A Day in Reno

Every once in awhile I will forget which blog I’m posting to and then I have to try and unscramble the results. I see that I have posted the one below this to the wrong blog. Should have gone on Projections. But I’m leaving it…

Anyway, back to my story…

I had just met Art, my new boss and he was going to send me out on a job. And he told me that he would be sending me to small projects at first; nothing major until he knew more about me. I was on trial again.

Art introduced me to Carl Scatena, who was going to be my partner (and judge) for the day. Carl was from Loyalton, California, a small town north of Reno. We already had something in common. We were both from small California towns and earning our livings in Nevada.

I grabbed my tools and followed Carl to some small job; maybe it was an office remodel? Or a patch in a ceiling in some factory? I don’t even remember all of the places we worked for the first few months of my career with C. Solari and Sons. Every morning would find me driving in from Janesville and meeting with Carl and Art, at the office, to see where we would go that day. No job lasted more than a day or two. It was always interesting and I didn’t miss the excitement (and the boredom) of working on a high rise hotel, like the MGM Grand.

Solari’s office was only a few blocks from the MGM and Solari had already started working a crew on the tower portion as well as the casino levels. The foremen for that project would be in Art’s office each morning, making their plans, while Carl and I waited outside for our daily instructions.

(As it turned out, working with Carl produced some of the best working days in my career. Great times!)

A little something about Solari; when I was still working in Los Angeles and working for Modern Drywall Systems, we had secured two out of town Broadway store projects. One was in Sacramento and the other, a twin, was in Reno. And the drywall contractor for the base store project was C. Solari and Sons. We did what were called the fixturing walls and worked directly for Broadway or the store fixture companies. So, I already had a small, indirect, relationship with them and knew something about the history of the company. More about that later.