Gateway, Part 3

By the end of the first day at Gateway we all knew a few things about how the summer would go.

The shop had no bench power tools: no table saw, no band saw, no radial arm saw, not even a hand-held laser cutter.

Our rooms were small, the beds were awful and the food was even worse.

From those who had been there the summer we heard stories before how bad the food had been and they told that we should be happy how good it was now.

Evidently they went through a few cooks, one who made the cast sick because she did not know that you take the giblets out of turkeys before you cook them.

Another cook served the cast and crew beans and franks on the opening night of one of the plays and they plastered the walls of the dining room with the food.

The cook the summer I worked at Gateway tried his best to give us good food and even some special treats when he could, but on a whole it was pretty bad.

We always had a big vat of “Bug” juice to drink, Mmmmmm.

In those first few weeks we quickly learned about each other as we worked on the first play “West Side Story”.

We explored the buildings and grounds of Gateway; the two theatres, storage and work spaces and found our favorite places to hang out after work.

I used to like to sit up on the roof of the rehearsal hall late at night and look up at the stars.

But we always seemed busy with little time off.

Sketch I did at Gateway back in 1976

Actor Kieth Rice by the pool and building in my drawing.

The only power tool that we had was a circular saw which was by far not my favorite tool.

By the end of the summer I had gotten over fears and became pretty handy with it.

I had also brought the tools that I had bought for school, including my hammer, and they all got a great deal of use.

It was that summer when my hammer gained some of the magic that is now in it.

It seemed to me that the Technical Director spent most of his time dealing (fighting) with the producers and I do not remember him working in the shop too often.

We had problems with the wiring of the lighting boards and I worked with the Technical Director and a few others to re-wire the lighting boards.

We worked all night right after we closed “West Side Story” so that the dimmers would be ready for the next show.

That night turned out to be July 4th, which was America’s Bi-Centennial and I heard but did not see any fireworks.

The three lighting boards were old Luxtrol Autotransformer dimmer six-packs.

I had worked with this type of dimmers before and had some knowledge about them, but learned a great deal more that night.

Some of the wiring had insulation that was so old and dried out that it was crumbling off and causing short circuits.

More fun was yet to come.

Updated 12/18/18

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