They were of a culture all their own, a small Deluxe within Deluxe...a special group of Deluxers, each of whom made the choice to work at night for his own special reasons. If strange things were to occur, they seemed to wait until the moon rose. Who remembers the night the lawn caught on fire...or the night our fellows crawled under a Mack truck in the pouring rain to cut our fence loose? Or the night Reva's car window exploded, was it really gunfire? Well, there had been shots fired there before! How about the night the police knocked on our door and ordered us to evacuate because Philip Morris had a chemical spill? Oh, so many years ago the northern sky lit up as the Little Oil Company went up in flames, knocking power out all up and down Commerce Road. But not all the memorable times were catastrophes. There were happy, fun times, too....the feasts around the holidays, the going-away parties...the magical feeling of walking out on a pre-dawn Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve and heading home. Our bleary eyes hardly saw another car on the road (except maybe another night-shift Deluxer). Of course, every night wasn't such an adventure. Most nights were very calm and serene.
On October 20, 1999, present and former night shift folks got together to celebrate the end of an era in many of their lives. They reminisced and bade each other fond farewells. A few of the pictures are posted here. Click on the thumbnails for a better look, and use your "back" button to return to this page.
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