Saks

Sorry for the interruption in the narrative. I was waiting for some inspiration and it just never materialized, so I had to go and find it.

Let’s see…I left the reader in Connecticut when I last posted.

Spring eventually came to New England, but not before we had a chance to experience the 5th season; mud. It comes between winter and spring and has nothing to recommend it.

And with spring came the end of the job. The G. Fox store of Waterbury Connecticut opened on time and with great celebration while we shipped our tools home and took the final flight west.

Sad…but the store was demolished a few years ago. Alex sent me a newspaper clipping of the event. Of course the clipping made mention of the asbestos contamination in the building; a hazard we weren’t aware of when we were building it.

Once we were back in Southern California we got back into the usual routine of taking on projects of all sizes. Some would take less than a week and those were always my favorite kind. I was able to travel all over the greater Los Angeles area and never knew where the next project would land me. We worked as far south as San Diego and as far east as Palm Springs. And since we seemed to have found a niche in department store remodeling, we would sometimes have to take on jobs late at night, remodeling complete departments overnight so that they could open the next day without any loss of revenue.

Saks 5th Avenue store in Beverly Hills was one that we spent a few nights in. We would arrive about 9, just as the last shoppers were leaving and then we were locked in by the security guards. The guards would return at 5:30 in the morning to let us out. In that short time we would have completed the demolition of an existing department and rebuilt it with a brand new look…except for the paint. That happened the next night.

Of course we had to spend some time looking at all of the merchandise and wondering why anyone would spend that kind of money on some of the items. $5,000 for a dress? That was an amount that could serve as a year’s salary!