With Christmas over it was time to get to work on the basement. Wally desperately needed a larger bedroom and one that wasn't a short cut to get to the family room. With both costumes and draperies to be made I needed a place to sew that did not involve crawling all over the carpet to lay things out.
I did not realize until we started the project that Charles did not know anything about carpentry or carpentry tools. He had a few tools but the few times he attempted to use them should have made Wally and I aware that this was going to be very interesting. Luckily in my previous life I had helped on a few construction projects and had a full set of Time Life do-it-your-self books. In order to attach the studs to the exterior concrete walls Charles purchased a RamsetHammerShot0.22 Caliber Single Shot Tool. In plain English that was a gun that shot nails through the stud into the concrete.
Anyone who knows me knows that guns are not my thing. The only time I ever fired one was when I had a cute guy ask me to go rabbit hunting in the snow in college. I fired the gun once to scare the rabbits away so they would be safe. Needless to say the RamsetHammer thing scared me to death. But Charles happened to be a real gun loving person who owned a lot of vintage firearms as well as those things people use to kill each other. So, Wally and I would cut the studs to length and Charles could fire away.
When all the walls were built and in place it was past the time I needed to be working on the ice show costumes so the rest of the basement was going to have to wait. I was very excited and pleased that Wally made the cast. It was also a little scary from the aspect that he was only fourteen without ten years of ice skating behind him. The good thing about Wally was that he had been roller skating since he could walk. The conversation from roller skates to ice skates is very easy. Put a pair of roller skates on an ice skater and get ready to watch them fall down. There is something about the weight of the wheels that they have a great deal of difficulty in knowing how to handle the wheels over little thin blades.
From the first of February to showtime the last weekend of April always seemed to just be a big blur of busy days and nights. Between Wally and I there were seven costumes to make and one that I was in charge of. Add into that I did have a business, Wally had school and poor Charles only got to see us coming or going out the door. By the first part of April you begin to wonder if you are going to live through this, why did I ever sign up for this and everyone just gets sick of rehearsal and everyone in the show.
Then the magic happens. The sets begin to be built, bleachers fill the empty space around the ice, the forty foot tall curtains are hung and the arena takes on a totally different look. You can begin to see how awesome this show will be and how the routines you have spent hours learning fit together. The Las Vegas number has a huge slot machine with a teflon ramp the skaters will fly down, the Gypsy number will have a huge circular box that will move across the ice with skaters on top and all those glow in the dark orange costumes will be beautiful as the skaters fly across the ice under black light in the Main Street number.
From opening night through all eight sold out performances you tend to forget how many hours and how much work it took to get through the show. Wally did really well skating with all the seasoned skaters. He even got over the fact that he had a pink spandex suit with huge ostrich feathers on his shoulders or how much he hated the sixties costume with only fringe covering his belly. I can remember that years later he said none of his friends ever got to skate in an ice show. I took that as a positive comment. Hopefully he will be ready to be in the show again next year as it was fun to have him in it with me.
Real life was hard took go back to. There was always a feeling of let down for a week or so after the show was over. Wally was finishing up middle school and the final band concerts with the best band teacher ever was hard for him. He had summer camp to look forward to and Wes would get his dragster license that summer. Charles' daughter in New York was planning her wedding for August. All in all, it turned out to be a very interesting summer.
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