Banquets in the museum showroom

Last I knew, good as ever...which is to say, gorgeous. The present owner was having some mechanical work done on it a couple of years ago when he bought it to make it run as good as it looks. I hope he enjoys driving it (often).

Yes, Mike, that is the car.
Please forgive me for not having my names straight <!-- s:oops: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarassed" /><!-- s:oops: --> It has been a long time ago.
How has that particular car aged since restoration?

Andy,

Are you refering to Bill Buddig`s MCC restored by Fran Roxas

8 pm- the Ball began, and I was busy again. Trash,food,ice,spilled drinks,bathrooms, all of the "FUN" stuff nobody thinks of. I do not recall if the ball ended at 12 midnight or 1am. Either way, we would 'shoo' the people out and begin cleaning up. We would lift all of the chairs onto the tables and then mop the ENTIRE showroom up. It takes a lot longer than you would think, even with 3-4 people working. One guy would run the buffer across the floor to make it shine once again. We would rearrange the tables for the ACD club awards that started at like 10 (?). I remember going home at like 5:30 sunday morning and being back at 8:30 to open back up. (Museum opened at 9)
We also had to try to leave a path thru the back room so that the "Best of show" car could be staged (shhh, its a secret) <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: --> and then rolled into the main showroom for all to see. THAT was pretty cool, and a beautiful backdrop/photo opportunity.
After the banquet, it was teardown, clean,mop,polish, and pull the cars back in. About 6pm sunday we would have the showroom all set back up.
I worked like a dog all weekend, met some cool people, some not so nice, and saw and drove some BEAUTIFUL cars. It is a fond memory as I type this, I hope that I did not bore all of you.

ANDY
P.S. Does anyone recall what year the black on black on black Duesenberg won "best of"? 1979-80? I do not remember who owned it, possibly a Brian Joseph restoration.

Part 2
After we got many of the cars to the park,(Museum cars ran the parade too) we would then empty the showroom around noon saturday when most everyone was out watching the parade. We then set up everything for the Gala Ball saturday night. The musuem closed at 4pm (I think)
Tables,chairs, stage, lights, the bars, all of that. we were 'humping' to get most of that done by 3 pm, and then I'd walk uptown to recover "our" (Museum's) cars and drive them back to the building.
I would have some 'down time' between 5 and 8 to help the caterers, clean trash/bathrooms etc. I even had time to go home and change clothes and shower <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: -->

Justin- we used to move the cars a LOT back then. Labor Day weekend was the busiest. The "back room" was just that, a storage room where we moved the cars to.
Many owners back then left their cars in the museum during the year, and would arrive for the week, and have us pull the cars out so they could drive in the tour and/or parade. We would charge/change batteries fresh gas, and all of that. The following week we would clean them up and put on display again.
We would try to stage the cars as well as we could for the owners arrival.
We also would rearrange the showroom so that the empty spots would not be as noticeable. This was/is the busiest weekend for visitors, and they were not too happy with the showroom only half full <!-- s:oops: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarassed" /><!-- s:oops: -->
You need to be aware of the fact that Duesenbergs had not yet reached the 1MM mark, and were still valuable, but not like today. Many cars were driven quite often.

I attended a couple of awards banquets that were held on the main floor. They were in the area were you walk in the door now from the gift shop. In those days if you did not want to eat you could "sit in" on the stairway. Russ

Found out that my Boss was the first to have his wedding reception in the showroom of the ACD Museum back in the 70's.

I've not seen it done recently (1990's) when I worked there part-time.

I was looking through some mid and late 80's newsletters today and saw photos of the museum showroom, with no cars in it, filled with tables and chairs for a Reunion banquet. I'm just curious if the museum moved the cars out to make room for this every year? Or was the showroom not full of displays and cars in those years?

It's fascinating to see that huge room with no cars. Although I went to my first Reunions in the late 80's I have no memory of the showroom in any state other than full of cars.

Justin