16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, August 12, 1911: What with rubbing against fresh paint, and watching the painters I managed to have something to do, but this won’t occupy me very much longer, as the house will soon be painted with its last coat.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Ready-mixed paints became widely available in the late 1800s. The July 26 diary entry mentioned that the barn was being painted red—and now the house was being painted.
