On a regular basis First Impression provides service for retail shops internal to the building. Every other month the building manager requests that First Impression clean all ground level windows, panels and frames around the entire perimeter of the building.
Knowing this project was underway, late in the day Wednesday I volunteered to join Jonathan for the evening work session. I offered to contribute my squeegee as long as Jonathan was willing to drive the distance into the city.
Arriving at seven PM the building glowed like a massive alien object illuminated by the city lights. It's gargantuan saucer like structure, housing State of Illinois agencies, is an obvious architectural statement. The human figure standing upon the side walk is diminutive next to the hulking structure.
We began to work, cleaning aluminum frames, salmon hued panels, and windows. Hydrocarbon residues of a million passing trucks and automobiles, released from vertical metal and glass surfaces blacken?d our strip washer tools. Wet and black, the tools were a type of postmodern road kill.
Jonathan and I worked on. Our spirits lifted when Chris Brunson joined our effort. I learned about Chris?s love for opera. How amazing to hear your fellow window cleaner in fine voice, hold forth with a few lines of an opera lyric in Italian. Quite impressive!
Dennis and Jon joined us around ten o'clock and shortly afterward Jason Strietzel walked up tools in hand. To a beleaguered squad of marines, nothing is more beautiful that the arrival of the reserves.
I had to leave at eleven. I understand that the others worked until job completion at five o'clock in the morning. As with Richard Dreyfuss in Spielberg's film, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, this job was something of a life changing experience. In fact, the Thompson Center resembles the alien space ship in Close Encounters. You don't think.....?
0 comments:
Post a Comment