It's Over

With a couple of men from California hanging the drywall it wasn’t long before the project was back in the black. And then it was time for the tapers (Painters) union to go through the same exercises. The union insisted that we do all of the taping by hand; no machines allowed. Negotiations ensued. A deal was struck and a minimum number of the Ames tools were allowed on the project. We were definitely luckier than the painting contractor on this project. He had to paint a two story department store with 4” brushes; no rollers allowed!

With the coming of spring I was finished with the project and desperate to come home. And to celebrate, I decided to take that final flight home on the new 747 aircraft. The plane was too large to land at Newark Airport at the time so I had to schedule a flight from JFK in New York. And that meant a commuter helicopter ride from Newark to JFK and crossing directly over Manhattan. Now that was fun! We flew in among the skyscrapers and I remember looking down and seeing fire engines and police cars racing through the streets. With the noise from the helicopter engines drowning out any other noise, I could only imagine the sirens…

I remember that you couldn’t really get a grasp of the size of the 747 from inside the terminal; it was only after you walked down the jetway and entered the aircraft that the immensity impacted you. Wow! The plane wasn’t even half full and I had a window seat and a row all to myself. On takeoff, I remember that the blue runway lights kept coming and coming and coming…would we ever get into the air?

Of course the plane lifted off as planned and then it became apparent that the size of the plane was giving us a smoother ride than I had ever experienced before. So smooth that the drinks served in the bar never even showed a ripple. Yes, there was a bar, upstairs. A semi-circular stairway took you up to the lounge. I remember that they had an old-fashioned popcorn machine up there as well. What a way to fly!

5 hours later and I was home. Ready to begin a new project somewhere. But would there be any work in LA? Times were tough once again and we hadn’t been able to secure much in the way of future work.