Former Newarkite 'dreams' of new paint stick

Who says "Dreams have nothing to tell?"

Not attorney Pete Van Tyle, a Newark native (now living in Skaneateles) who saw his future in an invention that came to him in a dream.

Van Tyle dreamed he was rubbing the sides of a milk truck with (of all things!) a wedge of Parmesan cheese. "Obviously too many take-home pizzas eaten way too late!" admits Van Tyle. In the dream, pranksters suddenly appeared and began to scrawl graffiti on the truck. Curiously, wherever the parmesan cheese had been spread, the paint would not adhere.

The peculiar vision dogged Van Tyle until he had a flash. "Why not coat glass with something that makes paint drips slide right off when painting window frames and mullions? Just like the parmesan cheese did!"

So he set about concocting various recipes and molding them to fit into deodorant stick dispensers.

Painters were asked to try out the paint masking sticks and it was love at first sight! No longer would they have to tape-off windows before painting them or scratch windows while razor-blading the paint drips off -- now they can rub a masking stick along the window's edge and simply wipe off the drips with a cloth after the paint dries.

"It's laughably simple," exclaims Lori Ford, who single-handedly painted Geneva's Seneca Lake Country Club's many windows. "But, hey, it works!"

Van Tyle filed a patent for his product and is launching it in our own back yard. "You can't just dream," he muses, "you gotta listen to 'em too!" Van Tyle's "Paint Masking Sticks" are available at Hadlock's House of Paint on W. Union Street in Newark.

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