The Great Cover Up, Upholstery For The Soul

In my teen years while living in Santa Rosa I worked as an Upholsterers Apprentice...No, I did not wear a funny hat with stars on it and the furniture did not dance to the flick of my wrist or tempo of my staple gun.

Upholstery was a good job for me, I enjoyed it and I'd do it for a living if it paid enough money for anyone other than a starving kid or a greencard-less immigrant.

I'd gotten the job by being bored and in the right place and approximately two years ahead of the right time.
The owner of the upholstery shop was Danny Skiles, he and his brood went to my family's church...Anywho, Danny called my Dad on a hot summer afternoon to see if my older brother Jimmy and I would be able to help him deliver some furniture from his shop to a customers house...The reason he needed to hire some underage workers (ME) instead of using his own employees was because one of his guys had quit only days before to hit the road as a traveling musician (good luck to him) and the other employee had cut his hand wide open with a staple removing tool which was appropriately named "The Pig Sticker."

Either way, I soon found my 14 year old self in the back of a moving van trying not to get my grubby little hands all over the brand new golden-colored velvet that covered the antique sofa that I would soon be lifting with my 14 year old back.

I guess my Dad and Danny Skiles had conspired to make a man out of me by way of upholstery.

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Quick tangent...Did you know that the majority of adult males in the upholstery industry over the last 30 years have learned the trade of upholstery while in prison for crimes requiring more than a 5 year term and social rehabilitation...So, I guess it was either making license plates or upholstery...I'm really glad that my loving Dad and a virtual stranger conspired to place me amongst convicts of ill repute to start me on my vaunted career path...Yeah for ME! I get to study prison tats and learn curse words in three different languages as well as the various plastic utensils that can be turned into lethal weapons using toilet paper and a comb! WHOOPEEE!
Tangent over.

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Anywho, from that first afternoon forward I worked for Masters Touch Custom Upholstery as the Apprentice Upholsterer under the direction and tutelage of Danny Skiles and another guy named Danny...I forget the other Danny's last name, I only remember that he was around 60 years old and he was into motorbike racing and ballroom dancing...His favorite song was Lady In Red, he had a tattoo of an Eagle eating a snake on his left forearm and he hated Texas and everything, anything and anyone that came from Texas...I don't know why.

I learned from the movie Big Fish that you never start off a story that has a point by asking a question, I.E.: "Do you know what the thing is about Upholstery?"...Instead you're supposed to say: "The thing about upholstery is..."

So, the thing about upholstery is that when you get down to the form and function of upholstery; it's only good for one thing...Covering up old, dirty, worn-out materials with clean, new, stylish materials.

Upholstery is a cover-up of surface proportions meant to hide the skeletal frame and the thousand tiny nails and screws that hold it together...the springs, the cotton, even the cushions themselves would be totally naked and out of place if not held together by the fabric that most aptly described the feeling that the owner of the furniture was going for when they chose that rusty-orange corduroy monstrosity to cover that perfectly yet simply elegant antique loveseat...God help us all!

You see, upholstery may not seem like any big deal until you meet and get to know the people that are getting all of their furniture re-covered for each and every season and holiday...It's not re-upholstery to some of these people, it's re-birth...re-creation.

Take Peaches Scandini for example.

Peaches Scandini was the type of woman that had married and divorced enough wealthy men to make herself quite rich by the time she was pushing 40.
Peaches was our most loyal and eccentric customer and called the upholstery shop virtually every day of the workweek to see if new materials had arrived that she would like...You see, we knew what Peaches would like because Peaches only had her furniture covered in fabrics that shared the tonal quality of, you guessed it, a Peach.

Peaches Scandini had her entire mansion-full of furniture and tapestries recovered and/or remade in Peach-colored materials 4 to 5 times per year.
Peaches never seemed as happy as when she had her whole house remade in Peach tones...almost manically happy really.

I always felt like I was seeing Peaches Scandini from the inside-out when we re-upholstered her furniture. Peaches wore her need of recognition and acceptance on the outside like a suit and that need shown clearly to anybody who was paying attention...Peaches was a broken woman, she was worn-out and used-up, a woman in need of upholstery of the soul...and every time she got her possessions re-covered in materials that screamed for recognition and acknowledgement, that practically said out loud: "I am Peaches Scandini, please notice me, please pay attention to me...Please love me."; she must have felt that she was losing a little bit more of her self in the re-created, re-covered and re-upholstered facade that she had created of her life.
Peaches Scandini just wanted to start over, she wanted to re-cover her self.

How many times have we sought renewal of the material things that make us - us; when all that we really wanted was re-upholstery of the soul?