The End. Or was it? The flood where the story begins.
I didn’t really want to pick this picture for today’s post, but alas, here we are. It was just another morning at work, June 8, 2008.
(If you missed my last post where I explain my assignment: catch up here!)
It’s not as if I haven’t thought about the day, the disaster, the destruction. I have. The current draft of my book begins with this day, because it was traumatic. A turning point. A moment to consider whether or not to continue on the wild ride of small business, or hang up my Pyrex once and for all.
There are so many gems hidden in this image. Gateway Computers!? How could the brand with the unmistakable cow-spotted boxes have died? The CD stand by the window, with the boom-box that surely came from my brother Anton during one of his many stereo upgrades. Enya, John Hyatt, Grateful dead bootlegs, Christine Lavin, Nancy Griffith disks made their way to that rack during 1990’s into the 2000’s, and filled in the Mad Gab’s make-area with music while tins were filled, capped and labeled.
Those things warm my heart. The Gateway boxes in particular because of the customer service rep who helped me in 2002 when I needed tech support with an upgrade that had me flummoxed. While on hold for almost two hours while the upgrade loaded, we got to chatting. That’s how I roll. If there is time to kill, checking out at the grocery store, standing in lines, I will find any chance to connect and make time go by faster. Magical things can happen.
Jake, the Gateway rep, was happy to talk and wanted to know what Mad Gab’s was. I told him about starting a lip balm company when I was in college (in 1991), about driving all over with maps and Yellow Pages to natural food stores to find customers.
Intrigued, Jake randomly asked if I sold to the Ritz Carlton gift shops. Ha! I wish! It turned out his sister was the buyer for the Ritz. He connected us and I sent her a care package, The Ritz went on to order Lip Lube and Elephant Lube for all their US locations and were customers for years. So, yeah, I talk to strangers whenever I can. Also, I was a Gateway customer up until they were acquired in 2007.
The part of the disaster photo that turns my stomach into knots is the water. See it? All over the wooden floor beams, reflecting outside and the different levels of soaked everything was.
Mad Gab’s had been at the mill since 2001, when we moved from the State Theater building in Portland to the Dana Warp Mill. Westbrook used to be super-stinky before they stopped making glossy paper at the Sappi Mill, and now the mill was super cheap so I secured a huge wing, had it outfitted for half office space and half production and shipping. It was incredible. The posts were all painted my favorite lavender— the unofficial color of Mad Gab’s— and I had a door to my corner office (the only existing room when I signed the lease), which was convenient because Silas was one year old and had started to walk. Fast. He had recently started day care (something I was firmly against until having an actual child at work for almost a year) but I still brought him in at times, and had to keep him safe/captive for moments. Sometimes many moments.
Mad Gab’s started in my mom’s kitchen when I was a college student in 1991, and I’d had a few “shops” by the time I landed at the mill. I cleaned houses in college and one of my clients owned a pub (RIP, Twister’s) and he let me use the kitchen when it was closed before I realized I didn’t need a food-prep kitchen. I would shlep my Rubbermaid bins into the kitchen at night, and folks wobbling down the hall to the restroom often peered in, and sometimes came to see what I was doing. Explaining lip balm making to drunks while melting beeswax, and adding drops of essential oil is not as easy as it sounds.
The Mill was an easy decision— I loved the old building, the tall windows, and watching the falls outside my window. The mill space had a lunch room, and when I was pregnant with Jasper, my crew/friends/team, surprised me by making a small space into a nursery with a changing table, nursing chair, and plugs for breast pumps.
By the time this photo was taken, Mad Gab’s was humming along and I had a great little crew who wore many hats to get the product made, the customers tended to, reps supported and orders shipped. We did it all, and I managed my time around the kid’s schedule which mostly worked.
Around 10AM that morning on June 8th, the lights in the hallway went out, which we ignored. Old buildings, and all. Then around 11 we heard fire engines roar up the street. We barely noticed. When 4 or 5 stopped and we saw firemen climbing the fire escape outside our window, we peeked out front and saw oodles of tenants across the street. They were under the awning, holding umbrellas in the pouring rain, and their faces told us we should probably get out there too. I grabbed my laptop, and we all booked it outside. I continued to work under my umbrella— I was deep into an excel doc about inventory— and we assumed we’d be fine to go back to work once whatever was happening was over. Wrong.
What we found once we made our way back inside was gut-wrenching. There had been a small fire above Mad Gab’s space, and the firemen had extinguished it with over 500,000 gallons of water that now poured through the holes and cracks (old building, remember?). The water was black and chunky and nasty. Inventory was floating in bins, labels were ruined, computers toast, Ikea furniture laminates bubbling. Mad Gab’s was completely destroyed. I sloshed around in my Doc Marten Mary Janes, sobbed and tried to figure out what to do. Or not do. Mad Gab’s was all I knew, the only job I had ever had, really. I don’t know if I left myself think about shutting it all down or not. I do remember the tar-like smell, the adrenaline rush, and the fury. How could it be harder than it already was to have a business?
*****
Happier times at the Mill…see the purple posts??
This was during a photoshoot for Motherhood Magazine— you can’t see the second degree burns on my neck and face from putting soup in a blender—but they were there before we photoshopped them out.
The flood even landed me in the New York Times, for an article about insurance.