The name is Bohn - Keith Bohn. He was my best buddy at F/X from the first day I walked in to the last day I walked out. He is an excellent carpenter and a very easy going guy. There have been those who thought he was too slow to work in the business, but they just didn't have the attention span to appreciate him.
Tom "The Turkey" Magierski finally admitted it years down the line. "Every time I look at Keith he's just standing there staring at the pieces of wood on his table. As long as I watch him, that's all he does. Then I look away for a few minutes, and when I look back, the piece is finished and he's still staring at it. I don't know how he does it. He just stares it together."
He had a reddish brown Isuzu Pup pickup truck when I met him, which he drove from Deland every day. It had frequent trouble, and he was having a hard time finding parts - until one day on his way home he came up to a red light beside a baby blue Isuzu Pup, same year and everything. "You want to sell it?" he asked. "Sure!" the guy said. For the next nine (at least) years, he drove the blue one and pirated parts from the brown one.
We usually had an hour for lunch every day, which suited most of us just fine. I often tried to take a nap. Keith, however, liked to keep busy. When his son was a few years old, Keith spent his breaks and lunch hours building a "Thomas The Tank Engine" playhouse beside his table. Other days, he set up the planer and planed down pallet wood for future furniture building projects. If you've ever heard a planer, you know that there was no napping while that was going on.
I'm sure I'll think of more stories about Mr. Bohn. Luckily I can edit them in at a later time. Or maybe if I just stare at the keyboard...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The "New" Building
As I mentioned in an earlier post, in early 1997, Mack bought an old, dilapidated long-abandoned corrugated steel building that had at one time been a manufacturing plant for concrete things such as bridge parts - huge things. The ceiling was about thirty feet up at the peak, and twenty along the walls. The overhead I beams sported an old dilapidated traveling crane system that we who carried big set pieces the length of the six hundred foot long building believed should be brought back to life. I'm guessing this still has not been done.
When we moved into the building, both ends were wide open and much of the roof and walls was missing. I often phant'sied that if Bill Villegas had not been on the crew and/or a licensed commercial contractor, Mack might not have had the temerity to buy it. We had to hire a security guard overnight for the first month or so to guard our tools and materiel while half of us built scenery and the other half worked on closing up the building during the day.
At least as threatening as the possibility of marauders getting in, was the certainty of critters that still lived there. Opossums and raccoons had nests around our stuff on the floor, dozens of pigeons nested in the I beams overhead - making a mess of whatever was stored beneath them - and thousands of lizards, snakes, insects and spiders were at home everywhere in there. Any time we moved something, three or four critters would run for cover. We had an alarm system installed, but they had to take the motion detectors off line because the nocturnal critters were so active overnight. The Ocoee police were fining us to death for "false alarms."
By the time the weather started getting unbearably hot, the whole building was closed in - a steel box baking in the Florida sun with almost no air circulation. My work table was five feet from the south wall, and I swear I could almost see it glowing red in the afternoon. Mack bought us four or five four foot diameter poultry fans. I called them "category three" fans. If I set my pencil down on the table, the fan blew it across the room. I had to staple my drawings to the table. But even so, when I picked up a staple gun or router, it almost burned my hand. It was hot in that box.
As the years progressed, Bill and his boys cut six or eight holes along the walls and installed roll-up doors. One was very near my table, which was nice. Still hot as hell, but at least I could breathe.
Rain was a factor nearly every day, especially during the summer (April - October.) There were some massive leaks in the roof that could soak whatever was beneath them in a few minutes during a Florida thunderstorm. And the shop end of the building was lower than the surrounding property, giving us a two-inch deep lake around the table saws whenever it rained. Pushing water out of the shop probably accounted for ten or fifteen man-hours a week. Another ongoing project over the years involved digging drainage ditches around the shop and plugging holes in the roof.
As my nine and a quarter years with F/X were winding to a close, the building was having its roof insulated, which was supposed to have a side-effect of stopping the last of the leaks. They hadn't made it to the shop end by the time I left, so I don't know how that went. There was a pretty good leak right in front of my tool box that still dripped on me as I cleared my stuff, the company's tools and nine years' worth of drawings out of the box.
As much as I cursed that leak and the unbearable heat, I sure miss that work table. It was the best ever.
When we moved into the building, both ends were wide open and much of the roof and walls was missing. I often phant'sied that if Bill Villegas had not been on the crew and/or a licensed commercial contractor, Mack might not have had the temerity to buy it. We had to hire a security guard overnight for the first month or so to guard our tools and materiel while half of us built scenery and the other half worked on closing up the building during the day.
At least as threatening as the possibility of marauders getting in, was the certainty of critters that still lived there. Opossums and raccoons had nests around our stuff on the floor, dozens of pigeons nested in the I beams overhead - making a mess of whatever was stored beneath them - and thousands of lizards, snakes, insects and spiders were at home everywhere in there. Any time we moved something, three or four critters would run for cover. We had an alarm system installed, but they had to take the motion detectors off line because the nocturnal critters were so active overnight. The Ocoee police were fining us to death for "false alarms."
By the time the weather started getting unbearably hot, the whole building was closed in - a steel box baking in the Florida sun with almost no air circulation. My work table was five feet from the south wall, and I swear I could almost see it glowing red in the afternoon. Mack bought us four or five four foot diameter poultry fans. I called them "category three" fans. If I set my pencil down on the table, the fan blew it across the room. I had to staple my drawings to the table. But even so, when I picked up a staple gun or router, it almost burned my hand. It was hot in that box.
As the years progressed, Bill and his boys cut six or eight holes along the walls and installed roll-up doors. One was very near my table, which was nice. Still hot as hell, but at least I could breathe.
Rain was a factor nearly every day, especially during the summer (April - October.) There were some massive leaks in the roof that could soak whatever was beneath them in a few minutes during a Florida thunderstorm. And the shop end of the building was lower than the surrounding property, giving us a two-inch deep lake around the table saws whenever it rained. Pushing water out of the shop probably accounted for ten or fifteen man-hours a week. Another ongoing project over the years involved digging drainage ditches around the shop and plugging holes in the roof.
As my nine and a quarter years with F/X were winding to a close, the building was having its roof insulated, which was supposed to have a side-effect of stopping the last of the leaks. They hadn't made it to the shop end by the time I left, so I don't know how that went. There was a pretty good leak right in front of my tool box that still dripped on me as I cleared my stuff, the company's tools and nine years' worth of drawings out of the box.
As much as I cursed that leak and the unbearable heat, I sure miss that work table. It was the best ever.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Keeping Time
The first year, over on Currency Drive in south Orlando, morning break time happened when the "roach coach," in this case Bill's Quick Lunch, arrived and blew its horn. This happened somewhere around 10:30 - mostly. Well, for one thing, the horn wasn't that loud. For another, the many segments of the F/X space were sectioned off by concrete block walls. Plus, with compressors, table saws, routers and belt sanders going, one could be pretty near the front of the building and still not hear the horn. The system was: several guys who felt confident of their job security would gravitate out to the loading dock around 10:25 and hang out there until Bill came. Then they would jump down and get their food and have their break. The rest of the company could easily - and did often - miss out completely. Even the office people. If I happened to see the truck, I would yell out "break time" in my Dodger game "Charge!" voice, so that the whole company might know.
Then we moved to the Ocoee shop. My work table was in the end of the building nearest the road, and the truck, which was from a company called "Dot's On The Dot" rumbled past the big twenty foot wide door on its way to the main entrance, blowing its horn all the way. I nearly always saw it go by, so I would yell out "Dot's On The Dot!" loud enough for the whiole building to hear. It was very much appreciated by the warehouse guys six hundred feet away at the other end of the building, and by the people in the office, which fronted on the driveway, but they could always hear me even when they couldn't hear the horn.
It may have been a year later that the company name changed to "Southeastern Catering," but I never changed my call.
Mack was increasingly unhappy, as his union crew got brassier, to see the fifteen minute breaks stretch to twenty, twenty five, thirty minutes. He bought a toy truck with a sound track that said, "Let's get rolling," with revving truck engine noise, and he would play that over the phone system's public address mode. But, after a while, he began to think that he should delegate the break-ending job. He delegated it to me. So I drilled a piece of aluminum tubing and hung it by my bench. Fifteen minutes after the break truck arrived I would whack it in the rhythm of a song from the early sixties - whack... whack... whack whack whack... whack whack whack whack... Let's Go!
As the years rolled on, the rack of pipes and other noisemaking objects grew. I even bought a car horn and a button switch, because there were some who claimed not to hear the pipes clanging. The horn was so loud and obnoxious that I abandoned it soon after I installed it. I would bet it's still up in the structure over by my work table.
Before I left in 2005, the Fergermeister (Anthony Ferguson) spent a couple of days with a digital audio recorder, trying to get a good recording of "Dot's On The Dot" to play over the PA system. I heard tell he even used it a few times after I was gone. But then he found out what I already knew: keeping an eye out for the break truck takes dedication and diligence. Not a job for the faint of heart.
Then we moved to the Ocoee shop. My work table was in the end of the building nearest the road, and the truck, which was from a company called "Dot's On The Dot" rumbled past the big twenty foot wide door on its way to the main entrance, blowing its horn all the way. I nearly always saw it go by, so I would yell out "Dot's On The Dot!" loud enough for the whiole building to hear. It was very much appreciated by the warehouse guys six hundred feet away at the other end of the building, and by the people in the office, which fronted on the driveway, but they could always hear me even when they couldn't hear the horn.
It may have been a year later that the company name changed to "Southeastern Catering," but I never changed my call.
Mack was increasingly unhappy, as his union crew got brassier, to see the fifteen minute breaks stretch to twenty, twenty five, thirty minutes. He bought a toy truck with a sound track that said, "Let's get rolling," with revving truck engine noise, and he would play that over the phone system's public address mode. But, after a while, he began to think that he should delegate the break-ending job. He delegated it to me. So I drilled a piece of aluminum tubing and hung it by my bench. Fifteen minutes after the break truck arrived I would whack it in the rhythm of a song from the early sixties - whack... whack... whack whack whack... whack whack whack whack... Let's Go!
As the years rolled on, the rack of pipes and other noisemaking objects grew. I even bought a car horn and a button switch, because there were some who claimed not to hear the pipes clanging. The horn was so loud and obnoxious that I abandoned it soon after I installed it. I would bet it's still up in the structure over by my work table.
Before I left in 2005, the Fergermeister (Anthony Ferguson) spent a couple of days with a digital audio recorder, trying to get a good recording of "Dot's On The Dot" to play over the PA system. I heard tell he even used it a few times after I was gone. But then he found out what I already knew: keeping an eye out for the break truck takes dedication and diligence. Not a job for the faint of heart.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Union
We were still in the industrial park location when we built and sent out three sets for Fox News - two to New York and one to Washington, DC. I, of course, didn't go, but those who did - including Mack - were picketed by IATSE because we were not a union shop. Not long after, Mack called us all into a meeting. "How many of you would like to join the union?" About four people raised their hands. "How many would NOT like to join the union?" about fifteen people raised their hands. The meeting was adjourned until about two weeks later when he called us all to another meeting and said, "We're joining the union." It was March in the Ocoee building when we were sworn in and issued our union card and "Backstage Handbook." I joined for two reasons: first and foremost, by the deal negotiated with the Business Agent, it was free for us to join; Second, if the other guys were going to be voting on stuff that affected me, I wanted a vote. In fact, I did vote a couple of times.
Being in the union meant that, during the busy busy times, F/X could call the hall and get some really high priced incompetent help with highfallutin' attitudes. Not all of them were incompetent, of course, but most of them were not scenic carpenters. "Carpenter" in IATSE terms means that you know how to use a screw gun. After a while we got to know which ones to ask for and which ones NOT to ask for - but we still had to take what we got.
So I was a member in good standing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts for eight years. The only time it has come in handy since leaving Orlando was the two-day stint I did when F/X brought a news set to a TV station in Albuquerque while we were there. The local help assumed that I was still in the union, especially because I wore my old F/X tee shirts with the IATSE bug on the sleeve both days. Good thing they didn't ask to see my card!
Being in the union meant that, during the busy busy times, F/X could call the hall and get some really high priced incompetent help with highfallutin' attitudes. Not all of them were incompetent, of course, but most of them were not scenic carpenters. "Carpenter" in IATSE terms means that you know how to use a screw gun. After a while we got to know which ones to ask for and which ones NOT to ask for - but we still had to take what we got.
So I was a member in good standing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts for eight years. The only time it has come in handy since leaving Orlando was the two-day stint I did when F/X brought a news set to a TV station in Albuquerque while we were there. The local help assumed that I was still in the union, especially because I wore my old F/X tee shirts with the IATSE bug on the sleeve both days. Good thing they didn't ask to see my card!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
F/X - The Early Year
So I left Central Florida Display, and we went to Seattle on my birthday 1996. Carmen and I were looking at Seattle as a possible next destination for our adventure together. It was rainy and snowy and cold, oh my, but we liked the city. The cost of living is way higher than Orlando and the wages not so much. Real estate prices were ridiculous compared to Orlando. But the real deciding factor was that we felt so very far away from all of our family and friends. Back from our vacation we were in a tailspin over where to go next. But on January 23rd I was scheduled to begin work at F/X Scenery and Display, with Eddie Channell as my shop boss once again.
The shop was located on a railroad spur nestled back in an industrial park off of Sand Lake Road. I knew where it was because Al Caputo had had some peripheral dealings with Mack over the years. In fact, early in my career at F/X, Al traded his semi trailer and everything in it for us to do a show for a client of his. Al was out of show business by then, but still willing to take somebody's money to get one together. He also had no good place to keep his trailer load of crap.
One of the first things I worked on during those early months was a new (and short-lived) game show called "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego." We built a huge time machine set, a "Chief" screen wall for Lynn Thigpen, and six portals for the last part of the game. I built all of the rolling platforms to which the portals were attached, and the "Stonehenge" portal. Way cool. I still haven't encountered anyone who ever saw it on TV - not even me.
During the spring we finally decided to move north, just not so far. We put our St. Cloud house on the market, freshly painted inside and out, and began looking for a house in Orlando. After looking at twenty five or thirty houses, we found one we liked in the county, about six blocks south of the city limits. It was close enough to F/X that I could go home for lunch if I wanted. I did, twice. I believe it was for this reason that Mack began looking for a place to locate F/X, far far away from his house, which was ten blocks from our new house.
Everett Moran came to work for us that summer of 1996. He was from Honduras, grew up on the streets, never went to school, had very limited English, and little by little we figured out that he didn't know how to count. He obviously had learned over the years to get along without being able to count, and having never encountered such a thing before, it was hard for us to spot. We would tell him to cut twenty five pieces of one by, and he'd commence-a-whacking. We'd come back in a bit and ask how many he'd done. "Plenny!" he told us. Sometimes it would be eighteen, sometimes thirty seven, never the right number. I finally figured it out one day when Everett and I were setting up pipe and drape at the Dolphin Hotel. We needed seventeen uprights, so we were going around the room attaching pipes to bases and standing them up. After a while I paused to count. "How many we got?" asked Everett. "Sixteen." "An' how many we need?" "Seventeen." "So how many more?" W-h-a-a-a-a-t ? !
During the fall we did the first of many many many television news sets I worked on. We did five different sets for Court TV. The one that stands out in my mind is the one that had "V" groves on every panel, three eighths of an inch wide, routed into the laminate. The designer from New York measured every groove, and either they were three eighths or they were done over. I think there were twenty-some panels. The grooves were rectangles set three inches (not three and a sixteenth) in from the edges of the panels, with diagonals corner to corner. Suffice it to say that this was an immense pain in the ass times twenty-some. When the set was used on Court TV, I watched it for probably six hours, and during that time caught a fleeting glimpse of one corner of one panel maybe four times.
In November we were getting a load ready for a big corporate event, with decks and flats and pipe and drape and rear projection screens and lecterns and the whole magilla. Somewhere along the line, Mack came out and asked if any of us had experience running follow spot. Keith and I raised our hands. "This client asked for two follow spot operators on the last night of the convention, but there's a catch." Uh oh, what's this? "The entertainment is John Denver." Luckily, among the dozens of people working for F/X, Keith and I were the only ones who liked John Denver. In fact, I was putting together a church service for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I wanted to sing "Back Home Again," but I didn't have the song on any of my CDs. I was pretty sure I remembered the verses correctly, but I wasn't dead sure until the last night of the convention, hosing JD with photons from the twenty foot high stage left spot tower, listening to the author. He asked us to sing along on the choruses, and my dulcet tones filled the hall from the top of that tower. I packed John's guitars after the show. His manager asked if I'd like to play one, so I did for a minute. Then he gave me a pick with John's name on it. Wow. I was especially glad I'd had that experience when John died about a year later.
In December I began a year-long saga with AAA that is written up already in "The Gospel Of Rand McNally" in a post called "Triple A Times Seven" And then there was the Christmas party. We were invited to bring a guest. Everett showed up with his wife, his three kids and his next door neighbors. Plenny of guests.
The early part of 1997, between shows, we were packing to move. Mack was buying an old dilapidated abandoned corugated steel building in Ocoee. Who do you think he put in charge of keeping track of how many of what was packed into which trailer? Of course it was Everett Moran!
The shop was located on a railroad spur nestled back in an industrial park off of Sand Lake Road. I knew where it was because Al Caputo had had some peripheral dealings with Mack over the years. In fact, early in my career at F/X, Al traded his semi trailer and everything in it for us to do a show for a client of his. Al was out of show business by then, but still willing to take somebody's money to get one together. He also had no good place to keep his trailer load of crap.
One of the first things I worked on during those early months was a new (and short-lived) game show called "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego." We built a huge time machine set, a "Chief" screen wall for Lynn Thigpen, and six portals for the last part of the game. I built all of the rolling platforms to which the portals were attached, and the "Stonehenge" portal. Way cool. I still haven't encountered anyone who ever saw it on TV - not even me.
During the spring we finally decided to move north, just not so far. We put our St. Cloud house on the market, freshly painted inside and out, and began looking for a house in Orlando. After looking at twenty five or thirty houses, we found one we liked in the county, about six blocks south of the city limits. It was close enough to F/X that I could go home for lunch if I wanted. I did, twice. I believe it was for this reason that Mack began looking for a place to locate F/X, far far away from his house, which was ten blocks from our new house.
Everett Moran came to work for us that summer of 1996. He was from Honduras, grew up on the streets, never went to school, had very limited English, and little by little we figured out that he didn't know how to count. He obviously had learned over the years to get along without being able to count, and having never encountered such a thing before, it was hard for us to spot. We would tell him to cut twenty five pieces of one by, and he'd commence-a-whacking. We'd come back in a bit and ask how many he'd done. "Plenny!" he told us. Sometimes it would be eighteen, sometimes thirty seven, never the right number. I finally figured it out one day when Everett and I were setting up pipe and drape at the Dolphin Hotel. We needed seventeen uprights, so we were going around the room attaching pipes to bases and standing them up. After a while I paused to count. "How many we got?" asked Everett. "Sixteen." "An' how many we need?" "Seventeen." "So how many more?" W-h-a-a-a-a-t ? !
During the fall we did the first of many many many television news sets I worked on. We did five different sets for Court TV. The one that stands out in my mind is the one that had "V" groves on every panel, three eighths of an inch wide, routed into the laminate. The designer from New York measured every groove, and either they were three eighths or they were done over. I think there were twenty-some panels. The grooves were rectangles set three inches (not three and a sixteenth) in from the edges of the panels, with diagonals corner to corner. Suffice it to say that this was an immense pain in the ass times twenty-some. When the set was used on Court TV, I watched it for probably six hours, and during that time caught a fleeting glimpse of one corner of one panel maybe four times.
In November we were getting a load ready for a big corporate event, with decks and flats and pipe and drape and rear projection screens and lecterns and the whole magilla. Somewhere along the line, Mack came out and asked if any of us had experience running follow spot. Keith and I raised our hands. "This client asked for two follow spot operators on the last night of the convention, but there's a catch." Uh oh, what's this? "The entertainment is John Denver." Luckily, among the dozens of people working for F/X, Keith and I were the only ones who liked John Denver. In fact, I was putting together a church service for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I wanted to sing "Back Home Again," but I didn't have the song on any of my CDs. I was pretty sure I remembered the verses correctly, but I wasn't dead sure until the last night of the convention, hosing JD with photons from the twenty foot high stage left spot tower, listening to the author. He asked us to sing along on the choruses, and my dulcet tones filled the hall from the top of that tower. I packed John's guitars after the show. His manager asked if I'd like to play one, so I did for a minute. Then he gave me a pick with John's name on it. Wow. I was especially glad I'd had that experience when John died about a year later.
In December I began a year-long saga with AAA that is written up already in "The Gospel Of Rand McNally" in a post called "Triple A Times Seven" And then there was the Christmas party. We were invited to bring a guest. Everett showed up with his wife, his three kids and his next door neighbors. Plenny of guests.
The early part of 1997, between shows, we were packing to move. Mack was buying an old dilapidated abandoned corugated steel building in Ocoee. Who do you think he put in charge of keeping track of how many of what was packed into which trailer? Of course it was Everett Moran!
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