​UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN BUCKET LIST
PAINTING THE ROCK WITH THE MICHIGAN WATER SKI TEAM
The rock before...
Teammates
Walking away :(
The rock before...
Let's start by getting one thing straight: the painted rock seen above is no work of art. Luckily, that was completely besides the point!
I have always wanted to paint the rock. It seems the poor thing rarely goes a full 24 hours with the same coat of paint. And it's a Michigan tradition that brings diverse campus groups together. Frat pledges, social justice advocates, artists, athletic teams... they've all painted the rock.
This may seem like a fairly easy task to cross off your bucket list, and it is. All you need is some paint (and maybe some friends if you want to hurry the process up). However, the history of this colorful rock is a bit more complex.
The rock was placed in its current home on the corner of Washtenaw and Hill in the winter of 1932. "Ann Arbor Parks Superintendent, Eli Gallup, found a large limestone boulder in a county landfill and became quite smitten with it. He decided the rock would make an ideal monument for the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth — February 22, 1732 — and convinced the city to foot the $15 bill to transport the stone to its current location," wrote the Michigan Daily in 2010.
There was no paint (yet), although a commemorative plaque was added in 1939.
The rock's first coat of paint didn't come until the mid-1950's when a group of Michigan State Spartans defaced it with those three horrible letters: M, S, and U. The city tried to clean up the mess, but the precedent had been set and a tradition was born.
That's not to say that the rock has been covered for over 50 years. Here's more from the Daily's rock investigation: "According to Ann Arbor native Brian Durrance, he himself chipped away the layers of paint over the span of two days in the 1980s to reveal the commemorative plaque’s original message: 'To George Washington this memorial erected in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, 1932.'"
The author of that article decided to use modern power tools to chip away at the layers in 2010 to see just how much paint covered the rock. He discovered that depending on where he drilled, he could go 1 to 5 inches through paint before hitting the limestone.
Today, the rock still stands in all its glory. The City of Ann Arbor does little to interfere with the activity that surrounds the rock, unless it's covered in offensive graffiti. Although, some residents have complained of the paint and trash that gets on the surrounding sidewalks.
My journey to paint the rock with the Michigan Water Ski Team began the night before the actual event. After all, someone had to purchase the paint! I stood in Ace Hardware with a friend, debating how to approach this daunting task. Bucket of paint and paint brushes? Or spray paint? How much? What colors?
In the end, we bought 10 cans of spray paint in blue (6), yellow (2), and white (2). This proved to be plenty to give the rock a healthy coating of blue and decorative lettering in yellow and white.
The night of the actual painting, approximately fifteen teammates encircled the rock, armed with spray cans and a lack of creativity. There was little talk of how to approach the artwork. We're skiers after all and become much more excited by action than thinking.
So the rock turned out less than equisite, but the experience was completely worth it. We left our mark on a Michigan landmark, even if we found another student group covering our hardwork the following night.
Check out the slideshow below to watch the rock transform and see the fun the Michigan Water Ski Team had partaking in this Michigan tradition!
