Ruidoso hydrant painter masks fascinating past. Resident paints fire hydrants instead of designing Hollywood sets.
Found this image on Google, had to see what they looked like… seems to me more popular than I thought!
Have you noticed some our Ruidoso fire hydrants suddenly developed character and are decorated with flowers, cat faces and other designs?
The credit for the transformation goes to the creative energy of Charly Kohlmyer, a stroke victim who over a five-year period relearned everything from a left-handed point of view. He can be spotted in the mornings applying his imagination by paint brush to the hydrants, while maintaining the correct colors on the caps to denote for firefighters the water pressure in the hydrant.
His reward, beside keeping boredom at bay, is the plates of cookies and other goodies dropped off by residents who stop to talk and to thank him for his contribution to the village.
