Another place that comes to mind as fun and very dangerous to work is the Field Museum of Chicago. It’s the place featured in that horror movie - think it’s “Species” where the monster goes after the party goer’s and Swat team in a museum. Not as good as either version of "Candyman" but good flick overall. Would not surprise me that there is a connection to the underground
rail system, but when the police dropped
thru the ceiling, they made at least one slight mistake in that there is a sub ceiling between roof and main room in the museum.
This was the place I normally was working after hours in the semi-dark. Used to take my breaks up there. Dark room with the primary lighting coming up from below by way of these frosted windows. Huge blackened room with all kinds of steel structure and dirty sky lights showing a great view of the city skyline above and wood/concrete and huge raised lit from below windows. The first sight of the room after you climb the ladder up to the ceiling
level is awe inspiring. The light and shadow
play on the various shapes is amazing to remember. The ceiling looks great from below, but the visitors should be allowed to see it from above, it would take your breath away. Loved just sitting up there, did not much like standing on my tippie toes working above the windows, or pulling overloaded milk crates up from below, much less a
load in from the truck during winter, but the break times there or anywhere in the half lit museum at night made it all worth it.
Mostly with this company my job was walking inside the recess of the
molding between the 10' glass window panes covering the ceiling. Ceiling was huge and the
molding formed sort of a box
grid with sunken walkways between the windows. Good and safe up until you attempted to move one of these reinforced windows only slightly dropped into the wooden frame supporting it. The
molding holding the window in place was not very sturdy so you had to be really careful when you dropped the window back into place. Used a
Wonder Bar to pry the thing up than had about four people slide it open enough to
drop your lighting
thru. The window was heavy enough it took at very least two people to move but you could not lift it out of the recess without four people. During the winter when the wooden frames and wooden windows shrunk the most due to moisture, it was easiest to grab them but also most dangerous because unless that window was slid just right in opening it, it likely could fall. Should this window slip off at an angle, it would
drop 80' to the floor. Should you slip in rigging the steel above to suspend your lighting, you would also be
splat on the floor below. They did not believe in fall protection and it was not really mandated back than. As I remember it, you had to stand up on the ledge of the window in order to reach the steel above the opening a very dangerous situation where if you were lucky you would have a big strong guy standing behind you in holding onto your belt. Smart people wore strong belts on these installs.
I’m not normally afraid of heights, but you stick your head down from one of these now open windows and look at this huge open space of a
foot ball field sized room from way above, and you do tend to get a
bit of vertigo. Than you lean down further and look at the under side of the ceiling you are atop and you get really loopy. Great fun.
You than would either lower down a rope to the hard marble floor below and pull up your cables and lights, or attach a
block and fall to also operate from above. Think out of about ten shows I did there, there was only once any chain hoists involved. Company did not own any thus they did not use them much. Most of the lighting used was Christmas light based. Just
drop down from the ceiling a few dozen strings of Christmas lights or some three dimensional snow flakes, umbrellas or something of the like and you were about done. Funny thing was all this stuff was powered up with
zip cord and add a taps.
Zip cord and add a taps had a past discussion about it already. Since this was not a very high tech lighting company, they would about hire anyone that was a warm body and thus at some
point someone put a
plug on and really did
plug in a 500' spool of
zip cord so they could just run it out to the location. More common than this was when people bumped the
zip cord and since most people did not at least tape up the end of the
wire, it would never fail to touch something metal and you would see sparks in the
grid. Ah’ what fun days. Kind of miss the museum, even climbed it’s mini-pyramid in the after hours, much less wandering around half dark exhibit halls was always fun. Security was about non-existent, just about everyone had the security coded doors memorized and they did not patrol much given we were locked in.
When you were done with the ceiling you normally hot patched a 30 amp twist
plug in weather tight boot to a similar tail than installed various lekos on floor bases hanging over the
balcony rail 20' above the
main floor.
Safety cable use was also frequently not done - if I remember right in many places there was nowhere to cable off to. These boots on the plugs would retain moisture and heat. It was not infrequent someone would try to un-plug one and there would be a vapor lock holding it together. I know the place used boots over their plugs so they could be used outside, but the receptacles in the building should never have had it on them. This in addition to the fact that it was a twist
plug and live tended to cause problems because people frequently just kept twisting the
plug and pulling on it until it broke and shorted in a big way. At least with the vapor locked boot you were double insulated against this for the most part. The electrical cabinets if I remember right were locked thus we could not get into them - also a wee
bit of a problem.
Last contact with this place was a few years ago during the un-veiling of Sue the T-Rex Dinosaur. Had a last minute
call from this company I used to work for, they were asking for something like 60 or 120
kabuki drop solenoids. No idea what they were for but it was a wee
bit of a project to get that many working properly. The next morning by chance I was watching the Live on the AM news broadcast of the un-veiling of the dinosaur that was carried on all networks in the area. Than it dawned on me, at least 200' of drape surrounding this dinosaur from all sides and on
cue, the drape would fall... My boss by chance at his home had also been watching the tv and also had no idea of what our
drop system was being used for. Both of collectively and individually were bighting our nails that these things would go off on
cue and none would malfunction live on the air. Luckily they all worked. Apparently during the night they did some test drops and worked out the problems with it not working. Due to
voltage drop you can only
power up 18 of these things in a string or they will malfunction. Had to do some re-circuiting over night I guess.
About a year or two later, I left my perminant
mark at the front of the building. There was a celebration of the newly opened meseum campus and a different company yet I was working for was doing the basic event set up. I was helping someone move the generators into place. Problem was we could not drive vehicles out to the positions the generators were being put, we had to use the fork lift to tow them into place. Fork lifts without trailer hitches I might note. My boss set up a trick
hitch with a length of chain so we could tow the four wheel trailer worth of generator. Someone took a turn without watching the forks and he punctured the fuel tank. Here was about 30 or 40 gallons of disel fuel about to leak out of the very large puncture hole all over the new concrete and still sodded grass right in front of the main enterance of the museum. I made a command descion that since all we had about was garbage bags and they were not working well enough to catch the fuel as it poored out, I hopped into the fork truck and towed the thing a few hundred yeards at a high rate of speed to the parking lot where at least the fuel leak would not be as much of a problem.
This solved the problem of a major
spill in a public area a few hours before the event in that we were able to buy a bunch of kitty litter from a near by store to mop up the fuel that did leak. Problem solved for the night at least. What we did not realize but the
park people did bring to our attention the next day was that the concrete was not sealed yet and disel fuel stains fresh concrete in a way that will not wear off. Now instead of one area with a large stain, there was a somewhat large area of the initial
spill, than a trail of stain and drips (I was gooing pritty fast while pushing the trailer in it's reverse direction since I could not turn around) leading to the parking lot across a few hundred feet of brand new pavement.
That next day I was out there with about 20 gal. of bleach in attempting to scrub the pavement clean. The owner of the company was steeming with everyone boss to fork
driver, and especially me who made the trail - though he respected my thoughts on why I did it given the situation. Still about two hours of scrubbing this long stain to the parking lot did not get rid of it much.
Park distract was pissed, our boss was fined and it about put an end to any future events in this plaza for the next few years. So if you are walking around in front of the Field Museum and see a long trailing stain along the side walk, you know who made it. I did not puncture the tank but I certainly made my
mark anyway. Hopefully it's warn off by now, would hate to stop by it and show it to my grand kids some day.