A little after 8:00 AM I arrived at the Scottish Rite. My goal was to attach the top and bottom battens by 10:00AM so that we could hang the scene before my departure at 2:00PM. This should be a fairly simple task to accomplish…if the battens had been labeled per my request when they were removed from the drop. If these were the only wooden sandwich battens along the back wall of the stage, that would be one thing – but there were others.
So I started to pull from the pile the ones that I thought might be for the scene. On top of this, one of the two volunteers was not going to make it. In a way, this was a little bit of a relief as the “hunting” was going to be problematic at best. The only worse thing would be an assistant randomly pulling lumber and asking, “Is this it?” A one point, my sole volunteer pointed to a stack of neatly labeled lumber on one of the racks and suggested that the pile might be from our drop. As I looked at the handwriting on the masking tape labels, I said, “Those are MY labels from the last time I was here and we had to remove the bottom battens from a damaged leg drop.”
There are a few fortunate things that happened during the search. The first was that the bottom batten was painted to match the scene. The second was that the top batten had paint slopped on it from the 1940s when the scene was touched up. All I had to do was match the screw holes, right? Well, kind of… You see there were two sets of screw holes – the first from when the scenery was installed in Little Rock, the second from when the scenery was installed in Pasadena. It took some time, but I was attaching the battens by 10:00AM.
Over the years, I have gotten pretty smart about how I attach the fabric to the battens. The big thing is that I use tables and work standing up. This saves my back and time. Well, this method only works with a minimum of three people, ideally four. I had one – so I started to create my guidelines on the floor, determined to occasionally stand up and stretch my back. Twenty years ago, attaching battens on the floor was a snap – no so much anymore. There was not much help as my volunteer could not easily kneel on the floor either. Looking like I was stretching for yoga, I slowly scooted along the filthy floor, thankful that I had a change of clothes for my flight that afternoon.
Now, the second problem – locating the screws. We had picked up new screws as sometimes the old hardware was compromised during the removal from the batten. The Valley requested that I reuse the slotted screws. Ok. I did, but all couldn’t be located at first. Ironically, my assistant found the screws on top of a table in a stage left alcove. I cannot tell you how humorous I found his finding the screws next to the mannequin of the “dead Hiram” that was laying on the table. Of all the places to find them! So with all of the screws, except three that had snapped during the initial removal, I completed attaching the battens.
Then we waited for my rigging crew to show up, after I sent the “ready to go” text. Nothing like having a professional crew on standby. Everything worked beautifully and the drop was up in the air by 1:30PM – just in time.
This project was the perfect “dry run” for the upcoming restoration work. I have my rigging crew and am thrilled with their personalities and abilities. This was also a good run for the Valley as they now know me, my work, the complexity of handling historic scenes and the hanging of backdrops.
Tomorrow, I am back to the storyline in my blog about Thomas G. Moses in the year 1896.
To be continued…
