Brush in Hand, He Heard Higher Call: Painting Flagpoles

Returning to the top of the historical Riverside Hotel where he started his unusual career 41 years ago, Jack Christal shinnied up the 40-foot flagpole Wednesday and added a fresh coat of gray paint.

“I guess I’m the only guy in town who does this kind of work,” the 78-year-old flagpole painter said.

Christal first painted the pole atop the seven-story brick building in March 1960 just months after he got off a Merchant Marine ship in San Francisco Bay with vacation on his mind.

“I wanted to get away from the sea. I never went back,” he said. He met up with a pair of flagpole painters and joined them on a trip to Reno.

“We painted a few poles, partied and took the bus back.”

Eventually, the San Francisco native was painting poles on two-year-long cross-country loops to the East Coast and back.

“I was on the road constantly,” he said, finally settling in neighboring Sparks in 1978.

The highlight for Christal probably was the $1,200 he was paid in 1962 to paint the 184-foot flagpole in Calipatria, Calif., elevation 184 feet below sea level.

“That was a lot of money back then. They got donations from all over the world so they could build a flagpole that topped out at sea level,” Christal said. “When I found out it was there, naturally I wanted to paint it.

“It is an awesome pole. I wouldn’t try to do it nowadays.”

Clad in white hat and sunglasses with the scenic Sierra Nevada range as his backdrop, Christal inched his way up the Riverside pole under a bright blue sky about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday so as to finish the job before afternoon highs soared into the mid-90s.

With paint bucket and brush dangling from the rope rigging, the technique is similar to that of a telephone linemen.

“Except you don’t have spikes,” he said.

Standing in leather stirrups more than 100 feet above the Virginia Street pavement, he pulled himself up with his arms about 8 or 10 inches at a time, then slid up the harness seat, which when lowered grabs onto the pole.

All pretty routine, he said.

“Usually I sand and prepare the surface on the way up. Sometimes I paint the ball gold on top. Sometimes it doesn’t need it.

“I had a few fall over with me, smaller poles,” he recalls. He broke his arm once--”a long time ago, down in New Mexico”--but has been fortunate to avoid a major injury.

The latest job came at the invitation of the Sierra Arts Foundation, which helped renovate the hotel built in 1927 on the banks of the Truckee River, turning it into apartment lofts for artists.

The Cal-Neva Hotel-Casino and Reno businessman Bill Thornton put up the $600 for the foundation to pay Christal to finish in time to celebrate Flag Day on June 14 and spruce up the view of the mountains from downtown offices.

“I was watching him there in that little sling from my 14th floor window,” Thornton said.

“I was hoping there wouldn’t be an earthquake or anything,” he said.

Christal said he keeps a scrapbook of newspaper articles about his work over the years. But he said he has no idea how many poles he has painted.

“There’s a whole bunch of write-ups. I’ll be doing a pole somewhere and a newspaper man will go by,” he said.

“All the stories are about the same, you know. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.”