🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2vfqdl$e1l@tech.mm.occ.cccd.edu>,
John Hanna  <johnh@tech.mm.occ.cccd.edu> wrote:

>The most bizzare location for a theater organ HAD to be Joe Coons
>Motorcycle Shop in Long Beach, Cal.  During the day, it was your basic
>motorcycle shop, but on Saturday night, they pulled out chairs, uncovered
>the console and played away on a fairly large Wurlitzer.  Mr Coons was a
>theater organ fan, bought an old organ, didn't have room to put in his
>house, so set it up in the back of the shop.  The organ chambers were
>built in old storage rooms, the electrical run all OVER the place to
>connect it all together.

Perhaps not quite so bizarre, but I have a similar story.

About 25 years ago I was visiting friends in LA, who wanted to take me
to dinner at a new place they had heard of on Melrose. We were early
and the restaurant hadn't quite opened, so we started strolling. Most
of the stores in the area were closed for the evening, but at one store
the door was open. There were massive cut glass chandeliers hanging
inside, and we wandered in. The owner came out to chat, and explained
that he bought old theater stuff, like the chandeliers. As we wandered
into the back area, we found a large room with some stuff here and
there. One wall was mostly mirrors, vertical strips of mirror about
12-inches wide and 6-feet tall, making a glass area about 15 feet long.

One object in the middle of the floor attracted my attention and I
said, somewhat puzzled, "That looks like an organ console". The owner
piped up that it was an organ console for a Wurlitzer theater organ. I
said "oh" when he asked if we wanted to hear it.

Now this was not a terribly large store, and the room was maybe 30 ft x
30 ft at most. And I didn't see no damned organ. Even more puzzled, I
said "Sure".

At this the man threw a wall switch in the back of the room and I could
hear a motor starting up in the basement. He stepped to the console as
the vertical mirror strips rotated louvre-like and a bank of pipes was
revealed. The louvres were controlled by the swell. 

I expected Rod Serling to step out with a smoking cigarette and explain
about Mr David Hatunen who did not know he had passed into the Twilight
Zone.

And he began to play the thing. Loudly (what else in a little room like
that?). Being a Wurlitzer, it had all kinds of things attached. All of
a sudden a piano across the room started playing on its own, like a
player piano, as it remotely followed his fingers on the console. Then
a xylophone could be heard somewhere.

Then he took us on a quick tour through a door near the glass wall to
reveal a smaller room with a lot of sound effects, and drums and the
xylophone in it, and a very large terminal panel with an awful lot of
wires coming from it.

We were a little dazed when we finally left for the restaurant. I've
always wondered if the place was still there, but I haven't a clue just
where it was.



-- 
    ********** DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@netcom.com) **********
    *                Daly City California:                *
    *       where San Francisco meets The Peninsula       *
    *       and the San Andreas Fault meets the Sea       *
    *******************************************************