27th December 2019
We tried to find a place for the new television to fit. I didn’t want to mount it to the wall because they are plasterboard and would require a lot of strengthening to make it work.
It was not possible to sit it on the top of the red cabinet where the current TV is because the feet are too wide apart. We had to resign ourselves to the fact that it was too large for our room. Short of attaching it to the ceiling we didn’t have enough walls left.
The next difficult task was to tell Greer and Dylan that we could not make it work for us.
The husband of the lady who wanted the Mexican style dresser turned up, and like most men wanted to inspect every element of the piece. He checked every drawer, many times, tapped the top and sides. He may have been looking for hidden compartments, but there were none, I made sure of that.
In the evening we went to a party hosted by Steve Kubica and his wife Jackie. They had just returned from their other home in Arizona to have Christmas in Saugatuck. It was a casual affair with fabulous food, plenty of wine and a bartender.
We mingled with Saugatuck’s finest and a few others that were down in the gutter with us.
I met up with the legendary Rog Bush, the guy who ran the seating development group at Herman Miller, in the 80’s and 90’s. He had retired twenty years ago, but in his hay day he was one of the engineers that developed Action Office. Although in his eighties, was still sharp with his recollections.
Hearing his stories, talking about the famous Designers, the long hours working, the excitement of developing something revolutionary, I could see the pride in his eyes.
It reminded me of my early days with Miller when you put the hours necessary to finish the job.
I was accosted by several older ladies fascinated by my accent, I sharpened my vowels and made several English jokes, but Kelli was on hand to make sure they didn’t get too familiar. We told them the story of how we got together, which is always fun seeing their expressions.
We heard about their plans to spend three months in Florida. It’s no wonder that Saugatuck is so dead in winter, everybody is in Florida.
On the way back we were stopped by the cops.
The blue and red lights flashing, we pulled over and waited.
A long shadow was cast over the road, as the officer walked up to Kelli’s window. We knew we weren’t speeding, and she was not driving erratically, so we waited for the officer to tell us.
The reason was, we had two number plate lights out.
Kelli was calm, she didn’t have her usual attitude to cops, and showed genuine shock when told about the lights. A quick check on the licence, and insurance, and we were let go.
Another Lifetime to go 