SAND BLASTING
transforming the interior of the builing on Chruch Street
okay ... here's what the inside of one end of the building looked like in the winter of 1976 (photo by Richard L. Haight, I believe) - the walls were very colorful, and dirty ... you can get a sense of how the front was once divided into several small rooms, above which there once was a balcony ... when we moved in, it was a big open space with catwalks down each side except in the front as you can see in the upper left of this pic
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About five or six months after we moved into the building on Church Street, our tech director, Billy Turnbull, and associate producer, Bob Small, came to me with an idea that turned into an adventure. I seem to recall Billy sayin’ in that wonderful drawl of his, “only way you’re gonna get rid of the paint on those walls is to sandblast if off the brick.”
A volunteer - not sure of his name, sorry - busy packing stuff
away in the basement in prep for the big sand blast.
Didn't help - sand, dust and paint chips got into everything
no matter how it was packed away.
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I don’t remember if I even stopped to ask either of them if they had ever operated the equipment used in sand blasting. I probably didn’t because in those days their response would be the same as any one of us would respond whenever faced with an unfamiliar but necessary task … “how hard could it be?”
me after one of my turns with the blaster
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What we lacked in knowledge or experience we made up in naïveté. It is so easy to mask ignorance with enthusiasm – a feat at which we were superstars.
Bobby taking a blasting break in the back of Bergie (sorry for the aliteration ..
I coudln't help myself) - of course, the Bergman's Laundry truck is another story
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So I gave the boys a check and they went out to rent a compressor and sacks of sand. I figured, hmmm, compressor, how big could it be? ... the size of a lawn mower or a little bigger? Wrong again, Harry ... the guys came back with a piece of machinery that was the size of a Volkswagen beetle. There it is ...
Of course we all became great friends wih "Smitty" ... thought the neighbors did get tired of the compressor making all that noise late into the night for four days.
Billy, Smitty and Bobby
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I will write more about our sand blasting adventures when I have more time
This is Bill Turnbull atop the scaffolding
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… using up 2 tons of sand to make the interior of the brick building look beautiful is one thing 
… getting rid of 2 tons of sand afterward is another. How did we do that?
Anyone remember?
Kem Bloom moved our phones to the sidewalk and continued working outsde while we were blasting inside - ambitious guy that Bloom
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not a great picture because of the dust in the air I believe that is Kathleen
Tosco (wearing Billy's overalls) standing at the base of th scaffolding - another thing
about this piucture is that I can make out two radiators and a sink in the corner of the room - how did we remove them? The landing to the stairway to the second floor was build in that corner, wasn't it? And where could I have been standin to take this picture? ... atop that wobbly a-frame ladder we used to have?
Ah ... good times!
here's a snapshot of the same corner years later (and from a lower agnle, duh) - post-sandbalst, and post rennovation after the fire marshal closed us down (another story) - anyway back to sand blasting ...
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Bobby? Billy? Me? Kathleen? One of us was atop the scaffolding and about to do our turn with the blaster ... of course, the dust in the air made taking pictures almost impossible. Come to think of it, I would guess it is me because of the wide body - the other three were much thinner than I ... Billy, Kathleen? Bobby? Recollections?
Okay, here's a question ... why did we put all this stuff on the street and was this before, during or after the sand blasting?
Pictured are Kathleen Tosco and Art Auer along with the best
theatre pet in the world - Billy's dog, Rhett Butler
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actress/volunteer Barbara Calendar helping clean up after the big blast - here she's vacuuming off the script submission library - I am sure some writers whose scripts were rejected in the months that followed found sand in their SASE's
one of my favorite pictures of Bobby -
this was taken atop the scafolding - I guess that was before I became so terrifid of heights - intersting thing about this picture is that you can see how clean the bricks and wood were after the blasting ... of course stray sand also frosted the ancient panes of glass, but the historical society never found out
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that's all for now - regards to all, HB