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!