriman, 13, of Cypress, won the theme contest for the upcoming Cypress Community Country Festival.

Her entry was “We’re moo-ving to Greater Heights.”

It was Prom Night for Angelo Trombetta of La Habra, and Sylvia Krieger of Sunland, who were named king and queen. Never mind that she’s 70 and he’s 80.

They were part of a crowd of 275 who attended the Third Annual Senior Citizens Prom sponsored by the Fullerton Senior Multi-Service Center.

“I had a terrific time,” said Queen Sylvia, while carrying the roses traditionally given the queen.

“I’ll be back next year,” said King Angelo, as he did a two-step.

There was a time when you went to work for a company and stayed there. Theodore Payne is one of those kinds of people.

He just retired from Ganahl Lumber Co. in Anaheim after working there for 60 years, most of it in the unusual dual capacity of truck driver and bookkeeper. There were times, he remembered, when he also worked there as a salesman and even collected on outstanding accounts.

And for more than 50 years, he rode his bicycle to work.

The 86-year-old Anaheim resident said he loved his job and never saw a reason to look for another one. He also couldn’t understand how the time passed so quickly.

He started with the company May 14, 1928.

The folks at Ganahl threw him a big retirement party. Payne’s photo now hangs on the wall, among the company’s family founders.

Dean Hesketh, 58, of Anaheim, left today from Seattle with 200 others on a 3,400-mile bicycle ride across the United States as part of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trek sponsored by the American Lung Assn.

His sponsors are donating a penny for each breath he takes on the ride. Hesketh calculated he will take 500,000 breaths by the time he reaches Atlantic City on July 22.

And that’s a breathtaking $5,000.