Chapter 17

Everybody was working hard, so I decided I needed to do something more. I went to one of the pro audio shops on Ventura, and actually saw a few musicians I recognized. I asked the guy about light boards and equipment, and he turned me over to another guy that had a real geek look about him. But he knew his stuff, I could tell that right away.

One thing I had noticed is that the light board Karl brought over was very basic, little more than dimmer switches. But there were ones here that were much better. These were actually a new computerized system called “DMX” and could do a lot of great effects once they were programmed in. He then showed me a series of lights that would take advantage of that, including a single light that had 3 bulbs, and could be used to make almost any shade of light needed.

We sat down at a desk and when I said the rig was about 10 feet wide and 7 feet high, he sketched out the best lights he could suggest. Including two strobe lights that could be linked or operated separately. Well, I got all of them, including two new fog machines and two spotlights. And one thing he had just gotten in, a remote-controlled spotlight that could be moved around with a joystick. He showed me his most advanced control board, and that went into the pile. And after paying we loaded it into my car, which barely had room for it all.

When I pulled up the girls were on the stage and Karl was testing the lighting when I called them all over. “OK, Karl, did Becky tell you that she wanted another one of these?”

“Yeah, it will take me about a week to get it done though.”

“OK, here, these are going to be hooked up to it. I just got them, they are a hell of a lot better than your old system, we need to have a nice new one here. These are all computerized, and once Mike learns how to use it I bet he will have it doing some neat tricks.”

Soon everything was laid out on the floor next to the stage inside, which still had signs saying “Wet Paint” on it. Karl was blown away, saying he had been itching to get his hands on a set like this. “Dude, I am going home now! Sharla, call Rad and tell him I am borrowing the van, I can have this done by Saturday!” He then kissed her and ran off. Sharla laughed and made the call, and then called Mike. He said he would be over after work.

We had pushed two large folding tables together and had the stuff spread out on it when Karl came back. Three new trusses in the back, and some tools and hardware. Becky and I moved upstairs to the office and cuddled together on the couch in her office. And after some kissing, she asked how much that had cost and I told her. She shook her head, and I said that was actually another thing she should get into.

“I saw it kind of at the store. But it was not displayed, and I had to take their word for it. You can have Karl and Mike coach you on it, and I bet this is another area people will buy. Especially if they can see it working. And the guy said they can be hooked into computers also. Imagine that, you can create a program for all of the lighting effects for say ‘Final Countdown’. And hit a button when the band starts, and the lights are all in sync with the music. Even spotlighting performing solos at the right time.”

“But what do I do with the old rig Pete?”

“Sell it. Somebody will want it, and we have them suspend an, oh, 10 or 15 foot long rig from the ceiling about 6 foot from the ground. Run all the wires, have that a display area for lighting. This DMX technology is only a year old, I bet most do not even know what it is yet or what it can do. You were already thinking of adding professional lighting, and this can make you the specialist in that also. But unlike the other stores, here they can see them all in action.”

She gave me a kiss, then went to her desk and pulled out a few supplier catalogs. And sure enough, they had them, and for less than I had paid. Well, I had gotten a military discount so I still got a good price. She grabbed them all up and we headed downstairs where Karl was busy working out the pin braces to connect it to the stage as Sharla joined us at the catalogs.

Mike showed up a bit later, and he was at the table hooking up various lights and playing with the controls. “Dude, this is sweet!” He then had a light that was a bright white then transitioned to a bright blue, a darker blue, then to red. “This one light can take the place of three of those old can lights. I’m going to have to get them set up. But according to the book here, I can have them act as chase lights, work together as if they were all a single light, or a lot of other things.”

Becky came and kissed me, saying she forgave me for doing this without asking. Right before the contractor left we told him what we needed next, and he laughed. “OK, we can do that tomorrow. Which is good, some of my guys were just sitting around half the time as it is. And my son is a HAM guy, he has an old 12 foot truss in his garage, I will have him paint it tonight and bring it over. What color?”

Becky said dark blue, and he nodded. It was after 8, and Karl and Mike were still working on the new truss, and it was starting to come together. Sharla, Becky, and I had brought in the old one, and Peggy arrived with three pizzas. We finally dragged the boys from their new toy, and Becky handed around the catalogs that had the things she was going to order underlined. Some of them were more advanced lights than I had even seen at the store. They were multiple small spotlights that would move in preset patterns. She wrote out her initial order and said if we liked them we could add them to the truss for our own use.

The girls were all tired, so we all kissed our respective ladies, and I walked them out to their cars. “I’ll stay here with them, I have a feeling they will be here until midnight.” They laughed and agreed, and I went back inside where I relaxed in one of the lounge chairs we had set up and started going through the catalogs. And in the back of one, I found what I wanted. A DMX controller that also had an interface to a computer. I wrote a note and set it on top of the stack, telling Becky to order two of those.

It was almost 1 when they finished, and Karl said he would be there in the morning. I thanked them both and asked Karl and Mike how much they wanted. Karl laughed, “No charge dude! Hell, Becky and I already worked it out, I’m gonna get $500 for each of these rigs I build for her. Even if I only build two or three a month, that’s not bad.”

“Same here, I’m learning a new thing. I’m getting crap where I work now and Becky has offered me a job if this takes off. I have seen nothing like this before, and I bet there is money to be made here. And I will be one of the first to master it if I can.”

I thanked them both, and before Karl left I told him he should get a patent on his design ASAP. He looked at me funny, and I said the connection system he designed was original, and if these got sold others would copy it unless he got moving fast. I pulled out one of Mr. Flushing’s cards, and he said he would pass that to Sharla.

I checked in at the shop the next morning, and sales had been good again. I asked Dee if she could call some of the shops in the area and see if they were open to having us buy up any excess inventory they had for cash, and she said she would get on that. I then made the run to a warehouse in Pasadena and picked up the computers. I snagged some other odds and ends as well, including three scanners, one of them with a sheet feeder. I got them to the shop and took a look, score! Over 80% of them had the math chips inside! He must have gotten these from an engineering department. Julie got to work with Dee looking through the catalogs so we could price the scanners, and I picked up the one with the sheet feeder and took it to the new shop.

And once I got to New Dawn, Karl wanted me to help him drag the rig outside and put the lights on. “Dude, why do that? Set it up here on the smaller one, you only need a step ladder then.” He shook his head, and said that is why he kept smart people like me around him. Becky came downstairs as he was hooking up the lights and I was hooking them into the board. The contractor was finishing hooking the last of the lights on the display truss, and the electrician came over and asked what I was doing. I had just tore open the third bag of cable, and I explained what it was for. He looked at the cable, then handed it back. “Stop opening those, Pete. Those are 5 wire plugs, I got tons of those. Got a schematic of their wiring?”

I pulled out the manual for the panel, and he spent about 10 minutes looking through it. “OK, put those things away. I got 20 wire bundles, and those are standard plugs, I can wire those up, and have four in a single bundle. Let me guess, one for the truss, one for in here, one for the outside stage? Becky nodded, and he smiled. “Just sell those, I can have this done in a few hours. Let’s shoot the moon here, I will run five in the stage outside, that is 20 connectors to play with. Let’s do seven for the truss, that is 28 for that, and another five in here.”

He then grabbed Karl, and I followed as he pulled out a spool of thick black cable from his truck, and handed the site gopher a list of things he needed from the electrical supply store. And in short time he had the seven cables strung into the truss. And after a bit of instruction, Karl and I were attaching connectors on the truss end. He inspected them all as we finished, and soon we had all 28 done. He then tagged them with numbers from 1 to 28, and got on a ladder and secured them all in the truss. We then repeated this at the conduit he had run from the truss to the teller booth we had pulled over. It made our front counter look smaller than we had liked, but I had to admit it looked really good. It was all soon finished at that end, and he smiled.

“OK, when you get those lights up, you will know what is what. Oh, and I want to give you some of my cards. I’m independent, and I sometimes do work at clubs and bars setting up stage lighting. I bet we can feed each other a lot of business. I can send some here to get their stuff, you can send me people who want this but can’t set it up themselves. I have wanted to get into this DMX lighting, but nobody has wanted to pay the money sight-unseen. Now, I can say ‘Oh, you want to see it? Well go see my friends at New Dawn, they will show you exactly what it can do!’. I gotta admit, when I first came here I thought you guys were crazy, and I was unsure when you asked to be my wire monkey. But you both are not afraid to work, and do good work. I got free help, you both learned something so we both come out ahead.”

I laughed and said that I was not afraid of hard work, this was actually half play compared to what I did in the Marines. At that he grinned and stuck out his hand. “Well then Semper Fi brother, I knew I liked you for a reason. First FSSG here, I learned electrical in the Corps. Yea, I surely wanna get in on the ground floor with you guys.”

We took apart the completed truss, and took everything outside and they started the wiring as I swapped out the old light panel for the new one. I had one of the guys help me set up the truss, and I got it quickly wired up thanks to Sharla’s color-coded tape. I then installed the new panel into the case and rolled it outside.

Becky was surprised when she came back downstairs. She told us the lighting would start to arrive by tomorrow, but it should all be in by Friday. Karl was already playing with the controller board, and all the lights were reacting as they should. The electrician gave her his proposal, and she smiled.

“Well, how about this? Send anybody over you want for a demonstration, and we will give them and you a discount on the components. We will be your exclusive supplier and demo center, you can be our exclusive electrician.” They both shook on that. I then said he was likely already doing more work for us. He looked at her funny and I laughed.

“Oh, my dad and his family are moving to Idaho next year, we are moving into their house in Van Nuys. You guys are building an extension from the kitchen to the garage, and putting in a workshop for me in there. We are going to need a lot of wiring done, stuff none of us thought about eight years ago when it was remodeled.”

He looked at me when I said I wanted phone, Ethernet, and cable TV run to each room, then smiled. “Oh, you are a wet dream come true for me times two! Hold on, be right back!” He ran out to his truck, and when he returned set an envelope on the table. “I got these samples a few weeks ago. Here, check that out.” He pulled a bundle of wire that was about a quarter-inch thick, and black. But inside the bundle I saw two coaxial cables, and two phone cables. “It’s a company in Santa Fe Springs, this is their newest product. Now the phone cables are Cat-3 network cable. Four phone lines each bundle, or a two phone lines and an Ethernet line. Or two Ethernet lines if you want. And the coax is all RG-58, not the cheaper RG-59. So it can also handle Ethernet, and satellite TV transmissions. So you can have say phone, computer, antenna, and cable in each room of the house with this. It all feeds to a common box I can put wherever you want.”

Becky smiled at me, and I said it was sold. “When you submit your bid, include that. Put the common box inside the extension, and the cable and phone moved to that. It’s a two floor house, three bedrooms upstairs, office, and living room downstairs. Oh, and one in the kitchen as well.” He smiled and said if he could use us as a reference he would give us a discount. Of course, we said he could.

“Oh, and if anybody in the future wants a computer network, send them to me. I can sell them a server like I have upstairs, and show them what all it can do. Kids finish their homework in their room, print it out in the den. At the same time sister is using her computer hooked up to her keyboard and recording it, then going to a computer in the living room and playing it on the stereo for everybody to hear.”

“You can actually do that?” Becky grinned, and told him to follow her. He could not play, but he banged out a bunch of keys at random on the Roland keyboard, as Becky saved it as a file. We then went upstairs to her office, and pulled up the MIDI file through the network, and sure enough it was the same banging away he had done downstairs. “Well I’ll be damned, that is impressive. What else can it do?”

“Well, some of this is still a few years away,” I said. “But I have been tracking the industry for a few years now. I expect soon you will be able to buy movies on CD, and play them on a computer. And there are some prototype cameras that have a computer inside and do not use film. And with some games out now, they are better than even Nintendo. Hook a computer up to your TV, the sound to your home stereo, you are gonna have a system that makes the Nintendo look like a ten year old Atari.”

We talked a bit more, and I saw that this time Becky had “That Look”. Once he was done, she grabbed me and we hit a few pawn shops. Finally, at one in Van Nuys we got three nice component stereo systems, and set the nicest one up in the display area. And Becky pulled up one of the King’s Quest games, and it sounded fantastic. “OK, we now need a sound control box, but we can use this or something like it as a demo mode for these. OK, the next one goes next to the instruments, and I will take the small one into my office. Oh dear.” A large delivery truck arrived, and Becky grinned as they opened the back, and brought in box after box after box of stuff. I took up the stereo myself as she was checking everything in, and it was an impressive amount. The vault was half full now, but she said she would move most to the storage room as they were not particularly valuable. Then I helped her unpack one of each of the keyboards, as she checked them out and I moved across to set up the speakers, amps, and other pro audio stuff that had arrived.

Being her first order, she just got three of everything she wanted. I laid out the mixer boards, amplifiers, and speakers. The sign painter arrived, and she handed him the drawing Mandy had made, and soon he was removing the signs on the roof and pole. And after checking the lights he said they would be back by Friday.

Mike got there shortly afterwards, and I grinned as a few people walked in. I went to help them but saw Becky was already talking to them, so I joined Mike. He loved the setup and said these new lights were incredible. He had the manual in front of him and was already making some programs, to automate the effects they could do.

In less than 30 minutes, Mike had a new setup programmed. Each of the lights rotating in brightness and color, and it looked pretty good. And the couple that had gone in walked out with a long box. Becky came out and threw herself into my arms. “Baby, they bought a Casio! My first sale!” We kissed, and Karl and Mike congratulated her as well.

“Not bad, not even officially open yet, and you got a sale.”

Finally, the work was all done but the signs and the contractor gave Becky a preliminary bill, saying the final would be here next week. $62,000. It was a fair amount higher, but we had also added in a lot of other work in the meantime. But the place looked fantastic. The outside was a nice turquoise blue, and the inside an off-white. His people had finished the floors, and we got a discount on that as we had the equipment and supplies as well as I had already done the initial stripping. Marble floors on the bottom floor, granite on the top floor. And all the lighting inside was working, and on a dimmer switch.

Becky went inside and was going through the applications we had gotten at the other shop, and calling in people to interview for her shop. It started to get dark, so we moved the truss inside and set it up again so Mike could keep working on programming it. Karl asked me what we were going to do with the other one, and I shrugged. “If I have to guess, once Mike is happy with this that will be held in storage and that will be on display until we can sell it. We talked about having them add another base for the truss on this stage, but Becky decided that once that is gone we would not replace it, so why bother?”

The guy from the restaurant came by, and he sat with Becky and she read over his proposal and nodded. “OK, I like both of them. You set up in the back corner, we will rope it off the day before and that will always be yours to use. How do you want to work it?” They decided that they would try for the first three months at a 50-50 split after expenses, then renegotiate after that. They also worked out a basic menu, just hamburgers, hot dogs, and can soda. “Oh, and so you know, next month you may have competition. My cousin is dating a guy that has a taco truck, if this works well he may want to set up here also.”

He just smiled and nodded. “Family is family, and tacos are not quite competition. I have a feeling this will be like a little block party every week, more than enough business to go around.”

They shook, and he said he would be there Saturday morning to set up. And then another delivery truck showed up, and it was the first of the lights. She had ordered four of each of many of them, and Mike set up one of each and played with them, then handing me some to be mounted on the overhead truss, and a few others to put on the concert truss. The center light was moved to the side, and one of the spinning multi-light units went in the center, next to the moving spotlight. And he ran two more down each side, those were also three light units. He hooked those up as Karl and I hooked up the ones on the truss, and Becky hooked them into the light board that had arrived. We put up one of each and she nodded, just as the first applicant arrived for an interview.

It was only 8 when the guys packed it in, and Mike said he had the next two days off so he would be here and work on the display unit programming. I locked the door behind them and heard on the intercom that I was needed in the office. I turned off the lights, and headed up the stairs. I was wondering what Becky needed help with, but did not expect what I found when I walked in the door.

The lights were off, about a dozen candles were lit, and a soft sax song was on the stereo as Becky reclined on the couch, which had been pulled out into a bed. Wearing a purple camisole and matching panties. I quickly stripped off my clothes and joined her on the bed. She rolled me onto my back, and after kissing me for several minutes, she worked her way down to my neck and ears, alternating licking and kissing me with biting and sucking lightly. The entire time grinding her silk covered mound against my cock.

My hands caressed her back and bottom, always amazed at the miraculous things the female body could do. Standing next to me, it often seemed like I could cup her entire bottom in one hand. Both hands would completely cover it, thumbs in her crease as my little fingers would caress the side of her hip. But laying on top of me like this, with her thighs outside of mine it was like it grew so much larger. That never ceased to amaze me, and I loved it. I let my fingers slide down her bottom, fingertips between her thighs as I felt her panties. They were moist, I could feel her leaking through the thin silk and caressed her lips through them.