Escape
It felt like I was fleeing the state on October 12, 2016; so desperate was my need to leave Minnesota and seek sanctuary in Santa Fe. I began a cross-country road trip with two dear friends from college. We had all been in the theatre department together at the University of Minnesota and shared many stressful times working on theatre productions or other projects. It was a trip that would test the limits of any relationship as we journeyed from Des Moines, Iowa, to Santa Fe, New Mexico in Christee Lee’s RV. After Santa Fe, our plan was to venture east to Austin, Texas, so that I could visit the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas – Austin. There was a 1920s electric theatre model that I had wanted to see for over twenty years.
As we travelled across country, I finally started a project that had been on the back burner since 2014; transcribing a handwritten diary of Thomas Gibbs Moses from 19131. In case you had forgotten, Moses was the sole scenic artist for the Fort Scott collection and I had been restoring his landscape drops in Scottish Rite theaters for years.
This handwritten diary was but one of many that he referenced when compiling his final typed manuscript in 1931. As an undergraduate, I had created an index for both Moses’ Diary and his Scrapbook. The handwritten diary is part of Lance Brockman’s collection, and he had passed it off to me during the fall of 2014 with the hope that I would transcribe it in my “spare time.” Unfortunately, my work for the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center had taken precedence over the past two years and it had remained untouched – always placed on the corner of my drafting table. This little book had moved from my Bella Scena, LLC office in Cambridge to my “office house” in Bloomington, and finally to our new home in Crystal. For my travels, I took digital photos of each page, knowing that I would want to enlarge them on my iPad for viewing.
I watched the landscape from the back seat of a truck, carefully transcribing page after page of Moses’ almost illegible script. My iPad perched against the door handle and my laptop balanced on my knees, I slowly entered each word into my document. Moses had a tendency to not only misspell, but also use various spellings for the same word. The first twenty pages of transcription were difficult until I familiarized myself with his cursive and the phrasing. My first breakthrough was recognizing “the,” and “down.” Interestingly, if I didn’t think to hard about what I was doing, the sentences would occasionally just flow from the page onto my laptop.
1931 was a low point in Moses’ career, having been betrayed by many of those he had worked for throughout the past five decades and found himself financially stressed. He looks back over the years, yearning to paint for pleasure instead of a paycheck; he wishes that he were a more accomplished as an artist at the age of 75. His age and health were becoming a liability as he struggled to obtain work for the first time in his life. Up until then, it had he had an abundance of work. As I realized his struggle, both financial and internal, I thought that this might be an appropriate time to read his entries.
On January 14, 1931, he writes, “I am going to Milwaukee tomorrow with Megan and see if I can dig up some work as I understand there is a Masonic job up there or that is what I want to do as much as I can as I am more fitted for that.” He knew the type of painting that he did best, yet the Masonic work was drying up after the crash of 1929 and the Scottish Rite Masons were not paying their bills. Masons not paying their bills was nothing new and the scenic studios constantly waited in fear for a Valley to renege on a contract, or skip the final payment. For years, the Sosman & Landis Studio financed various Scottish Rite Valleys for terms of six years or more. But many Valleys were always late on the final payments, making both artists and studios to beg for what was contractually theirs.
Furthermore, as painted scenery work became scarce, the game of securing scenery installations became a cutthroat business for scenic studios. As a younger generation began to replace original studio founders and create competing companies in the 1920s, old alliances began to crumble. Gentlemanly agreements between studios during the first two decades of twentieth century ceased. Moses continued to seek work and studio space in both California and Illinois, finding plenty of “part-time” work without any of the full-time job security. During some of his darkest hours his family suffered from Scarlet Fever. On top of everything else, Moses writes in despair, “Still floundering along with little in sight, and the house full of sick ones.” My little case of Shingles paled in comparison.
This was a particularly difficult story to read for a variety of reasons, but especially in light of my former employer. As I transcribed Moses’ soul-wrenching entries, I sympathized with his desperation and overall sense of betrayal. He had worked as a scenic artist for over fifty years and now was either being cast aside for cheaper artists or taken advantage of by studio owners. Moses understood that his age was a liability, but there were no retirement plans. There simply was no safety net for aging freelance artists. So Moses turned to fine art, painting and trying to sell enough of his work to cover his ever-increasing bills, writing, “I am doing all I can to get some of my pictures out but it seems a hard job, no one wants to take a chance on selling them.”
Moses never joined the scenic artists’ union nor transitioned into painting for film. His career remained firmly in the production of painted scenery for the stage with skills that many no longer sought. Furthermore, he did not have the backing of a single company to ensure his retirement as Sosman & Landis became tossed about between shareholders. Moses only had a savings account for old age and that was rapidly diminishing after the 1929 market crash.
As I continued to transcribe the diary on my way to Santa Fe, I wondered about his contractual negotiations both in Santa Fe and Fort Scott. Did either of these Valleys pay their final invoices on time or were they part of the ongoing problem; one that would manifest into aged buildings with deferred maintenance?
To be continued…
