CHAPTER 7 
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other . . .
The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
—-JAMES BALDWIN
When Dwayne and Sue Young heard about the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery that was opening only a few streets away from their downtown Des Moines, Iowa, location they were concerned. Their own gallery had been open for a year, and business had steadily declined. Luckily for them, Dwayne still had a significant nest egg left over from the sale of his family business, so he could afford to cover the monthly allotment of paintings they were obligated to buy in order to meet their contractual purchase quota. After Thom had visited the gallery for their grand opening, business had been brisk for a while, and every family member and friend had come in to purchase a canvas transfer to get in on the good investment and support Dwayne and Sue. They had held special events, holiday happenings, hired a Santa Claus for Christmastime in the gallery, and staged an egg hunt in the gallery on Easter.
At some point, by the end of their first exciting year—a year filled with pride of ownership, mastery of the art market and art handling, hiring and training gallery staff, and the planning and hosting of the gallery’s special events—they had to admit to themselves they weren’t making it. And with another gallery opening several streets away, things weren’t going to get any better. It was hard for Dwayne not to feel personally responsible for the lack of business, although Sue always reassured him they had gone above and beyond the requirements and had invested not just money, but loving care into the gallery.
It had been a joy for them to spend every day among the thatched-roof cottages and gardens and gazebos of the paintings hanging on the walls. There were days it didn’t feel like a job at all; it was a privilege and a blessing. When they spoke to collectors, they spoke with genuine affection and enthusiasm for the latest release, or their classic favorites. It seemed wrong to doubt that all would be well—it seemed a little like doubting God. Their faith was inextricably linked to the endeavor, and they never questioned that they were doing the work God wanted them to do.
Even with the strong sense of calling that had led them to sign on the dotted line in Monterey, California, after their weekend intensive at Thomas Kinkade University, they had also considered the matter carefully as far as the money went. After all, they were told by the team in Monterey that they were practically guaranteed to be netting nearly $200,000 a year with their business. They had been reassured about the solidity of the businesses with graphs and statistics. They had been shown business plans and projections. It was all so encouraging, and the numbers were obviously so strong. They felt as if they couldn’t go wrong.
A year later, however, the financial reality was becoming all too clear for them to ignore. After much prayer and agony, Dwayne got on the phone and called representatives at Media Arts to ask for an extension on the next required allotment, and to inquire whether there was any financial support possible from the company, since the numbers were just not measuring up to what they had been promised. He wasn’t looking to make trouble; he simply wanted a little help to make it over a rough patch. He also wanted to inquire politely why there was another gallery opening several streets over, when they weren’t making ends meet with their own.
Dwayne was given an answer in very simple terms: he had signed a contract and there was nothing the company could do. The contract stated that if he were in arrears there would be penalties; and if he couldn’t pay he would be sued.
Dwayne hung up the phone in shock. Neither he nor Sue could believe this was possible from the Painter of Light’s company. Their worldview, and their image of Thomas Kinkade, were shattered.
Dwayne and Sue were not alone. By 2003 a significant number of galleries were failing. Contrary to what prospective signature gallery owners had been promised, the business was not certain to succeed. And they had been promised many things at Thomas Kinkade University. They had been reassured no galleries had ever failed, except two. And in both cases, those failures were only due to sickness in the family.
Good people, like Dwayne and Sue, saw their life savings disappear because they couldn’t move the merchandise and the customers weren’t coming. There were too many galleries for them to compete with; often several in the same town, in the same neighborhood, or even on the same street. Thomas Kinkade paintings were being offered on the QVC network at greatly discounted prices, and people preferred to buy the art at a reduced price. Dwayne and Sue watched with dismay as the Painter of Light broadcast from the Morgan Hill headquarters of Media Arts, four times a year, from his own specially built studio, selling prints at discounted rates. This was the same company that was threatening to sue them if they didn’t pay their contractual allotment. And still they were contractually obligated to sell their stock at the predetermined full price.
Then Media Arts made a deal with Tuesday Morning, the off-price, deep-discount retailer that specializes in name-brand closeout merchandise. Dwayne and Sue were alarmed. With over eight hundred stores across the country, Tuesday Morning was powerful competition. The fact that the Tuesday Morning sale of Kinkade’s artwork took place in December, just in time for Christmas, made it all the worse. Thomas Kinkade was the Painter of Christmas, and the holiday was the most important retail time of the year for any signature gallery.
But Tuesday Morning was selling Thomas Kinkade paintings by the stacks; next to rugs, lamps, china, luggage, toys, Christmas wrap, and garden furniture, all in their casual self-serve, no-frills environment. There was no need for cinnamon and spice, dimmed lighting and hearth fires, when the discount was so attractive. Customers began asking Dwayne and Sue if they were jacking up their prices, when the paintings they were contractually obligated to sell for $479 were being sold at Tuesday Morning as prints for $59.95. They were a different edition altogether with different attributes, but prospective customers found the distinguishing characteristics difficult to discern.
But the fact that any Thomas Kinkade works were selling for $59.95 at all was the real problem. Media Arts was only looking to unload some old inventory, open editions that were not signed or numbered, and which had never been sold. They were more like posters than limited edition prints. Tens of thousands were taking up room in the warehouse, and rather than burn them, they thought it would make sense to frame them and sell them to Tuesday Morning. They had no idea it would cause a firestorm of controversy.
By 2003 ten galleries were suing Media Arts, claiming Thomas Kinkade and his company had defrauded them by creating unfair competition. The lawsuit said Media Arts had saturated the market with other signature galleries, and by selling the canvas transfer inventory through discount chains, which drove the prices down and made the art impossible to sell. Media Arts fought every one of the lawsuits, often with a countersuit. Interim CEO Tony Thomopoulos was the unlucky recipient of the debacle that had been brewing for years as a result of the previous management team’s sales-at-all-cost policy. Its sales philosophy had not taken into account the nature of the art market; a market experienced dealers know they have to protect by carefully cultivating the release of an artist’s work, in order to avoid a loss of faith in the art or a loss of faith in its market viability.
The casualties began to grow. The stories were heartbreaking. When Dwayne and Sue attended a fine arts dealers convention, they happened to meet other Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners, and saw many of these people in tears. Some gallery owners had lost their homes. Others could no longer afford to pay for their children’s education. Dwayne and Sue themselves were facing bankruptcy. These couples were once well off, but now they had not only lost their nest eggs and their retirements, but also their businesses and professions. Some were forced to leave their homes and the states in which they lived in order to find work elsewhere.
The faces of the failing signature gallery owners were varied and yet the same. Once well-to-do business owners were reduced to becoming supermarket managers; interior designers became clerks for box companies. One gallery owner had once been an entrepreneur worth upward of $3 million. He and his wife had just remodeled their 6,000-square-foot dream home in Michigan. Then their gallery failed, leaving them with a $500,000 debt. The couple ended up divorcing. By the end of it all, the husband found himself living in a small apartment with his dog, having lost everything.
By June 2003 Media Arts posted a net loss of over $3 million; $0.27 per share. A year earlier the loss had been a little over $500,000, or a loss of $0.50 per share. The trend was alarming. The sluggish sales and the galleries closing in droves were a clear indication that Thomas Kinkade’s art had reached market saturation. Two years later, there seemed to be no more empty walls left to fill in the homes of America. Was it the brick wall?
Dwayne and Sue mortgaged their house, liquidated their stock, and countersued when Media Arts sued them for unpaid fees.
There were two kinds of people affected by Media Art’s policy of sales and saturation. The signature gallery owners who invested in a gallery and ended up losing their investments, and the collectors who bought paintings they thought would not only hold their value but become more valuable over time. Collectors bought prints on canvas of an image replicated in the many thousands, signed by a signature machine and retouched by the brush strokes of studio assistants, with the promise that they were making a good investment. They had all been swayed by the cinnamon scents and enveloping, warming hearth of the signature galleries. Their imaginations had been set on fire, and their deep yearnings sparked for simplicity and peace in an increasingly complicated and uncertain world. It was as though they could, with a moment’s glance, enter the realm of a Thomas Kinkade painting with the promise of a life away from the bustle of modern-day existence.
But did the artwork make for a good investment? Most Thomas Kinkade collectors were not savvy about the art market. Thomas Kinkade spokespersons even boasted that gallery employees were not knowledgeable about the art world, but rather friendly and welcoming. The lack of “culture” supposedly was a plus. The collectors were often trusting and uninformed individuals, interested in the art for emotional reasons, without a pragmatic knowledge of the larger picture. Many perhaps didn’t understand that, while they bought a canvas transfer painting in a limited edition of 2,750, a limited edition of a popular artist like Peter Max might only reach perhaps 100. And furthermore it’s safe to assume that many collectors didn’t realize that the same image was replicated on canvas and paper, in so many different sizes and versions that the total edition size was sometimes over 200,000.
Terry Sheppard had been promised the keys to the kingdom by Thom. He was the one guy who was always there for Thom, and who had an insight into his life like almost no one else had. Terry was the staple in his posse; he chronicled every minute of Thom’s life for posterity. There was a time when Thom didn’t go anywhere without Terry. It seemed like he wouldn’t go to the grocery store without Terry there with his ubiquitous camera, capturing the Painter of Light in his ordinary and extraordinary moments. In that sense, he was the most important person in Thom’s life. And for his loyalty he was promised a significant role in the company one day.
One day in 2003, much to our surprise, we heard around the company that Terry had been fired by Thom. I’m certain Terry never imagined this would happen, as close as he was to Thom. Rick Barnett was the most influential, Ken was the most devoted, but Terry was his pal—the beloved Labrador retriever at his master’s side, faithful, never straying.
Terry must have asked him, “Where are the things you promised?” Thom’s tendency to avoid conflict and be unavailable most likely didn’t help Terry’s shock and feeling of having been betrayed. Thom was a gregarious, easygoing spirit. It was hard for anyone who knew of their arrangement to imagine what brought Thom to the point of firing Terry. Perhaps there was pressure from the company. Perhaps people thought Terry was not a good influence. Nobody knows for sure. Terry was Thom’s biggest follower; he idolized him and would have done anything for him. And he knew where all the bodies were buried. It was as though he had been cut out of the will. In the end we never knew what happened, but I understand that Terry wrote a manuscript, soon after being let go, detailing his experiences with Thom entitled Thomas Kinkade: Painting by Numbers.
By June 2003, Media Arts had posted yet another quarter’s losses. Tony Thomopoulos, who to his credit stayed far beyond his desired tenure to continue to support the company in its distress, was trying his best to assuage the increasing concern on Wall Street, as well as of collectors, over the quarterly losses, and to reassure them about the soundness of the business and the value of the art. Tony explained that with the recent invasion of Iraq earlier in the year, the economic environment had been made much more difficult, and that in these times it was not unusual for discretionary spending to shrink as consumers were more cautious about their spending. He tried to reassure an ailing marketplace, and a skittish Wall Street, that Media Arts was implementing a comprehensive strategy to continue to build the lifestyle brand. The company planned to expand to a broader consumer audience by broadening the base of the licensing partners, and at the same time exert better control over the distribution of limited canvas transfer and paper reproductions of the art.
Six months into Tony’s tenure, the company had actually hired his replacement. Chuck Vita, an executive at an Atlanta broadcast company, was to be the permanent CEO of Media Arts. He was a devout Christian, and his reputation was excellent. Tony was a big fan of Chuck’s, and had started packing up his office, happy that a replacement had been found, allowing him to return to retirement.
However, Ken Raasch told me that something very strange had happened in his first meeting with Chuck, and that he thought Chuck might be a problem. No one believed Ken at the time. But soon, interesting stories were swirling around about him, and it wasn’t long before he was gone. Tony Thomopoulos, who would just as happily have stayed retired, was called back in, and would serve for two more years before the next replacement was found. This was part of a ten-year pattern of “revolving door” CEOs, only adding to the company’s chaos and woes. Tony was among the best and the most conscientious.
Several key factors might have doomed Media Arts and, ultimately, Thomas Kinkade. The first was the decision to go public. The art publishing business had been successful on its own, and would have continued to be. But with the pressures of Wall Street bearing down, the need for quarterly profits first drove the decision making at the top toward expansion and diversification, which nearly cost the company its life. The subsequent removal of Ken, and what seemed to be Media Arts’s ensuing policies of sales at all costs, further fed the Wall Street machine, but ended up creating a market bound to collapse due to saturation. Thom’s friends and cofounders of the company, Ken Raasch and Rick Barnett, helped create success in the short term, but might have contributed to its problems in the long term.
Thom wasn’t a businessman at heart, and he left the management of the company in the hands of those he trusted. He was a visionary and an artist. He avoided conflict and strife, and tried to let others handle the dirty work. He wanted to do good with his talent, he wanted to be liked, and he wanted to enjoy himself. He trusted his friends to make the right and the tough decisions. He didn’t want to hear about the lawsuits when they began to hit Media Arts in 2003. He didn’t want to know his company was suing the very gallery owners he had once visited and clinked champagne glasses with. Thom couldn’t easily separate his relationships and feelings for people from the needs of the business, rather choosing to avoid having to deal with things altogether.
Thom’s ultimate coping mechanism was twofold: avoidance and drinking. If he wasn’t comfortable in a situation, he disappeared. Didn’t answer his phone. Wasn’t available for meetings. Holed up in his studio and painted for days and weeks. If you finally caught him at a lucky moment, he avoided serious discussion by changing the subject, or suggesting heading out to a bar. Thom didn’t reveal his feelings if they were negative. I never saw him depressed; I never saw him down. He was so positive and upbeat all the time that it was as if he didn’t even know how to express himself if there was something bothering him. As if he had a need to be upbeat and positive all the time. And when you feel that you have a connection to God, you tend to see things in terms of blessings and gratitude. A deep faith doesn’t really allow for complaining. I believe that’s part of the reason why Thom avoided negativity; he felt it would just be wrong. If something negative had to be stated, Thom spun it into a positive.
“What do you think about those lawsuits, Thom?” I asked.
“I’ve got a lot of faith in Ken and that new lawyer he hired. Don’t we have a great team?”
Then we ordered another round of beers and talked about licensing some more. Anything to avoid the uncomfortable subjects.
Nanette began to come to executive meetings, taking a more active role as spokesperson for her husband’s interests. She began to rise in influence and importance, showing strength where Thom was becoming weaker.
We started to have our licensing meetings in the dining room of Thom’s house so Nanette could participate and also keep an eye on the kids. We sat at the big table and I brought out the mock-ups and samples, and we all looked at them together. Nanette looked at everything carefully, conscientiously. I admit that it felt a little weird to me at first after all those years of Thom and me meeting alone, but she showed herself to be very smart, very adept at the moving parts of the business, and very visionary, too. She asked if we could put the Christmas image on cookie containers, and I said that was a good idea. She also mentioned the idea of glow-in-the-dark puzzles, another concept I loved.
In October of 2003, with Nanette’s firm support, Thom took his company private. The stock had plummeted to a little over $2 a share, down from its high of $30. Thom and Nanette decided together that it was time to take the company back, and out from under the pressures of Wall Street. Thom had already negotiated with Ken for the largest stock share prior to this time, and Ken had finally, after many years of holding out as the largest shareholder, agreed to sell Thom just enough of his shares, which allowed Thom ultimate control over the company. Ken earned a huge windfall payment from Thom, and would still receive significant ongoing income including royalties on certain editions, just as he always had.
It had been a never-ending struggle between Thom and Ken; a battle over ultimate assertion of the original ownership and control of the company. Since their first days in the garage, they had begun competing for their respective positions. Even when Ken was removed, he continued to hold on to his control by remaining the controlling shareholder. By allowing Thom to now become the largest shareholder, finally he could no longer hold the sword of Damocles over Thom’s head. Conversely, Thom had held what Ken called “the power of the paintbrush” over Ken and the company. If things came to a head in business, or didn’t go in a direction Thom was happy with, then Thom would threaten to stop painting, which meant that everything would come to a grinding halt. It was the ultimate assertion of his being the source of all things the company achieved and profited from.
The settlement between Ken and Thom over the largest stock ownership brought a new peace between them. Thom’s taking the company private was the next step in his taking back what he felt was really always his. Enough time had passed since the sting of the Forbes article, the disaster of the David Winter Cottages losses, and Ken being forced out of the company. The constant vying for control and validation over who was most important to the company was finally implicitly laid to rest. Time had told; everything came from the paintbrush in the hand of Thomas Kinkade. The company existed, thrived, and succeeded only because of him.
Thom negotiated a deal with the stockholders to buy them out at $4 per share in cash, which represented a premium of over 60 percent above the $2.37 value at the time. Thom paid over $32 million of his own money in order to own the company outright and free himself from Wall Street. By the following month, Media Arts reported an income jump from its previous quarter. By January 14, Eric Halvorson, the former president of Media Arts, was named CEO, finally relieving Tony Thomopoulos and sending him back into retirement. Six months later, Eric Halvorson was removed and Dan Byrne was rehired after five years to become the new CEO.
In January of 2004, Thom also removed the name Media Arts from the company; a name which for so long had stood for diversification and had promoted the publishing side of the business over the importance of the artist who made it all possible. Thom renamed it the Thomas Kinkade Company.
By gaining the largest share of stock, taking the company private again, and putting his own name on the company, Thom had settled the score and ended the longstanding unspoken rivalry; he had won. Thom and Ken were finally able to relax with each other and return to the friendship they’d had in the early days. Thom kept on painting and Ken lent his support in the ongoing lawsuits, which the company was fighting at the time. Ultimately Ken was still happiest when he was involved in Thom’s life, whether owner of the company or not.
The lawsuits were being settled in arbitration. A new CEO had taken the helm. And Thom had a company that finally bore his name. For the first time in a long while, there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel.
In April of 2004, Thom received his first recognition by academia when California State University at Fullerton staged a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of his work at the CSUF Grand Central Art Center. The exhibit was guest curated by author, performance artist, and curator Jeffrey Valance, who called the show Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth. Valance was one of the rare art world figures who saw merit in displaying Thom’s work to the public. The exhibition featured Thom’s fine art, art products, and religious work, with original paintings, reproductions, limited edition collectibles, furniture, tapestries, and Christian artwork, including his celebrated Kinkade Nativity Scene. Some of Thom’s recent paintings inspired by his travels abroad were featured in the main gallery, along with examples of his architectural designs, shown in blueprints, photos, and models. The Art Center space even built a gallery that resembled a quaint country church with pews and stained-glass windows for the nativity scene, and the opening event on April 3 included a sermon by Reverend Ethan Acres, who spoke on Thom’s religious work. An actual marriage ceremony was held in the gallery’s chapel during the course of the exhibition.
When we at the company first heard about the exhibition, we were all asking ourselves, “What’s the hitch?” After all these years of being ridiculed and scorned, surely this couldn’t be real. But there were supporters on the board of CSUF who believed in the value of a Thomas Kinkade exhibit, such as Greg Escalante, who had read an article in the New Yorker in which Thom had bet the reporter that within his lifetime, he would have a major museum show. Escalante wanted to make that bet come true and took the article to the board, and the board voted for doing an exhibition. The result was thorough and thoughtful and genuine. And on the day of the opening Thom walked through the exhibition, beaming.
“Look at that. They’ve got a whole chapel set up. Isn’t that marvelous? Haven’t they done a wonderful job, Eric?”
“They sure have, Thom,” I said.
“Nobody’s calling me schlocky now, are they?”
“Certainly not,” I said.
It was fun following him around, watching him exclaim at everything in sight. The experience of the evening was truly magical. All these years, the critical establishment had called him formulaic, insignificant, schlocky, and kitschy. On this night, Thomas Kinkade was in heaven. After waiting for legitimacy for so long, the validation was much needed, and a long time coming.
That year, despite posting losses, the Thomas Kinkade Company reached another milestone: the $2 billion mark in total retail sales.
By May of 2004, the licensing business of Creative Brands Group with the Thomas Kinkade Company was humming. We had increased our license contracts to over one hundred and were coming up with new licensed product ideas all the time. Ken was seeking out other investment opportunities, as I focused my time on the licensing business with Thom and other clients, such as Rachael Hale. It was certainly where the biggest profits were. It was something I saw to be true for over a decade. Nothing sold like Thomas Kinkade.
In the spirit of things looking up, Ken surprised me with a birthday trip to Cabo San Lucas in May of that year. He had invited Dan Byrne and Thom as well, and bought us all tickets. I had never been to Cabo, and didn’t know what to expect. But Ken had been there many times, and assured me we would have a good time.
When we got to the San Jose airport, the first thing I saw after going through security was a large man dressed in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt with a large straw hat, hunched over the airport bar. I immediately knew it was Thom. He had a cold Corona in front of him, and had lined up two shots of tequila. I was not surprised. Thom frequently started early and drank throughout the day. But the prospect of drinking with the Painter of Light so early in the morning was a bit intimidating. Nobody had his stamina, and we were all in for some nasty hangovers if we were going to try to keep up with him. Nevertheless I approached the bar, and Thom gave me a big hug and handed me a shot of tequila. All I could think was that it was going to be quite a trip.
After an uneventful flight on Alaska Air, we landed in Cabo San Lucas, where a private car was waiting for us. We all piled in, and soon Ken, Dan, Thom, and I were headed to the hotel. As soon as we exited the airport, Thom shouted at the driver to pull over. He had just seen a market and wanted to stop and go inside. He left, and we sat in the idling car for several minutes before he returned. I thought he might be looking to buy some Cuban cigars, but he came back with a six-pack and handed each of us a cold beer to drink on the way to the hotel. It was classic Kinkade; and it was his alcoholism. Thom didn’t want a minute to go by that we weren’t having fun, and the key part of fun was having a drink in your hand and a buzz going on. He was continuously feeding the needs of his addiction, and we were unknowingly feeding it, too, by wanting him to be happy. We cracked our beers and kept on driving.
Our hotel was the Pueblo Bonito Hotel, situated right on the beach, in the old town of Cabo San Lucas. Ken usually liked to stay in the nicer parts of town, at one of the luxury resorts such as the Palmilla, Las Ventanas, and Ty Warner’s Esperanza. But for Thom’s sake he had chosen one of the older hotels, knowing his preference for history and charm. We were well set up, each with a suite of his own.
Just as we were getting settled into our rooms, we heard a rallying cry from Thom. He was down below, heading for the pool in his Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops, and a six-pack of Corona under each arm, enough for all of us to share. We went downstairs, grabbed a row of chaises longues, and relaxed by the pool for hours. Thom sat in the sun, turning red as a lobster, smiling at everyone and drinking his beers continuously.
Ken was working on his tan, while Dan cracked jokes relentlessly and Thom dipped in the water and came back out, then sat drying off in the breeze, smiling at us. We later had a big dinner and lots of drinks at a place called the Trailer Park, known throughout Cabo for its generous portions of steak and lobster as well as its supersize margaritas.
I woke up early the next day and made my way down to the pool where Thom was sprawled out on a chaise longue, tanning in the sun, with several drinks already behind him. It was ten in the morning at the latest, but that was how Thom rolled.
“Morning, Thom,” I said as I spread my towel on the chaise and sat down, surveying the pool scene from behind my sunglasses. It felt good to be away from the day-to-day business of the office, and the low hum of worries the lawsuits were spreading in the company every day. And it was great to be with Thom, catching a carefree moment. Thom was a fun guy to be around, and two beers into the morning, he was definitely on to the fun.
Thom raised his head from his towel and, under the glaring sun, squinted at me with one eye. He wished me happy birthday and insisted I have a beer with him. The others came down around noon, and after a nice lunch at the pool, we walked down the beach to a well-known happy-hour spot called the Office, where the waitresses walked with holsters around their waists, carrying tequila shots and chasers.
Zigzagging our way back to the hotel, we came across a henna tattoo artist, and Thom insisted we all get one. I ended up with a dragon and Thom got an eagle. Dan got a dolphin on his bicep, and Ken decided to have his name tattooed on his shoulder, which the tattoo artist misspelled as Len. We had a good laugh and called Ken “Len” for the rest of the trip.
Back at the hotel, Ken fell asleep from the heat while Dan, Thom, and I hung around the pool until Thom felt it was time to go into town. We roused Ken back to life and rode a cart drawn by a bicycle, which we had to pedal ourselves. We found a great Mexican restaurant and gorged on tacos, lobster, beer, tequila shots, and margaritas.
After finishing our dinner at the restaurant, we spotted one of Cabo’s most notorious hangouts, called Squid Row. It was eleven at night by this time, and the place was jumping. We looked into the entrance and saw that it was jammed with people, the music pumping loudly. We looked at each other, uncertain; “Should we do this?” The place was full of twenty-somethings on spring break. We felt old, being in our thirties and forties. But Thom wouldn’t take no for an answer and hustled us all in. We pushed through the crowd and worked our way to the bar. We were holding our Coronas when Dan turned around and asked, “Where’s Thom?”
I looked at Ken, and Ken looked at Dan. All of a sudden I was very worried. The idea of Thom out alone late at night, missing in Cabo San Lucas after drinking all day, was a troubling scenario. We quickly paid our bill and turned to go and find him. Suddenly, I caught a commotion out of the corner of my eye. At the other end of the bar, several scantily clad girls had lined up on an elevated ledge that ran along the entire dance floor, and were dancing together with the crowd cheering them on. Then I saw him: Thom was climbing up on the ledge. He wanted to be dancing and swaying to the music with the girls. As he tried to climb up, one of the girls fell off. Thom had a bottle of beer wedged between his teeth and another one in his hand. Somehow he finally managed to get up on the ledge and started dancing.
I tapped Ken on the shoulder. “Turn around. You’re never gonna believe this.”
Ken turned to look, and his jaw dropped. There was the Painter of Light up on the ledge with all the girls, a beer in each hand, dancing to the earsplitting music. One of the girls got into the groove and started pouring beer onto herself. The other girls in the line joined in. It seemed to be a tradition at Squid Row. Thom noticed what they were doing and followed suit, pouring beer all over himself as well. Soon he was drenched from head to toe in beer, dressed in his loud Hawaiian shirt, shaking his hips with reckless abandon, a line of fifteen girls dancing with him. Dan, Ken, and I were in hysterics. Ken leaned in and whispered to me, looking worried. He said if the world knew what the Painter of Light was doing right now, it wouldn’t be pretty, and I agreed. He said he hoped they never would. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and wished me a happy birthday.
I grinned. “Thanks for the trip, Len. I’ll never forget it.”
We stood for an hour and watched Thom enjoy himself, dancing to the music. We finally looked at each other. None of us wanted to, but finally Dan was elected. He hitched up his pants, walked over to Thom, and sweet-talked him off the ledge. Thom waved at the girls, and following Dan with a grin on his face, unsteady on his feet, swerved up to us, reeking of beer.
“How do you like my dance moves?” Thom asked.
“Travolta’s got nothing on you,” I said.
Then we all supported Thom out of the bar, dragging him into a bicycle cart, and pedaled him back to our hotel.
Meanwhile, back during a chilly spring in Des Moines, Dwayne and Sue Young quietly picked up the phone and dialed the number a friend had given them. The person who answered was a man named Norman Yatooma. He had vowed to stand up for the suffering gallery owners who had lost everything, and to take Thomas Kinkade and his company down.