[SML] A very special birthday

[Jeff Forbes]

Greetings listers:)
I’m actually celebrating two anniversaries almost back to back here, but it’s the second one that inspired this post. 
Back in 2000 my wife and I (using her money from selling her apartment in NYC) bought a small rather plain looking church in Portland Oregon which we turned in to a dance studio and small performance venue and founded a non-profit arts organization.. That is the first anniversary, and we celebrated out 20th year mostly in lockdown due to the thing. But that’s not the birthday I’m thinking about today.
Sometime in Spring 2001 a friend of mine in the performance community here told me of some used lighting gear that was going up for sale in her neighborhood. It seems there was an elderly retired gentleman who lived on her block who used to be a stage hand or electrician at Portland Civic Theater. ( I never figured out if this was the Portland Civic Theatre that was a community theater here for many years, or the building that is now the Keller Auditorium, previously the Portland Civic Auditorium, and the Portland Civic Theatre before that.) He was quite elderly and lived alone and had a bunch of lighting equipment in his basement among other things. Recently some young thugs had broken into his house while he was there, beaten him up and robbed him, and his family had decided it was time to move to an assisted living facility and not live alone anymore. They were also selling the house and all of its contents. 
I wound up picking up some 6” fresnels as the beginnings of a lighting rig for our studio. These were old Century fresnels, in their original boxes. They say “Century Lighting Inc. 419 West 55th Street, New York N.Y.” on the box. 
Now these fresnels also came with lamps, 500w incandescent T20 medium pre-focus. These fresnels put out a very n ice even field and were pretty much in pristine condition. And after 20 years of moderate use I have yet to replace a lamp in any of them. Those suckers are still burning..

Kinda reminds me of the story of Benny the Bulb in “Gravity’s Rainbow”, about an immortal light bulb that doesn’t burnout.