“Say — I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work — wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: “What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

— From “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” by Mark Twain, published 1884

Summer is a season for simplicity — for picking dinner right out of the garden or sleeping under the stars beside an open fire.

There was an even simpler summertime when small-town businesses advertised their wares and services on the walls of barns and brick buildings. If you look closely, you can see vestiges of such paintings on the walls of old brick buildings all over town.

Butler is about to have some fun with an art medium that came out of wall painting. In three weeks, a group of enthusiasts who call themselves the Walldogs will descend on Butler. They will turn 10 plain walls around town into murals — works of art with depicting events or sights of local significance.

That’s why we thought the reference to Tom Sawyer was appropriate. This coming weekend, the walls that will grace the murals will be primed — whitewashed — to prepare them for the dozens of artists who are coming July 27-31 to create their colorful murals.

The Walldogs and their host, the Butler County Historical Society, assure us that the murals will be highly stylized, attractive and instantly recognizable images — no graffiti, no abstracts.

In fact, the group exhibited miniature versions of their planned murals this past week at the Historical Society’s headquarters, the Senator Walter Lowrie House. The miniatures won enthusiastic approval from those who came to see them.

The mural themes will include a Pullman Standard rail car, the Bantam Jeep and the city’s namesake, Gen. Richard Butler, among others. When completed, the images will measure between 12 feet and 34 feet wide, and between 8 feet and 18 feet tall.

Photographs of the miniatures that were displayed this week will be featured in upcoming editions of The Butler Eagle before the Walldogs arrive.

Let’s have some fun with this project, Butler. Just like Tom Sawyer, we have the opportunity to take a drudge chore like painting and turn it into a festival. We even have other people showing up and volunteering to do all the work.