THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 12, 1994 TAG: 9412100038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
THEY CALL HIM ``Red Rooster.''
A red rooster is on his business cards, on his art, his stationery, and painted on the door of his car.. . . . And when they bury him there will be a rooster on his tombstone.
His real name is Paul LeVaughan Trice. In time the name became harder to carry than a gorilla in a grocery cart. Particularly in Ocean View and certainly in the Monkey Bottom section of Ocean View where the 62-year-old Red Rooster grew up.
``We lived at the end of a dead end street in the last house before you hit the swamp,'' he said.
And the nickname? All the boys in Ocean View had nicknames back in the 1940s. Croaker, Fish Bones, Squealer and Squirrel were the names of his friends. He got the Rooster moniker while wrestling at Granby High School.
``I kinda looked like a rooster when I was young and had red hair,'' he explained. ``And I was feisty. Always in trouble.''
Red Rooster is a man who has spent most of his lifetime figuring out what he was supposed to be.
When he was 10 years old he wanted to be a fisherman. He collected driftwood and built a platform at the end of an Ocean View jetty.
``I had a high chair on the platform and would sit out there all the time fishing, even at high tide,'' he said. And for a while he was a shoeshine boy at the old Ocean View Amusement Park.
But he was mostly in trouble, breaking a curfew imposed on young people by roosting in the balcony of a movie theater until the double feature was over. When walking home after the show, the police would chase him to the edge of Monkey Bottom and give up.
``They knew once I got to Monkey Bottom the chase was over because I knew every grain of sand out there.''
After growing up, the Red Rooster stretched his wings and flew all over the barnyard but never settled on anything.
He was a clown, a dry cleaner, a soldier, a tugboat cook, salesman, restaurant owner and tavern operator. But never conventional. While chili simmered on the stove of the tugboat, the chef would sketch and paint things he saw at sea. And the restaurant he operated had a sign in it that read: ``T-bones, 45 cents. With meat $4.75''
When he hit 50, the Rooster settled down a little and began asking himself questions, such as ``What do you like and love the most?''
He figured he liked painting and loved Hampton Roads, particularly Ocean View. And he has followed that passion since, working in oils.
``You can wash my paintings with a garden hose and they still won't run,'' he said, proudly.
His most famous painting to date is one called ``Ocean View Fun Spot'' - a night scene at the old Ocean View Amusement Park that won a second place ribbon at a Suffolk art contest but deserved better. The painting was shown, albeit briefly, in the 1979 television movie ``The Death of Ocean View Park.''
``I was hired for a non-speaking part in that movie as a clown,'' Rooster remembered.
His other subjects are local landmarks that hold memories for him and many living in Hampton Roads. A few of his subjects include: Harrison's Fishing Pier, Tony's Original Hot Dogs on Lafayette Boulevard, Charlie's Seafood Restaurant on Shore Drive, and Abby's Amoco & Garage in Norview - the oldest service station in Norfolk - owned by his friend Harold Davis Abernethy.
Rooster's latest painting - his most ambitious so far - is an untitled work that shows the Lessner Bridge over Lynnhaven Inlet and the high-rise condominium buildings beside it. It's a sweeping view of midsummer beach activity that shows fishermen, sun-bathers, boaters and swimmers. It's so realistic you can almost smell the suntan lotion and hear the squeal of children in the water.
``This is great,'' Rooster said, bouncing around a table as he showed me several of his completed works. ``Look at this. . . beautiful! . . And here, look, isn't this nice?'' You could tell by his winning, if snaggle-toothed, smile that the former tug chef was really pleased.
Well, what's a Rooster for if he can't crow about himself every now and then? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Motoya Nakamura, Staff
Paul LeVaughan Trice, "Red Rooster" to his friends, shows some of
his paintings.
by CNB