Everything seemed in place to maintain the family’s heritage.
Conrad Young began working with his father, a logger, shortly after he could walk and continued through the start of high school, bouncing around the state like a pinball.
They packed and moved each time a new job surfaced. They did tough work, manly work, cutting and hauling wood. They worked on farms, and dad was a blacksmith as well. His son was being groomed.
Then, in the summertime about 70 years ago, 14-year-old Conrad Young told his father, “Dad, I know what I want to be in life. I want to be an artist.”
He’s been painting ever since. His book, “New Hampshire’s Historical Covered Bridges,” published three years ago, is popular this time of year, with the leaves ready to burst. And it’s tough to beat the Granite State’s unique, coveted scene. The one with the covered bridge, built in the 19th century, engulfed in bright colors.
But back to dad. He never saw it coming. “He was looking to hear that I wanted to be a logger like him, like my dad,” Young, who’s 84, said from his home in Concord, which doubles as his studio. “You should have seen the look on his face.”
It probably wasn’t as panicked as the look George Costanza got after telling his father he wanted to be a ventriloquist. But point well taken.
This was Young’s calling. Not cutting and carrying wood. Not working in the advertising business, which he did for 40 years.
Painting. Specifically, New Hampshire’s covered bridges, of which there are 54. The book features paintings of about a dozen bridges. Young has shot about 20 others and plans to visit all 54 and continue painting.
“I did all the artwork for my high school and then I was in art school and that is what I have done my whole life,” young told me. “I love the character of the covered bridges, and I’ve been teaching myself and learning that there is no end to how you can use watercolors and make it more realistic.”
He’s loved covered bridge since he began seeing them while growing up in towns everywhere, smaller and simpler back in the 1940s and ’50s. The Youngs went where the work was, moving every three to four months.
Young was born in Moultonboro. He missed all of 5th grade while helping his father battle a wildfire that lit the Maine sky orange. He graduated from Tilton-Northfield High School. He lived in Lincoln, Holderness, Meredith, Laconia, Conway, Albany.
He and his father used a two-person crosscut saw together, alternately pushing and pulling from each side, sawing hard, dust flying.
“It was fast and rough and it was wonderful at that time,” said Young, referring to the days of his youth. “I learned how to work, and work was part of my lifestyle. It’s when you don’t have things to do is when kids get into trouble.”
Young said his bridge watercolors take about 24 hours of work, from photo to completon. His wife, Penny Young, quickly jumped in, saying, “Oh, honey, longer than that. 35 to 40 hours.”
She’s been part of the team since the start, playing a big role. Her encouragement. Her optimism. Her blessing.
“If you want the truth, I told him he needed to close his (advertising) business,” Penny said during our three-way call. “I said ‘just Paint, do what you enjoy.’ I didn’t know how it would affect me, that I would be the marketing manager, but they love his work.”
Conrad has his own favorites. He says his first watercolor – the Dalton Bridge in Warner – remains his favorite covered bridge and his favorite painting as well. In fact, it’s on his business card.
The bridges have common threads. The crisscrossing patterns of wood, the distinct aged smell, the feeling that transportation once had nothing to do with automobiles. Trains, horses and walking did the trick.
Conrad said he’s worried about the 54 covered bridges that are registered by the State of New Hampshire.
(Certain criteria have to be met to qualify, like no use of steel.)
“One time there were 400 and now it’s gone to less than 100 in the state,” Conrad said. “We’re losing these covered bridges from vandalism and floods and old age. Some have floated downriver and never been rebuilt.”
He said he’ll shoot and paint the bridges he hasn’t gotten to. He’s come a long way since that day 70 years ago, when he sprang the news on his mountain-man father.
“It looked like it almost killed him,” Conrad said.