Beginning of The End....
September is the month that we begin shutting down the plant. I had a rude emotional smack across the forehead this morning when I cut thru the stair shop to the UPS receiving dock.
The stair shop was empty. What used to be full of woodworking saws and material, carpenters and piles of finished sets of stairs, was a huge empty void. All moved to our other facility across the river in Kentucky. It was a difficult walk thru that vast void. We used to have the Christmas parties there back in the day. All the saws would be moved out of the way and the alcohol moved in. This was when we were still a family owned company, people were still buying houses, and you still party at work with a few drinks without fearing a lawsuit. Every year folks would mingle over to the bar next door, and stories would circulate the next week about who got into a fight and who went home with who. I never been in a fight, and I always went home with my husband, but they were still good days. I miss so many of those folks now. Most are long gone. Many left with the corporate buyout. The rest have been sliced off sporadically thru the years. Only a few of us remain, and we stick together like soldiers in a foxhole. Hopefully, we will make it thru the war.