Turning Point Overturned

 I began my career as a professional scenic carpenter in Orlando at the ripe old age of thirty five. I knew going in that I could do the job, due to my years in community theatre. What I didn't know going in was that a) I was really very good at it, much better than I realized, and b) there was a huge good-paying market for it in most major cities. I started out in an events management company, doing sets for meetings, conventions and best of all, huge themed parties. During my first year I built some of my favorite things. See www.slideshare.net/jimemerson for details. And I began to realize that if I had known all of this twenty years back, I could have been working on Broadway or in Hollywood well before I was thirty five.

I was walking the dog this morning (see https://walkingwithabassador.blogspot.com for details) and thinking, as usual. My mind drifted to the time of year it was, and remembered that next year will be fifty years since I graduated high school. Would I go to Vero Beach for the reunion? Hell No. If I went to any reunion, it would be to Gambrills, Maryland to see the friends left behind when my parents uprooted and moved to Vero Beach in 1968. Once again, I was grumbling about that, the most life-changing change of my early life. Who would I want to see in Vero? The only 1971 VBHS grad I would want to see was in a play with me when the tenth year reunion was going on. And the only other folks I would want to see would be the friends I made in the Vero Beach Theatre Guild. That sent me on the same old track about how things might have been different if only... Suddenly, the juxtaposition of all of these musings took an unprecedented turn.

When my parents moved me to Vero, I had my high school life all mapped out ahead of me in Maryland. I knew dozens of people, I was asked to work on the yearbook committee, I was known to be a good football and baseball player, and I might even have gotten into theatre. I landed in Vero Beach determined to hate it. I skated through high school doing the bare minimum it took to graduate, and moved back to Maryland a week after graduation.

I thought about Vero Beach High school, which at the time was also home to the Theatre Guild. I actually went there to see Guild shows. I already was in love with theatre. There was an active theatre group doing high school shows. So determined was I to eschew anything that might be construed as enjoying my imprisonment, I avoided the drama department. Ten years later I was acting in a show with someone I sort-of knew back then. Sixteen years after that, at forty three years old, I was working with another, much more recent VBHS grad at F/X Scenery And Display outside of Orlando, doing real big-time world class set work. 

Suddenly, my whole life story turned upside down. It was not my parents uprooting me that ruined my early life. It was me, my pig-headedness that made me refuse to find my calling until middle age. I could have been a game builder/stagehand for The Price Is Right, if only I had allowed myself to find out early on that that was my dream job. I forgive you, Wyni and Gil Emerson. Rest in peace.

Covid-19 Sick Days

I received some bad news from the show biz front last night. My buddy Matthew and nineteen others were laid off from Mystic Scenic Studios in Norwood, Massachusetts. The reason was that there had been too many cancellations of gigs. No telling how long it might last.

This reminded me of a semi-similar situation back in the fall of 2001. F/X Scenery And Display experienced a steep drop in business after 9/11, but Mack, the owner, kept everybody on for the months affected by that situation. Now, to be fair to Jim Ray of Mystic, F/X had around twenty employees to keep while F/X has over a hundred. And, frankly, I was flabbergasted that we were all paid to come in and do nothing for many weeks. On the other hand, I was disgusted when a couple of our gung-ho Union guys were whining that we didn't get Christmas bonuses or raises at the end of the year. Humans will be humans.

I was among the laid off from Mystic after the crash of 2008, which, as we all know, was caused by Obama several months before he was elected. I was on unemployment for several months, worked for Harvard's American Repertory Theatre for one week, then for Jim Ray's former partner John for three months in Somerville, MA. After all of that, I was called back to Mystic in June of 2009 for the two weeks before we began packing up for our move to Albuquerque. In Albuquerque, I applied for hundreds of jobs, heard back from maybe seven or eight, had interviews with three, and was hired by none. What I did was get involved with scenic construction on a volunteer basis at Albuquerque Little Theatre. The Production Manager managed to squeeze a few hundred bucks out of his budget to pay me for my hundreds of hours of work. That was my last paid gig in the Biz.

So I understand Matthew's situation pretty well. He has applied for a couple of jobs already, but whereas I was 56 when I was laid off, he is 66 now. Good luck out there, buddy. And don't contract any viruses.

I Could Do That!

"I could do that!" were the very words spoken by me, words that marked the turning point that spun me in the direction of my long career building and installing custom works of three dimensional art. I've never had a dream to drive me to pursue any career. I never went to any school or program to learn any of what I ended up doing. My Facebook profile says that I attended the Gilbert H. Emerson School of Art from 1953 until 1987. What that means is that I either watched my dad or helped him create solutions to whatever problems arose, and invent ways to produce whatever he dreamed of creating. When we moved to Vero Beach, Florida in 1968, he carved a niche for his commercial art business in a town that repeatedly told him that they had no use for a commercial art business. He did it by taking on whatever half-baked idea anyone had, and making it happen. He was a genius at that.
.
So when I graduated high school in 1971 and moved back to Maryland, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I got a job pumping gas at the Auto Service Department of the Montgomery Ward store in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Now, Aaron Montgomery Ward began his mail order business in 1872, so there were big doin's afoot. There were guys I saw installing "CENTURY II"  signs and displays throughout the store. What do you suppose I said to that? So I cozied up to them, met Fred, the Display Department manager, and put the wheels in motion for a transfer. In March of '72 I became a member of that department. Before long, there became a category called "Jim jobs," projects that required time and planning and engineering things for which the others had no patience - like things my dad and I had done for years.

In 1980, back in Vero Beach, back working with my dad in the art biz, I finally decided to get involved with the community theatre. I quickly became one of the hard core, working onstage and backstage. And with the flexibility that accompanied working for Emerson Art Service, I was afforded the opportunity to work paying gigs doing load-ins, load-outs and various jobs during performances of the various touring professional shows that came to our beautiful little gem of a theatre. So, I was unloading chunks of scenery from the truck and wrestling them into place so that the touring professional scenic carpenters could put them together by whatever fastening systems - screws, bolts, clamps, lashings, loose-pin hinges, whatever - and I said "I could do that!"

In 1988, less than a year after newlyweds Carmen and I moved to the Orlando area, I was still unsure of what path my career might take, I saw an ad for SCENIC CARPENTERS AND STAGE HANDS in the Orlando Sentinel Help Wanted ads. What do you suppose I said then? Image International was an Events company that specialized in corporate theme parties for the huge convention industry in and around Orlando, but took on pretty much whatever half-baked idea their clients and sales staff had. I quickly became a respected professional scenic carpenter.

My final example took years to come to fruition. Sometime during the late '80s or early '90s, we went to the Orlando Science Center museum. Part of it was screened off with temporary wall sections. Through a crack between sections, I could see a bunch of guys working, installing an exhibit. "Wow!," I said, "I could do that!" In 2005, I was happily working away behind a temporary wall installing exhibits in the Museum of Science in Boston, and did so regularly for four years.

I suppose, as tremors, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and factor 5 deficiency blood clots slowly eroded my effectiveness in my chosen profession, I must have seen some retired geezers and said "I could do that," because here I am.

Don't Give Up Your Day Job

My day job doesn't pay much, but it pays a lot better than my night gig. I can't say for sure whether this has been the case ever since I gave up show biz eleven years ago, but I can say that ever since my sleep study in Nashville, when I began sleeping on my left side exclusively, I have been building and installing scenery professionally pretty much every night in my sleep.

What I am building is never very clear, but whatever I am working on is fraught with problems. No place to build it. It's gone when I arrive for work the next day. Materials can't be found. Tools are missing. The truck has already left without me or my project or both.

The other part of the story is the venue. We can't find the place. The place is so huge and convoluted that we can 't find the ballroom or the theatre or whatever we're looking for. We brought the wrong stuff. We can't find our way home.

It's interesting to me that pretty much without exception, the problems I dream about never happened during my twenty years in the business. Sure, there were always problems, but I guess since we always figured out solutions, those problems aren't worth dreaming about.

Anyway, I usually wake up scratching my head about some ridiculous situation we encountered. And I usually wake up exhausted. That's show biz.

The Face of Reality

My mental health professional gave me homework: update the blogs! Okay, this is number three.

So here I sit in Jacksonville, updating my blogs primarily because it's an assignment. Sure, I love to write, and I have already come to some interesting conclusions about the chain of events that precipitated my return for help from those in the mental health field. And the rise and fall of the Bellevue project, detailed in the previous post, contributed a considerable chunk.The initial response was so great and so immediate, I could not possibly have predicted the way it crashed and burned after six months of diligent hard work by the few of us who carried the ball to the end zone.

The good news is, moving away from Tennessee was a much easier transition than it would have been, had we actually birthed a viable community theatre group in Bellevue. We did not.The other good news is that our friend Pat and I have attended locally produced shows many times since I moved here a year ago. I haven't yet done any onstage or backstage work here yet, but I haven't given up on the idea either.

The reality is, I'm not ever going to be a show biz professional again. Perhaps a vastly talented amateur dabbler. I think that will be enough.

Rising From The Ashes

Wow! I just reread my post from February 14th. The road ahead looked a whole lot prettier than it turned out to be. Bellevue Creative Arts Community subsequently had a near-death experience!

First of all: the Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation. I wrote them from a template, with many questions to put to the Board about how we wanted to be structured and how we wanted to get things done. I know from long experience that the best first step is to go ahead and write them, then make changes from there. So I did. I brought several copies to the next meeting, each with blanks to fill in and all areas of concern highlighted. I was prepared for a meaty session of discussion of everything I had questions about and anything else the others might find to hash out. But no! The writers of the spiffy musical Once Upon A Tree were there with copies of 2/3 of their script. They and President Mary were hell-bent to do a read-through of it. So there was no discussion of Bylaws that evening. I gave a copy to President Mary. I feel certain that she never read them - to this day!. Mary said that she would be happy to go over everything with me sometime during the week. So we communicated via Messenger and found a chunk of time when we could do it by phone. I called her at the appointed hour. It turned out that she was in her car somewhere and it was pouring rain. "So, looking at the second page of the Bylaws..." "! don't have them with me," she said. So we limped through the session, me reading the questionable portions out loud and suggesting possibilities. It mostly went pretty smoothly, considering. We didn't have time for the Articles. I didn't have the heart for it anyway, and most of those questions were the same issues as in the Bylaws. I made the changes, printed several copies, and got them signed by all Board members present at the next meeting. I wasn't happy with the Bylaws - to this day. But we needed to get them signed so that we could move forward with the IRS. We could change them later.

And then! And Then!! Mirabelle, who was working diligently toward submitting our 501(c)(3) paperwork, noticed that Mary had signed a different last name than I had printed on the page. Oh, the name I used, the name I knew her by, was her maiden name, her pen name. She had, of course, signed her legal name. So, I made that correction, printed more copies, and gave them to Mary to take around to get signed again. March 19th was when the last signature was obtained. May 9th BCAC became 501(c)(3).

Then there was the May 19th Bellevue  Picnic. I did my research. A booth at the picnic would cost $500.00. We could have a cool booth with scenic elements from Once Upon A Tree. We wanted to perform a song or two from our spiffy musical on the stage. I wanted to put together a flash mob. Mary wanted to generate flyers to pass out to the crowds. It was all very exciting. I let the Chamber of Commerce know what we were thinking about, and they were excited too. I needed to let them know ASAP if we were using the stage so they could assign us a slot. I issued a survey to the membership asking which of these projects they would like to be involved in. Eight people wanted to pass out flyers, and fifteen wanted to do the flash mob. We asked the writing team for a full script so that we could hold auditions and cast the June show and be ready to stage a song or two at the Picnic. It was then that I learned that the script was not finished yet, but they would finish it by the end of March. Auditions were tentatively scheduled for the first weekend in April. From that moment on, the whole thing went south. The script wasn't going to be finished in time. I let the Chamber know not to expect us. The fundraising wasn't going well. We couldn't reserve a booth.  We called rehearsals for a flash mob. Seven rehearsals advertised, a grand total of three people other than Mary and me showed up (two at one rehearsal and one at another.) Mirabelle put together the flyers, and we told everyone where to pick them up on their way to the Picnic. NOBODY showed up. Mirabelle passed out some and Mary passed out some. I didn't even go. By then I was sick to my stomach about the whole BCAC project.

There were those among the Facebook group members who told us that there was much more interest in the visual arts than in theatre. Arleen proposed a meeting at her place for interested visual artists to brainstorm about how to get that action going. Arleen was there. Mirabelle was there. Cheryl was there for support - she wants to support BCAC any way she can - and Glen was there, a new face to the project. Nobody else. Not even Mary or me.

We called a regrouping meeting. Nobody showed up other than the three of us. Still we kept working. We found a carrier who issued liability policies for nonprofits, because we were required to have insurance for a million dollars in order to rent any venue for a show. $650.00 per year was the best rate we found. Mary offered to borrow money to get the policy so we could move forward. Mirabelle advised against it. Mary persisted. Mirabelle resigned.

Mary and I began thinking about abandoning the project. We went to the bank with Mirabelle to get her name off of the account, and she offered to help us dismantle the whole thing. We decided to hang on for a little longer, to let the group know what we were thinking about, to see if anybody stepped up to help get back on track.

Lo and behold, Joe stepped up. He was ready to take on the whole show and carry it to the next level. The existing Board members voted Joe president and Mary vice president, and at Joe's first meeting there were ten people. The second meeting is in a week and a half, and I hope that it is at least as well attended.

Who knows, Bellevue may yet have community theatre.   

All Business

Back in November, while walking the dog - when I do my best thinking - I was thinking about theatre, and how much I love it and how much I miss it. All at once I shifted from feeling sorry for myself because I had not found any practical theatrical opportunities, to realizing that I really had not done much in the way of seeking them out. In Vero Beach, the Theatre Guild was very visible and accessible. In Albuquerque I had started volunteering at the Little Theatre a couple of months after arrival. In Meadville, I was drafted by Carmen's Church members. Here in Nashville, all I could see were opportunities too far away for me to consider as a basically vehicleless individual. But had I really looked for opportunities? I decided that I had not.

I came home from that dog walk, picked up my Kindle Fire and began searching in earnest. I applied to join the Facebook Group "Theatre Nashville" and the Facebook group "Hip Bellevue" and once admitted, asked the question "Is there a community Theatre in Bellevue? The answers were mostly answers I would expect in a culture that assumes everyone has unlimited access to a vehicle. There's one in Brentwood. There are two in Dickson. There is a theatre in Bellevue, but it is professional dinner theatre, and still a long treacherous walk in a place where sidewalks hardly exist. I expressed my disappointment, and then someone replied, "Start one." Start one? Start one? Is that possible?

Timidly I went back to the Hip Bellevue page and asked, "Would anybody be interested in helping me start a community theatre group in Bellevue? " Within a few minutes there were five or six "Yes!" responses. Within a few hours, we were up to fifteen. Within a few days we were over fifty. Within a week we were planning our first meeting. Within a month we had a name, a logo, a website under construction, a mission statement, bylaws, Articles of Incorporation and a Board of Trustees. We created seven committees, and called for volunteers to fill them. The Board decided that our first production would be Once Upon a Tree, a spiffy musical written by two of our members, slated to open in June. Now we have a Tennessee Charter, a bank account, and  enough money raised to file for 501(c)(3) status.

The Bellevue Creative Arts Community group on Facebook has a hundred fourteen members (last time I looked) many of them chomping at the bit for us to call auditions. April first is our target date for that. I have designed the basic structure of the set, with details to be figured out as we go. We have a director, a costume person, and a pretty big pool of interested parties who we hope are willing to help get this sucker staged. What we don't have yet is a stage. We are working on that, and I have no doubt that we can git 'er don e before June. All in all, I am pleased as punch with our progress.

My first community theatre was The Vero Beach Theatre Guild in Vero Beach, Florida. They started up in the sixties, with no internet, no targeted Facebook groups, no email, no cell phones, no texting. What a very different experience it must have been for them. I joined them in 1980, when there were still a few original creators working on shows, still enjoying the theatre family experience, and the thrill of bringing a play to life in front of an audience. I think now about how gratifying it must have been for them to have birthed this baby and watched it grow.

Our labor pains are pretty intense now, jumping through all of the hoops it takes to become a legitimate nonprofit corporation in the twenty-first century. Two hours in the bank answering questions and signing papers designed to prevent our meager funds going to drug lords or terrorist organizations. Can't raise money until we are 501(c)(3), can't become 501(c)(3) until we raise money. But the theatre family experience is still sustaining us, just as it did those pioneers in the sixties, keeping on keeping on, knowing in  their hearts that the curtain would soon open on a spiffy musical, and gladden the hearts of the entertainers as well as the entertained.

Back In The Saddle

We've been here three weeks and four days. The first week was about moving in and getting settled. The second was about buttoning down the sale of our house in Meadville, PA. The third was about seeing if we can buy a condo/townhouse. Toward the end of last week, I got an email from On Location Casting - I signed up with them in Albuquerque - urging me to pay the fee that activates my account. I went in and updated my profile with my new address and phone number. It was all still Albuquerque. I added the plays I'd done on PA, fleshed out the rest of my profile and then went into the casting notices. Lo and behold, there were casting calls for the TV show "Nashville." They said I could look them up on Facebook to get the latest info. I did. There they were. There was a call for Friday that had people in my age range. I followed instructions: send an email with Friday Booking as the subject line. Include name and valid phone number. I did. In a very short time I got an email back saying that I had not been booked. Next was a Monday booking. I applied, was rejected. Tuesday was shooting on Lebanon, TN, 40 miles away. Not going there. On Tuesday afternoon the notice about Wednesday came up. Extras would be "Coffee Shop Patrons." I applied, and within a few minutes received an email back that I was booked and I'd better show up if I ever wanted to work in this town again. Or words to that effect. Within an hour after that I received a phone call confirming that I had seen that email.

At about 6:30, details about the gig came up on FB. Call time 11:00, at First Church of the Tangerine or something like that, 510 Woodland Avenue. I looked up the address on Googlemaps, printed out a map, and printed out a #5 bus schedule. Then I assembled the three outfits they said we should bring in a fancy garment bag Carmen found for me, made a copy of my driver's license, packed my backpack with everything I might need, and went to bed happy.

Wednesday morning was fairly cool, as Nashville summer days go. I got up, fed the beasts as usual, and we took Grace for an hour walk at Edwin Warner Park. I took a shower, dressed in my favorite of the three outfits, and set out for the bus at 9:02. I caught the 9:10, which got me downtown. I had never been to downtown Nashville, so I was happy to be early so I could figure out where 510 Woodland Avenue might be. I knew from my Google map that it was between 5th and 6th Streets, so I was happy to see that the Music City Center bus station was at 5th and Charlotte. Walking around showed me that Woodland was not nearby. Luckily, I had my Nashville street map with me. Looking at that, I saw that Woodland was on the other side of 4th. Hmmm. Then I noticed that the signs said "5th Street North." That indicates that there is a 5th Street South. I walked past 4th, around some fancy downtown structures, and found myself on Woodland. Luckily there was a nice breeze as I walked along in the Tennessee sunshine. Crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I was hit up by a man asking for a quarter. I gave him a dollar. He blessed me and asked me what church I belonged to. I told him. Of course, he never heard of Unitarian Universalism, so I explained it to him. (As the wife and research assistant of a UU minister, I'm pretty good at this.) He took up nearly ten minutes of my trip to 510 Woodland. I tore myself away and continued walking past 1st Street South, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and saw, with great rejoicing, the aforemisnamed church.

Having done three TV gigs in Albuquerque, I knew what to look for. None of this was evident at the church. I walked all the way around. Nothing. But across the street I saw a gaggle of trailers and a gaggle of humans standing around. Jackpot! I crossed over, found the food wagon - where one is most apt to find humans - and asked where extras should go. The human I asked got on her smart phone and called someone who knew. Molly came, showed me the air conditioned trailer where I could hang out, told me to eat some food and wait for further instructions. I was the first to arrive, at 10:25. I followed orders, having bacon, eggs, hash browns and a biscuit. When I finished eating in the air conditioned trailer, Dominic gave me my paperwork to fill out. He watched me struggling with my tremors, and filled it out for me. Nice guy.

Other extras began arriving. They were put in the trailer across the way. For most of the time at base camp, I was all alone in my trailer. Soon another person came breezing through. She looked at me, said "That's good." and breezed out. Molly told me that I had just been approved by the wardrobe department. I was glad I had carried that garment bag all over Nashville and never opened it.

About 11:40 we the extras were taken to an old rattletrap school bus and shuttled to the shooting location on Fatherland Avenue. The holding area was in the fellowship hall of the Baptist church across the street from the Coffee Shop. At noon I announced that we had now earned eight bucks! Soon after, Dominic came in and plucked four people from our ranks (there were twelve of us) to go over to the set. at about 12:45 he came back in and plucked me and one other guy. Yay. So he and I were shown our starting places and told what to do. "Action!" Two previously plucked women walked past the shop. When they were halfway across the street, I walked down to the corner and crossed the street in the other direction, past the shop. The other guy then walked by and across the other street. After all of this there was a long pause, then a principal character came out of the shop, stopped and went back in."Cut!" Techs swarmed around for a bit, "Reset" was called, and we all went back to our starting places and waited in the blazing sun for many minutes. "Action!" And we did it again. Wait. "Reset." Wait. "Action!" Walk. Wait. "Reset" go back to start. Wait. "Action!" Walk. Wait. "Reset." This went on for about an hour. I could feel my bald head burning in the sun. Good thing all that dog walking had tanned it some.

When we were told to go back to the holding area, it was because we were done, all of us. I'm pretty certain that at least four extras never did anything but wait.

That's show biz.

Anticipation

My fans who have read this blog - and both of you know who you are - know that I worked in show biz in many capacities from 1980 until 2010 when we moved to Meadville, PA. These last five years, I have built set pieces and props, designed sets for the first time ever, acted in three shows and built a wheelchair ramp. In 2009 I was paid $20 an hour for scenic construction. These last five years, scenic construction has cost me a couple hundred bucks, probably about a dollar an hour. Big difference.

Now I stand on the verge of a great leap into a real show biz town. Everyone asks me if I like country music, which in general I don't. But country music is not all that goes on in Nashville, any more than Disney World is all that goes on in Orlando. When we were in Nashville in April, there was a cultural events newspaper that informed readers that Natalie Cole would be performing with the Nashville Symphony in May. Not country music. I anticipate a cornucopia of possibilities for show biz work.

My first avenue of investigation will be casting agencies. In Albuquerque there are dozens of them, and I'm sure Nashville has at least several. I plan to break into voice work - commercials, audio books, newspapers and magazines for the blind - whatever there is. And several members of the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation have already figured on my assistance with scenery, props and acting with their theatrical entities. While my body is too fragile now to work in scenic construction like I used to, I can still be useful for small projects and less strenuous work on the big stuff. I anticipate a full and fascinating life ahead.

All we have to do now is pack up all of our stuff, get it onto a 26' truck, drive it to Nashville, unload it into our apartment and get our life in gear down there. Easy peasy.

From The Day You Were Born...

Since I'm in the mode of wacky personalities, I have a few more to serve up. My next victim is Matthew Mees. He started at Mystic in the spring of 2006, became one of Allan McNab's rangers, and therefore we were thrown together on a lot of wacky jobs. The first was at the Kennedy Library And Museum, where there was a cluster of repair jobs. The worst, the one I was dreading, was a reception counter with broken laminate that needed to be replaced. While I dove into the other projects, staving off the laminate job, Mees dove right in and peeled and replaced the broken laminate. He said it never occurred to him to be intimidated by it. I liked him from that moment on.

When Kevin Simard had a meltdown and was taken out of the Museum of Science, Matt Mees was tapped to be the new Mystic crew boss. Unfortunately, the Touring Exhibits Manager didn't like him, so he only lasted about a year and a half at that job. We all thought he was the bees' knees, but it didn't matter what we thought.

He loves his work, but his passion is historical reenactment. The character he portrays most often is a Revolutionary War soldier in a French regiment. His wife and two daughters are in on it as well, going to grand balls and weekend campouts in pertiod costume. Mees has several French Army uniforms as well as various other period outfits, some French, some not.

He reads a lot. If you asked  me to generalize what kind of books he likes to read, I'd say it's books nobody else would read or even know of. He loves to quote sentences or paragraphs to the people around him at work during breaks and lunch. Nobody has a clue what he's going on about.

He reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon. Snoopy and Woodstock and the little birds are all wearing French Foreign Legion hats in a big sand castle. Linus says to Lucy: "I see the French have retaken Fort Zinderneuf." Lucy replies: "From the day you were born I've never known what you were talking about!" I said that to Matthew many times.

Number One

Harold Hardy is his name. We can all remember his name. He, on the other hand... The classic Harold Hardy hail is waving his finger at somebody, saying "Hey, aaaaah..." His default name for anybody is "Number One." At first, co-workers are put off by his apparent disinterest in learning their names. I know I was. The turning point for me was when I worked with Harold and his son, Harold Hardy Junior, at the same time. Harold. would address his own son, who had the same name, given to him by him, waving his finger saying "Hey, aaaaah... Number One!"

I first worked with Harold Senior at the Star Wars installation. Mystic sent in the big guns for a lot of days and nights. Harold was 'Router Man,' when things didn't exactly fit right when the glass cases went together. He is a genius at seeing how a router with a top bearing bit and a stick to run the bearing on can solve any problem. I was in awe. Over the four years we worked on many projects together, and became buddies. Our musical tastes had many overlaps, most notably George Benson and Earth Wind & Fire. I kept his projects better organized "Where's the paper for this cabinet?" he'd ask. I'd rescue it from whatever precarious willy nilly place he'd forgotten and left it - on the floor somewhere or on the saw table or the lunch table - wherever. I used to demonstrate the Harold Hardy method of organization: I'd take the armload of drawings and specifications and just fling them into the air so they landed everywhere. Then I'd pick them up and keep them safe and together.

Our first real collaboration was the New England Sports Network set. We were filling a whole studio with columns, flats, decks, curved steps, frames with fabric stretched across, and a lot of laminate. I had ten years of F/X experience building television news sets, so I was actually more at home than Harold was with this particular kind of construction. By the time we were ready to install it, he was as impressed with my work as I was with his.

If you let him, he'll suck you dry of pencils and cigarettes. You can foil the pencil 'borrowing' by carrying flat carpenter pencils - he doesn't like those. The only way to stem the flow of cigarettes is to run out, or just refuse to give him one. I couldn't do that. I really liked the guy.

I haven't heard anything about Harold since I left Mystic over two years ago. I hope he's still doing well.

The Opening Was Just The Beginning

Mere days after the opening of the Star Wars exhibit, we were back in the Museum Of Science early on Saturday morning, October 29th. The "Air Car" ride was malfunctioning. Armed with drills and hammers and implements of destruction, we tore apart the little enclosed track and put it back together with a stronger knee wall around it. The broken plate on the car itself, a swivel thing that allowed steering, was removed so it could be returned to the shop for repair or replacement. A sign was placed at the entrance to the ride: "The Repair Droids are still working on this activity. Please come back later." Six months later, when disassembling and packing the exhibit for its world tour, I happened upon that sign. I still have it.

November, December and January I was often derailed from my Norwood projects for night shift gigs at MOS. Broken things were replaced and newly acquired elements were added that there hadn't been time for before opening. Cabinet doors were added, venting holes and fans were installed, labeling signs were installed on permanent posts, all kinds of little things.

And then we began a systematic measuring of all thirty-some glass cases, complete with drawings of the power inlets and forklifting access panels. Why? Because crates were required for shipping these giant glass boxes. Kevin and I spent several nights taking careful measurements. He wrote down the numbers and drew the locations of whatever needed to be accomodated. We compiled the "bible" of Star Wars crates and then began to assemble sides back at the shop. These were not your usual crates. They were individual sides, with 2X2 around the edges, drilled for bolt assembly. The top was a 1X6, mitred on the ends, that hooked over the top of the case. A huge stack of these sides began piling up in the shop, until Kevin took a bunch to the Museum to begin test-fitting them and modifying whatever slight miscalculations there might have been. For a couple of weeks, I was crate building guru, while Kevin worked nights fitting and tweaking.

May Day! May Day! Monday, May first was the beginning of the strike. I, of course, was put on the strike crew. I hardly did any striking, however. I was put on the finishing up project. There was a long list of trim pieces to add, threaded inserts to install, sign holders to secure for transport, and securing anything loose. Two weeks we spent finishing as many details as possible, packing things up and loading them onto thirteen semi trailers. That's a lot of stuff.

Star Wars has been all over the country and all over the world - Alaska, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and on and on. Shawn Marler and Vinnie Canney have been the point men from Mystic taking turns unloading, unpacking and setting up - and striking, packing and loading. I suppose that, five years later, it's still on tour. I hope it's finally finished by now.

Luke!....Luke!

Years ago, and I'm talking decades ago - say, 1988 or '89 - I was in the Orlando Science Center when a big section was walled off. Througfh cracks in the temporary walls I could see crews working, installing exhibits. "Wow!" I said. "I could do that job!"
Flow downstream to 2004. We were in Boston for Carmen's thesis presentation in April, and her graduation from Lesley University in May. It seemed like every place we went we went within view of the Museum of Science. I gazed hungrily at it. I wanted to go there.
Another year and four months passes, and I'm called into the office, issued my first "Mystic Scenic Studios" T-shirt and told to show up with my tools the next morning at 7:00 at the Museum of Science to work for a few days. Double you oh double you.
The next morning was my first experience with the MBTA's "bus replacement" service. One of the effects of the Big Dig was that it interrupted service on the Green Line west of North Station - where Science Park station is located - so there was "bus replacement" service to get people there. Knowing what I know now, I would have skipped the Green Line altogether, but I didn't. Since my intention was to get there forty five minutes early, even with the hellacious cluster fuckage that is MBTA "bus replacement" service, I was fifteen minutes early. Which means I beat Kevin Simard, the Mystic crew boss, by about forty five minutes.
From information gleaned then and since, I believe I understand the situation. First of all, the Museum Of Science (MOS) contract was administered by Allan McNab, not Jim Ray or Jon Hondorp, which means that Kevin got for his crew whoever those two company owners were willing to let go. The dregs, for the most part. So Kevin and the dregs had been in there for quite a while building walls and rooms and other assorted structures for the new "Weather" exhibit in the big room where the World's Largest Air Insulated Vandegraff Generator works its lightning magic two shows a day. They needed expert help to finish up. Most of the really good carpenters at Mystic live south, in or near Norwood and Dedham. They hate to drive into the city. I, on the other hand, lived in Belmont, and the MOS was closer for me by far.
They needed to finish up because pieces of the brand new Star Wars exhibit were on trucks rolling out of Norwood a couple times a week. This meant stopping work on the Weather stuff, cleaning up and securing everything, going out to the parking garage, unloading a huge chunk of the Millennium Falcon, rolling it on dollies to the storage room, and then going back to work on Weather.
I didn't much like Kevin. He was a crack head, a smart-ass and a practical joker, but he had a long-standing rapport with the Museum people. He had been the Mystic Man there for eight years, and knew every inch of the building and every quirk of the Exhibits Department personnel. I loved working at the Museum, even if it meant working with Kevin. Kevin liked me because a) I could get things done and done right, and b) I have no authority issues. He told me what to do and I said "Yes sir!" and did it.
Too soon I was called back to Norwood for some Jim Ray job or Jon Hondorp job that needed all competent hands.
The next time I went back to MOS was for the Star Wars Exhibit installation. This was either at the end of September or the beginning of October. It turned out that what Mystic was sending to be installed wasn't anywhere near finished. All of the big glass cases were a base, a back board, a ceiling and three or four or five or six sheets of tempered glass, half an inch thick. Oh yes, and many cases of clear adhesive caulk. A base was positioned and leveled, a ladder was placed on it, and the back board was glued and screwed to the base. Caulk was squeezed into the groove near the edge, and a sheet of glass, maybe three feet wide by seven feet tall, was dropped into the groove. A person sat on the ladder and held the glass while caulk was squeezed for the next sheet of glass, and the next. The last sheet of glass was the door, no caulk allowed. Then the ceiling piece had its grooves caulked, except for the side where the door was, and it was hoisted up to guys on ladders who handed it over to the inside person, and it was eased down, glass being teased into grooves and the back board screwed into place. The door was removed so that the inside person could escape the caulk fumes and the precision caulking crew could connect the corners and other seams while the base levelers moved on to the next case.

There were about thirty TV panels, where a monitor was fitted into a pre-cut rectangular hole, a graphic panel was fitted over it, and holes needed to be drilled for control buttons for "UP" "SELECT" and "DOWN." This was my introduction to drilling one inch holes through quarter inch plexiglass with a paddle bit. Before Kevin showed me how, I would have sworn that it couldn't work. It works! So job one was to figure out which TV panel you had going, and match it up with its corresponding graphic mounted on the back of oversized quarter inch plexiglass, place it exactly where the monitor was masked perfectly by the opening in the graphic, and mark the graphic exactly where it needed to be cut. Out in the outer room where the gift shop would be, there was a work table set up. You placed your quarter inch plexiglass with the graphic mounted on it, set a straight edge along the cut marks, and ran your router along the straight edge. Then you took your resized graphic panel back to the TV panel, clamped it in place, and began drilling holes for screws and 'finish washers' around the perimeter. Once the graphic was attached, you marked your control button locations and began to slowly drill your one inch holes through the plexi, through the graphic and through the board of the TV panel. Then clean up the mess, install the buttons and move on. About ten of the thirty were instances in which the graphic didn't match the location of the monitor via miscommunication between the designer, Allan McNab, the carpenter(s) or the graphics company. Usually it meant ordering a corrected graphic panel (about $700 each) but a couple of times I was modifying monitor openings to accomodate the graphic. This all took many days. Between the TV panels and all the other exhibits that required control buttons, I estimate that I drilled about five hundred of those one inch holes through plexiglass. It was noisy, too. Throughout the gallery people were complaining about the "screeeyaareeyaareeyaa" noise my paddle bit made, hole after hole, for days on end.

Sixteen hour days were the norm for about two weeks, starting at 6:00am and working until 10:00pm. More and more heavyweight carpenters arrived as opening day drew closer. We started having an overnight shift in addition to the day shift. Tireder and tireder we got. One memorable night at about 7:30, Allan McNab took me over to a panel with about sixteen posts sticking up. He showed me the graphic that was supposed to fit over the panel, with the posts sticking up through it. My job, in my exhausted state, was to drill holes in the plexiglass
graphic so that the posts would stick up through it. I unscrewed posts while Allan looked for a big enough (16" X 30"?) sheet of paper to do a rubbing. I checked the graphic to see if it was the exact right size, and it was. I taped the paper over the panel and rubbed with a pencil over the sixteen or so holes. Then I taped the paper to the plexiglass and, using a plexi drill bit, drilled my holes. Only one gave me trouble, because the post screwed into the unit at a slight, maybe 5 degree angle, so the hole needed to be enlarged and angled correctly. When all was said and done, if you went looking for imperfections, you could see that slightly skewed hole. Otherwise, you'd never notice it. It looked good, and no one was more surprised than I.
One by one the looping narrations were turned on and allowed to run all day and all night, to test their durability. There was a face recognition exhibit that had a forlorn voice that periodically called out for someone to come over for a face recognition lesson. Every three minutes or so, he'd say something like "Hey there, come on over." Three minutes later, "I see you." There were probably seven or eight phrases that would suddenly break the silence while we were working. And maybe once an hour, and when we heard it we weren't at all sure we'd really heard it, he'd say, "I see dead people." The Millennium Falcon model, the four foot diameter model used in the first film, had a narration about the winding-up sound effect they used when the hyper drive was malfunctioning, complete with Lando's "YeeeeHawwww" when it finally kicked in. But the lullapalooza, the one that haunts all of us to this day, was the movie clip that ran beside the landspeeder, all day all night. It started out, all day, all night, every time, with Aunt Beru yelling "Luke! Luke!" Chills!

The day before opening there was a reception for the press and whoever they could get for celebrities. George Lucas was coming. The reception was to be at 7:00, so they chased us out at 6:00. "Wow, cool, a short day!" we said. "Wait a minute, that was a twelve hour day!"

Dimensional Shift

I can't believe I forgot this one. Once again, I don't recall exactly when it occurred, but it was in the range of spring 1990 to spring 1994 - it doesn't matter. Image International. 1992? Sure.

It was a waning afternoon, getting close to time to punch out and go home. The phone rang and someone in the Production office answered it. Within seconds he was out the door and headed straight for me! My first impulse was to run. I didn't.

"The guys at the Marriott are in the weeds!" he said. "They need more table cloths and chair condoms."

"That's very interesting," I said. "Thanks for letting me know." Sarcasm was dripping in gobs.

"You have to take the stuff down!" he said.

"ME?"

"You have a driver's license."

"Oh. Yeah." Most of our fine crew had beed busted for DUI at one time or another. So, because I was a good boy and had NOT lost my license, I was gifted with driving duty a lot.

"Some guys are loading the Step Van. Take the stuff down and help them finish up."

"Grrrrrrrumble grrrrrrrumble!"

Many expletives have been deleted for the sake of all the youngsters who read this blog. Suffice it to say that I was livid. Instead of winding up the day in the shop and going home, I was going to the Marriott Orlando World Center to bail out the crew down there. Table cloths! Chair condoms! Damn it, Jim! I'm a carpenter not a caterer! Otto had to show me the correct installation of chair condoms, and I was turned loose to get 'er done before time for the dinner. Grumble grumble grouse chair condoms! Grumble grumble grouse table cloths! Grumble grumble!

Then the band came out to do a sound check.

Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Junior and the rest of the Fifth Dimension sang five songs just for us, the table cloth and chair condom installers, as well as the hotel staff putting out place settings and setting up buffet tables. They did Aquarius, Up Up And Away, Wedding Bell Blues, Last Night I Didn't Get To Sleep At All and One Less Bell To Answer.

Sometimes even the worst indignities are worth it. I sang all the way back to the shop and home from there.

Goose Bumps

A year and a half ago I was in Albuquerque, laid up in a recliner with an oxygen tank wishing I could go see "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" to be wowed by the many fluid scene changes. Colby Landers designed the eleven sets and between us we engineered how to make them work. The situation at Albuquerque Little Theatre was a lot better than Meadville Community Theatre in that sets not in use could be rolled out the back of the stage and into the shop. The shop was pretty full of scenery during most of the show. I bought a DVD of the show, but the scene changes didn't give me goosebumps watching the little TV screen.

Wednesday night I watched a rehearsal of act one of "The Secret Garden." The first time the interior of Misselthwaite Manor magically spun to become the Garden, I got goosebumps. That's what I'm in it for, the goosebumps. The actors that turned the rolling double sided pieces did so flawlessly more times than not. By Friday night opening it was even better.

After all these years, I still get a kick out of show biz.

Fresh Thoughts About MCT

The first theatre I ever worked in was Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach, Florida. It has since been expanded in many directions, but even in the early eighties it was a gem of a theatre. It has a nice big stage - not as big as some, but pretty durn big for a little place like Vero Beach - with wing space and fly space. It had a well-equipped shop, a green room big enough to rehearse in, big dressing rooms and an enclosed light booth with two follow spots. Sound was equally well provided for, with a booth of its own and microphone and speaker inputs and outputs strategically placed around the stage.

The second one made the first one look mighty good. In 1985, the Vero Beach Theatre Guild bought a church building and made it work as a theatre. The stage was about half the size of Riverside, with no wing space and no fly space. Until the spring of '86, the only way in or out of the stage area was a doorway into the audience. BUT - it had a big green room, dressing rooms and a shop. When we put on "Damn Yankees, with seventeen scenes and twenty seven cast members doing costume changes, we busted a hole through the wall stage left, and built a stairway down to the ground, where a big tent served as green room and dressing rooms. Since then, this theatre has also been expanded and improved.

Albuquerque Little Theatre is littler than the Vero Beach Theatre Guild theatre, with very little wing space and no fly space. But it has a nice big shop, a nice green room, dressing rooms and a big rehearsal space upstairs.

So now we come to Meadville Community Theatre. First thing that smacks you is the proscenium, seven feet six inches high. The thrust of stage in front of the proscenium is really all the stage you have to work with. Inside the arch it has zero wing space, zero fly space and no way to make anything onstage disappear unless it can go through a narrow doorway, down three steps to a sharp turn through a narrow hall to either the audience or the next set of stairs down to ground level where one can go outside through the door, or on the stage left side make a sharp left through another narrow doorway and down more steps to the tiny green room / dressing room / storage room. There is no rehearsal space and no shop. Any cutting or building takes place onstage or (if you're lucky enough to be working on a non-rainy / snowy day) outside. Need flats? Take the stairs down from the stage, go up the aisle to the rear of the house, go through the doors to the stairway about ten steps down to ground level, turn right, go through the double doors to a tiny room - once an office - flip through the flats in stock, pull one out, lay it over so it will fit through the office door, through the double doors, up the ten steps, through those doors, down the aisle and up the steps to the stage. Need lumber? Go down the stage left steps, turn left, go down to ground level and outside through the rain and / or snow to the "hole," a small basement entrance that requires you to bend double to enter and stoop over to walk through. Racks and racks of two by, one by and molding await the stout hearted souls who venture in.

Stout hearted souls are the stuff of Meadville Community Theatre. They feel blessed to have this place to call their own. The laundry list of inconveniences I mentioned are to them a badge of honor, for in spite of all of that, the show goes on!

A Little Vacation, Mr. Manley?

This is one of those out-of-sequence stories that occur to me out of the blue. As a matter of fact, I was watching America's Funniest Home Videos the other night when they had a series of "Twenty Five Spurts In Fifteen Seconds," or something similar, showing clips of people being squirted in the face or elsewhere. I was suddenly reminded of the time in (I believe) 1992 when Image International had a gig at The Ritz Carlton Hotel on Amelia Island up near the Georgia line. It was a six-day gig from Friday to Wednesday. I was invited to the meeting, because Eddie and I were the shop at the time, and he was being sent out on some other job. This gig began with an outdoor symphony concert, with a 24' X 32' stage to build, and then an arcade to assemble brick walls for. (Ray sold forty brick panels. Al gave him twenty.) Then we had three days off, unpaid, before the big outdoor Games Night and strike on Wednesday night. The rules were read to us about our time at the Ritz - no pool use, no lounging in common areas, dress and act professional at all times while on hotel property - so I said, "If I'm not being paid, I'm going home!" Of course, this raised a ruckus. Kevin Rose said, "Don't you want a little vacation?" I told him I didn't call it a vacation if I'm stuck in a room with two other guys and can't enjoy myself in any way. Well, they weren't driving me home or flying me home, and I wasn't to ride my motorcycle there (heaven forbid!) So I asked for a round trip bus ticket from Jacksonville. That they went for, because nobody else in the crew could do the stage on Friday, or the Velcro wall on Wednesday.

For this party I built one of my most elaborate games, a slanting eight foot tall by four foot wide polygon, 6 inches thick, with holes of various sizes and placements for different point values. The whiffle softballs were tossed at the holes for points, and the internal structure channeled each ball from the hole to the slot at the bottom numbered with the corresponding points. It was very popular.

So on Friday, bright and early, we all piled into various cars and trucks and lit out for Amelia Island. After depositing our luggage in our rooms, booked in the name of crew boss David Manley, we set out for the truck to unload what we needed for the first day, the staging. It was brought out to the edge of the practice putting green, where I was instructed to set it up. I started out using big chunks of lumber to shim up the low places and make it level. But the client came along and told me he wanted the stage to kind of roll with the landscape. So I pulled out most of the shims and screwed together the frames as best I could with the roll of the landscape. The plywood decking was a little challenging to make pretty. I had barely begun plywood when the tent company came and asked for a hole to be cut in the center sheet of plywood for the center tent pole. This I did, then finished the plywood while the tent went up around me.
Saturday morning I awoke to find myself alone. I looked out the sliding glass doors to the green, where David Manley and his crew were almost finished painting the entire stage black. I turned away, but suddenly there was screaming from the green area. I turned back to see the guys scurrying away because the sprinkler system had come on. There were three or four Rainbird sprinklers shooting streams of water at the freshly painted stage. By the time they got the hotel to shut the sprinklers off, the stage was badly in need of another coat of paint.

We then began to load in and set up the brick panels for the arcade. This was in another tent, with a grass floor. We had it pretty much together when the games company arrived with the pinball machines, basketball game, air hockey etc. We were stringing extension cords all over the tent, and had just about finished when the Florida afternoon thunderstorm hit. Within minutes we were standing in two inches of water in the middle of dozens of electrical cords strewn around the floor. Time to go.

I got a ride to the Jacksonville bus station and was home before midnight. The return trip began late Monday night. I would arrive in Jax early early Tuesday morning. I had my suitcase loaded with one change of clothes and my tools. It was pretty heavy. I knew before I got there that what I wanted to do was to walk from downtown Jacksonville to the Island, twenty some miles. I damn near made it, too. At the bridge to the island was a little convenience store/bait shop. I used their phone to call Ray Ramsey. He came and got me. As I exited Ray's car, a hotel employee came and grabbed my suitcase. "I'll get that, Mr. Manley!" I told him a) I was going outside to the green with that suitcase and b) I had no tip money. "It's my pleasure, Mr. Manley!" I imagined that, after years of being taken for granted by the usual rich people, it was something of a treat for these employees to go the extra mile for us working stiffs, tip or no (and the client was paying them a big gratuity for all of the Mr. Manleys on the crew.)

So I did some prep work, stapling "loop" fabric on the plywood for the Velcro wall Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning began assembling three eight foot by twelve foot frames into a slanted twelve foot tall by twenty four wide climbing wall, with enough 2X4s to hold it together and stand it up. This took the major part of the day. Then I stood up my new ball toss game and helped with the rest of the party decor until nightfall, when a guy took my suitcase to my room and said "My pleasure, Mr. Manley!" I sat in the comfy chair and watched the party out the glass doors, dozing in and out until the real Mr. Manley called us out for strike. We had everything disassembled and in the truck before you could say "My pleasure, Mr. Manley!"

When The Pupil Is Ready...

In 1995, working at Presentations South, Inc., the job seemed to be: build a box, laminate it - build another box, laminate it etc. In the footsteps of Og, I proved myself to be really not very good at laminating - to the point where things I'd done went on display in the break room for the amusement of the rest of the guys. Jim Matthews kept telling me to ask the other guys for help and advice, which I did, but it didn't seem to help.

At Central Florida Display I did some laminating, but the sucky quality of my work kind of blended in with the general suckiness of Central Florida Display. At F/X there was a laminating department that got upset if the rest of us took work away from them. This suited me fine. For the next nine years, the fact that I couldn't laminate seemed to matter not at all.

At Mystic, whenever they didn't know what to do with someone, they stuck him in the laminating department. Early in my Mystical career I was thrown kicking and screaming into laminating. Pete was on vacation, so Paul was in charge of the department. I thought about putting on a brave face and just diving in. That sounded like a really bad idea. So I went up to Paul and said, "I'm here to help you with the laminating. The problem is, I've never been any good at it. Would you be willing to teach me?" And he did. He took me under his wing and showed me, step by step, from the most basic preparations through the gluing, the sticking, the rubbing down and the filing. By the end of the first week, my skills had progressed to the point where I could actually fly solo and do an acceptable job at a fairly complex project. This was a very good thing, because the laminating department only did about half of the laminating in the building. The cabinet guys pretty much all did their own, because they all did it so much better than Pete, just ask them. When the scenery division had laminating to do, there was usually a lot of it, and Pete's guys couldn't handle it all and get it done on time. I actually became one of the better laminators in the scenery section. All thanks to Paul, my sensei.

Tooling Up

My first day at Mystic Scenic Studios was surprising in many ways. For one thing, I found out that there were over a hundred employees with whom I'd be working - a lot of names to learn. For another, I was given, along with my employee handbook, a two page list of tools I was expected to own and use on the job. Everywhere I worked in Florida, they provided things like routers, drills, circular saws, jigsaws, belt sanders etc. They didn't want employees bringing in their own power tools and wearing them out on the job.

For the one thing, I was determined to learn everybody's name as quickly as possible. I've always been sketchy about remembering names, but somehow, a little-used part of my brain fired up. I learned all but a few within a couple weeks. I learned most people's names before they learned mine.

For the other, I bought tools with big overtime checks - which came along frequently in those early days. Belt sander first, then 1/2" chuck corded drill, jig saw, big router, laminate trimmer, 1/2" chuck cordless drill, tilt base trimmer, impact driver, orbital sander etc. I was still buying tools during the last weeks in Massachusetts in 2009.

The two owners of the company (until they finally split up in 2007) were Jim and John. One thing that was interesting about learning all those names was realizing that out of a hundred employees, six were Jims and seven were Johns. Those numbers fluctuated over four years, of course. John would hire a John or two, so Jim would have to bring in some Jims to catch up. In the spring of '07, John left and the Jims reigned supreme.

Frantic Searching

As mentioned in my previous posting, my last day at F/X was April 30th. From then until the end of June life was all about packing and moving and unpacking and setting up for a life in Massachusetts.

I went to Dedham to put in an application at Mystic Scenic Studios, a company I'd heard about because they opened a satellite shop in Central Florida for a short run a few years back. I knew they did good stuff, and I'd heard they paid well. But July is not the best time to go job hunting in show business. This was not a productive trip.

I took the MBCR, the Commuter Rail part of the MBTA, and far superior to the rest of it - just ask them - to Dedham, walked many miles in the blistering heat (this was the worst heat wave in Massachusetts memory) and found the address listed on their website. It was an abandoned
building, up for lease, with a sign on the door directing me to 293 Lenox Street in Norwood. I recognized the address of Mystic Millwork, a division of Mystic Scenic Studios. Did this mean that the scenery shop was out of business? And where in Norwood was Lenox Street? I made a mental list of three things I needed asap: a phone, a map and a restroom.

There was an office building very near the train platform. I was walking by the back door, glanced inside and saw a rest room right next to a stack of phone books for Dedham, Westwood and Norwood. Two of my three problems were solved. The phone book had a map section in the front. I found Lenox Street - it ran right along the Commuter Rail tracks. A nearby hotel had pay phones, so I called the number for the Studios, still listed in Dedham. A person answered, and she assured me that the studios were still very much alive. I asked if they were accepting applications. They were. Back to the Commuter Rail platform I went.


Of course, Norwood has two stops. Norwood Depot is on the north end and Norwood Central is a couple miles south. Where was 293 Lenox Street? No telling. Until, that is, I got off the train at Norwood Depot. That fact should tell you that I walked Lenox Street, which dead-ended into buildings and required a lot of extra walking to get there from here, past Norwood Central Station about a quarter mile. I arrived sweaty and exhausted, and the offices were being remodeled so the air conditioning didn't work. The application I turned in was not my best work, so it didn't surprise me that I heard nothing from them. The fact that much of the crew was busy remodeling told me that the dead slows of summer were in full force.

My next try was Local 11, the IATSE Stagehands Union in Boston. This was on a pouring-down-rain kind of day. Using a combination of my growing knowledge of the MBTA, my excellent Rand McNally map and my never-say-die attitude, I braved unmarked streets, unnumbered buildings and a sign on the outside wall written in Chinese characters, and found the office despite their best efforts to throw me off the scent. Once there, they treated me very well, even though Local 11 has never transferred a membership from another local and they weren't about to start with me. They took my information and put me on the overflow list - if a job comes along that requires more people than their membership, they'll call from the overflow list. I was at the bottom of a long list. Then, in say twenty or thirty years, they might make me a member. The business manager counseled me: "You know, if what you want to do is build scenery, you ought to go to work for Mystic Scenic Studios down in Dedham. They're not Union, but they treat their people well. Some of our guys free-lance down there when things are slow." They sent me to a drug testing facility in Government Center, Boston, which is required when you work at the Fleet Center, now known as the TD Banknorth Garden.

Then I tried Local 481 Studio Mechanics in Woburn. They gladly took my information, my application fee, my First Month's Dues and whatever other fees I had to pay up front. They told me I had to cajole two members in good standing into sponsoring me for membership, and then I might be voted in at the September meeting. The Business Agent counseled me: "You know, if what you want to do is build scenery, you ought to go to work for Mystic Scenic Studios down in Dedham. Some of our guys work down there when things are slow."

I went to the August meeting of 481 and talked to a couple of the guys, showed them my portfolio and gave them copies of my resume. They were impressed. They told me I ought to go to work for Mystic Scenic Studios in Dedham - they did when things were slow (which they often were.) When I got home, I emailed my resume to Andrew Shiels, the hiring guy at Mystic. I also sent one to Party By Design, als recommended by the 481 guys.

And I put in an application at The Home Depot in Watertown.

Local 11 called me to do a load out of a Kenny Chesney show at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. I worked from 10:00pm to about 4:00am and netted about a hundred fifty bucks. That was the last union gig I ever did until last summer in Albuquerque.

The Home Depot called me for an interview. I went in and talked to the manager. He sent me to a drug testing place in Brookline and set me up for an orientation class the following Tuesday, provided the drug test results were in. Well, the test results were not in for any of us scheduled for that class. I went to Watertown and was sent back home. The training was rescheduled for Saturday. I was pretty bummed out.

Then Wednesday, Party By Design called me to come interview, which I did. They were happy with me and thought they could hire me, they'd let me know in a couple of days.

Then Thursday Mystic called me in for an interview. They were happy with me and thought they could hire me, and I should call back on Friday afternoon. Suddenly, on Friday, August 19th, I was faced with telling two of my definite prospects that I was not available.

On Monday, August 22nd, I hauled my tools to Norwood for my first day at Mystic Scenic Studios, a happy union that lasted almost four years.