“‘Maybe it was just the way we felt then, but I think the sun set differently that night, filtering through the clouds like a big paintbrush making the top of the town all orange. And suddenly I thought what if the tops of our houses were that kind of orange, what a world it would be, Howard, and my God, that orange stayed until the last drop of light was left in it. . . . The feeling we had about that orange, Howard, that was ours and that’s what I’ve tried to bring to every house, the way we felt that night.’”

—Max Apple, from The Oranging of America, 1974. And so the orange Howard Johnson’s roof was born.