My name is Loren Rademacher. I’ve lived in Chenango County near Norwich for 20 years now. We came here, I started my job at Unison in late August of 2005. A couple years after coming here, I became a member of the Oxford Lions Club. And one of the members there was David Emerson, who was pretty well active member of the community, serves on all kinds of boards and stuff. But at some point, the barn that’s sitting on the museum property now was donated. It’s called the Loomis Barn. And it was dismantled and reassembled here on the museum property. And a couple of times he invited me to come help. The manager of the crew said, “I want you to be the workshop manager because you take care of stuff and keep things neat and organized,” and whatever. And so I took that on. And I relamped the workshop and put in brighter lighting.
And one summer on the work crew, somebody brought in a drag saw. It was dirty, grimy. Nobody wanted to work on it, but I did. I worked on it all summer. I invited others if they wanted to give me a hand, “Come on and scrape some of this gunk off.” But they’d much rather work outdoors on some yard project or something. And I’m working here in the heat of the summer, sweating and getting on the metal and making rust spots all over the place I had to clean up later. But by the time I was finished, I had all the gunk cleaned off and everything was in good working order.
A number of exhibits didn’t have bases for them to sit on, just to get them up off the floor and define the space that they’re in. So I made a few of them. Not really a difficult thing. You just make some perimeter framework and then nail some boards on and then paint it. I think that’s something just about anybody that can drive a nail and cut a board can do, and spread some paint around. But it’s worth it for the museum. One of the exhibit rooms was going to be renovated, and they had a lot of the bases sitting around that they wanted repainted. So I did all those bases. I made little risers to get them off the floor so I don’t paint the floor, and just went through and put a good coat of paint on them all.
I think I’ve got a good technique that not too many people do. I watch people paint and it seems like they take a long time getting the paint on, and I’m pretty speedy. I’m not typically a speedy worker, but I’ve got a process of getting the paint on and spread pretty quickly so it goes well. And it’s almost fun taking something ugly and making it look a little bit better. I’ve painted a number of things around here, and that works fine.
For one exhibit room that had crown molding, I finally remembered the word, what it was, it’s crown molding, the stuff that goes between the wall and the ceiling to make it look a little bit fancier. And there was a run of a… It didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. But it had crown molding on it just to define the end of it or the height of it. But that stopped at the wall and didn’t continue along that wall to another wall, and it looked incomplete. So I put crown molding on that wall. Never did crown molding before. I thought, “Well get some videos. How hard can it be?” But it ended up looking good. And there’s a technical flaw in an area of it that only somebody who knows what they are doing would see it, and the rest of you will just look at it and say, “Mm-hmm,” and then go on about your business.
And the basement, yeah, the basement had various display rooms and display areas that are no longer being used. They had a lot of dentistry displayed down there. Anyway, it was undesirable to have it there anymore, so it had to be all torn apart and torn down. And I spent several weeks doing that, or several weeks of Wednesdays doing that. The parging or the mortar coat that was applied to the surfaces was just flaking off, turning to sand really because of the warm room air and the moisture going through. And then the wall would be totally outdoors, winter temperature cold, so you didn’t get a lot of warmth going through. But moisture would get through and get into the mortar and then freeze, and that would break the mortar up. And so that showed from ground level down to about two or three feet, so you could see just how deep the frost line was. Pretty interesting.
Well, I started because I was invited to be here. The work is totally within my capabilities of doing. Some of the stuff is extending my capabilities a bit, but it’s all stuff that I know how to do and can think my way through how to do. When I started, there was a fairly large work crew of about 5 to 10 people that would show up every Wednesday. Then at some point, they decided to leave and work on other projects in town. And I stayed behind because I knew the… Well, I liked the management. And I realized that it would be tough on them to have to find somebody to take care of things when all of a sudden everybody that they knew just walked away. And I didn’t want to be walking away and leaving them totally without somebody to do some work around here.
I liked working with the guys and the social part of it. But I work very well on my own, very happy to work on my own. And being behind and being the only person working here suits me just fine, doing things that I know how to do or can figure out how to do. So it seems to be a good fit for me, a good little niche in life. Happy to be here for that.
