Chrome City: A California Heritage
Allen F. Weitzel
January 16, 2011
The San Jose Chrome City
The year was 1946, and Chrome City opened the doors on a huge chunk of land, at the corner of 4th and Gish roads in San Jose, California. Having just being discharged from the Marines after WWII, Paul Weitzel, a California native, saw a need for kitchen furniture for the great amounts of soldiers coming home and building or buying houses for their rapidly expanding families. Paul Weitzel was a carpenter and sign painter, and good with his hands. Chrome was the modern furniture metal of the time, so he started making chrome dinette sets and nook seats. Paul and his wife, Bea, named the new enterprise Chrome City, but to us, the children of Paul and Bea, it was "The Shop" and our wonderful Dad was the "Mayor of Chrome City". On that huge lot there was a big, white, 2 story Victorian farm house out front and in the back a big, long building where Paul had his huge work tables, tools and supplies and worked his magic constructing tables, chairs and nook seats. The ground floor of the farm house was the showroom for the gleaming new dinette sets, and Naugahyde nook seats, made from the premier vinyl for the upholstery industry. The buying public learned the names of Formica and Naugahyde brands quickly and ordered tables and chairs in popular grey linen or yellow pearl designs. In those early years, almost all the furniture was handmade by Dad, himself. http://www.formica.com/ContentPage.aspx?code=PAG_OURLEGACY_1950),
On the corner of the property was a Tack and Veterinary shop, run by a lady named Kay. Her store carried mainly equestrian supplies, horse tack, and saddles. My brother, Warren, and I would spend lots to time visiting with Kay and wandering around her shop, even sitting on the saddles from time to time. Once I fell while running on the property and cut my leg on a broken bottle. Kay treated it with some gookem that looked like clear caulking gel compound; she shot the stuff in the wound and bandaged it. I never saw a doctor; that was it. The wound healed, but I still have the scar on my right lower leg. Next to Kay´s Tack and Veterinary Shop was Domingo´s Produce Stand. Domingo had a late model Dodge pick up truck with a black and white TV in the dashboard where the Glove Box would be. We rode around with Domingo from time to time. He never ran the TV in the truck when he was driving, but Warren and I would sit in the front seat of Domingo´s truck when the truck was parked and watch the TV. There were 2 large open fields on the property; one in front of and one behind the farmhouse Showroom.
The Shop had its charm. Green Grip Glue smell permeated the air. Wood dust hung like a thin fog across The Shop ceiling. Though our friends called the whole complex "The Shop," technically, Dad´s workspace was "The Shop," and the farmhouse was "The Showroom." Saturday would find us running up Allen´s Alley and down Warren´s Way, the two roads leading in and out of the layout. In those days, with hamburger meat one of the cheapest foods you could buy, Mom made us lunches by frying hamburgers in butter on a hotplate and steel skillet in Dad´s Shop. That lunch aroma only added to the charm of the day and The Shop.
Besides my parents with Chrome City, and Kay and Domingo and their businesses, there was also Benny, who was part of the Chrome City world. Benny was Dad´s age and an upholsterer in his own right, and borrowed part of Dad´s shop for his upholstery work. Benny also stepped in when Dad had such big jobs that he needed a helping hand. Benny and his wife, Scotty, had two daughters: Toni and Vicki. Our two families became very good friends and Warren and I enjoyed having Toni and Vicki visit The Shop occasionally.
The Kid´s View
Warren and I always went to The Shop on Saturdays. To keep us occupied and out of his hair, Dad would start his day by making us rubber band guns that shot 12 rubber bands, long wooden Prince Valiant swords, or the world´s strongest slingshots before he started his own work. We would hang glass jars full of water from tree branches and shoot the jars with Dad´s custom slingshots. Neighborhood kids that lived on the street where we lived would also accompany us to The Shop often. Our neighbor, Jim, was the most frequent Saturday companion, but Trent, Glenn, and Corky would tag along from time to time.
On occasion, Dad would let us explore the second story of The Showroom, telling us to be very careful, as the floor was weak or missing boards in some spots. We would play hide and go seek, or Army games among the pepper and walnut trees on the property. Jim was the king at climbing to the highest branches in the old Pepper Tree behind The Showroom. One old, white empty building on the property with its very own escape trap door in the back became our clubhouse. We formed the All American Club. We had a secret password that was needed to enter the All American Club building. Kids being kids, the password sometimes changed at a moments notice depending upon who you wanted to admit into the building.
In the summer, most of our "out of school" days were spent at The Shop. Warren and I would wait for suppliers in their trucks to deliver plywood and big rolls of Naugahyde to Dad. On delivery days, we would wait at the front of the property and as drivers would pull in on Warren´s Way, they would stop the truck and we would climb on the running boards and ride the truck all the way back to Dad´s shop. We would then get off the truck and watch as Dad and the truck drivers unloaded the supplies. When the driver was ready to leave, we would ride the running boards of the truck along Allen´s Alley, to the driveway, get off and wave goodbye as they drove away.
Another special visitor was Earl, a local Highway Patrolman, who struck a friendship with Dad and Mom and would drop by for a chat, or to use the restroom. On rare occasions, we would get a ride on Earl´s motorcycle around the property. Through Earl, Mom and Dad became friends with many Highway Patrolmen. Mom and Dad would give them special considerations on furniture purchases. Remember, it was the ´50s. Business was as much about making a living as it was about developing friendships throughout the community.
Mom always fed the local stray cats, so we would have plenty of pets to play with. At one time, Mom was feeding 56 cats on the property. Cats were not the only critters we encountered. Jim picks up the story. "One day out back we spotted a 4 foot plus snake and quickly ran into The Shop. We thought it was a rattlesnake!!! Your Dad said it was probably a gopher snake, but I don't remember him being in a hurry to check it out."
One time a Formica salesman named Paul came to talk to Dad and sell him some goods. I was around The Shop and being pesky that day, so Dad asked Paul if I could ride with him while he made other sales calls, so Dad could get me out of his hair. The salesman agreed. When we stopped to get some lunch, Paul had me slap some Formica "Nevamar" advertising stickers on the garbage can of the food place we were eating at. He told me it would be okay. As the day progressed, he had me putting Nevamar stickers everywhere we went. I must have placed 100 or so stickers on buildings and doors and such during that day. Paul never placed one – I did them all under his supervision. When we got back to the shop, I blurted out how much fun we had doing that. Well, did Dad get mad! He verbally ripped into the salesman for turning me into a ´juvenile delinquent´. Dad and the salesman later patched it up, but that was the last time I was allowed to leave the property with a salesman. Now, I must be clear that Dad was mad at the salesman for encouraging such behavior, but that´s not to say I was perfect. Our friend, Jim, recalls: "I remember you, Warren, and I putting those Nevamar stickers on cans and other products in the grocery store while your Mom shopped. So, maybe we didn't learn that lesson in one day."
The Chores
Warren and I got paid for keeping the Coke Machine filled for the customers who visited The Showroom. Usually we spent our Coke Machine filling money buying Cokes from the machine itself. So, we about broke even on that work detail. Whenever we got a cold bottle of Coke, we quickly made them into "Scrunches," Cokes filled with salted peanuts.
Aside from filling the Coke machine, we had other chores to do, mostly in The Shop. We would pick up wood block chips and sweep up the sawdust around The Shop floor. Warren got 25˘ if he did it, I got 10˘. Warren was older.
At an early age, we learned to strip chairs to prepare them for their reupholstering. On every table where any of us would work, including his, Dad had installed soft carpet at the workspace so nothing would rip or tear any newly covered chair seat or stool. Our job was to remove the staples or tacks from the pieces of furniture, or unscrew the legs from tables and chairs. After that ritual, Dad would begin the repair or recovering process. No neighborhood friend was exempt from these chores, just because they were visitors to The Shop. Jim recalls one of his chair upholstering adventures, "We were popping staples out of chair seats with awls, and I stuck mine about one inch into my palm. Boy, was your mother concerned. Lots of blood and gauze. I think she thought my mother would be upset that I was allowed to injure myself, but it was the 50's and no big deal. My mother just treated it again for infection like your mother did and all was well. The wonder of Iodine!" We also had to cut and custom fit the furniture law labels that had to be installed at the bottom of the upholstered chairs. Common law labels were about 3" X 5", but Paul Weitzel ordered custom labels that had the required legal information on them, as well as the Chrome City information. They fit the entire underside of the chair. They came oversized and we had to cut them down to fit the shape of each individual chair seat. Once, using Dad´s big upholstery scissors, I cut my thumb down to the bone. Mom had to rush me to the hospital. We still have those big shears in our tool drawer, and I still own that scar, too.
Dad had a big, long table press, used to secure the Formica to the plywood to make custom tabletops. The beauty of Dad´s furniture operation is that he could and would make a dinette set to any size or shape that the customer wanted. He even made a tiny, kid size dinette set for Warren and me. For Dad´s customers, there were no standard size dinette sets. Dad made them custom to fit the customer´s home. I have no idea where he found a tabletop press. Where do you get something like that? Table Presses Are Us? When Dad had a big table or a special job, he always wanted to make sure there were no air bubbles between the plywood, the glue, and the Formica. For this task, he would lift one of us kids up on the table press to walk around on the new, drying table top (plywood side up) and have us "walk out" the glue bubbles. Again, Jim, Trent, Glenn, and Corky were not exempt from this duty.
As much fun as it was being at The Shop and helping Mom and Dad, there was one job we had, and hated. If we were at the shop prior to a delivery, we had to polish the chrome table and chair legs before delivery to the customer. That chrome had to shine like new. Dad was a perfectionist and a tough taskmaster. If chairs being recovered had very rusty chrome legs, he would send the legs to the plating shop to have them re-chromed. One of the reasons Chrome City was successful was that every job, whether a new set or reupholstered was in mint condition when delivered to the customer.
The Invention
One accomplishment that Paul Weitzel took pride in was his development of a system to allow for kitchen tables with a single center pedestal base to be enlarged by adding a center leaf in the table. Before Dad´s system, only four legged tables could be opened and have leafs inserted. The creation of such a system occurred because of a special request from a lady customer. It took awhile to perfect. Dad sold his system to a national table manufacturing company (Chromcraft, I think) for only a hundred dollars. We have yet to uncover any proof that illustrates that such a system existed before Paul created this custom arrangement for his customer. Today, you seldom see a pedestal style kitchen table without a center leaf, thanks to the wisdom of Paul W. Weitzel.
The Santa Clara Chrome City
Around 1958, Bea and Paul Weitzel purchased a large building on the El Camino Real in Santa Clara. It had long been a candy factory and store, run by the Naas family. After we bought the building, we found big vats of sugar that the owners had left behind, and Warren and I had sugar highs for a week. Business was brisk at this new location, because of the volume of traffic along the El Camino Real.
Behind The Scenes
We were at that El Camino property during my high school years and first years of college. The building had a small apartment in the back, where we lived. Dad built and installed large, wood letters spelling ´Chrome City´ on the roof for the customers to see from a distance, and installed a Reader Board that was on a pole that rose above the roofline near the end of the building. The Reader Board was installed by January, 1961. It was my job to change the Reader Board every Saturday, putting up new advertisements. Dad created a long stick with a hook on the end to allow me to push and pull the letters in place at the far end of the sign, as the Reader Board extended a significant distance out from the edge of the roof. Dad would write out what he wanted to say and I would check the letter supply bin to see if we had enough letters to write the same message on both sides of the Reader Board. Sometimes, due to lack of letters, we would need to become creative about what the Reader Board message was. On occasion, one side of the Reader Board would have a message that was different from the other side, due to lack of letters. One time Dad was at a loss as to what to put on the sign, so he wrote down the script and told me to put the exact same words on both sides of the sign. The message read "See Other Side." Dad´s sense of humor was always evident and got us through many very lean times. In addition, twice a year I would repaint the red Chrome City letters on the front side of the roof, due to the hot sun fading the paint on the giant letters. Looking back, it was dangerous work, but we did not think about it at the time.
Paul Weitzel was a dedicated businessman, who supported local festivities and business venues. For nearly 18 years, Chrome City was a respected vendor at the Santa Clara County Fair. Dad would display the latest in chrome furniture and custom nook seats. Chrome City was a vendor at the fair in the early days when all displays were housed in a large tent, and remained a vendor into the more progressive times when permanent display halls were built to accommodate display booths. Being a smart promoter, Paul Weitzel always signed up to have his display booth next to the extremely popular Fritter Frank deep fried corn dog vendor. The Chrome City booth was always filled with fair attendees wandering through Dad´s displays while munching on those great tasting Fritter Franks!
At Christmas time, Dad would put a huge flocked tree in the large front shop window, and install a Santa display on the roof. He made a large, cartoonish-looking, life size, stuffed Santa, and had the Santa soaking his sore feet in a bucket. The rooftop Santa gathered lots of attention.
When I enrolled at the California College of Art and Crafts, in Oakland (http://www.cca.edu/), Dad would let me display my oil paintings in the Chrome City Showroom. I sold a decent number of oil paintings to our customers. There were a few regulars, who would ask for special paintings. One customer used to pick up his paintings while the canvas´ were still wet, and we would put newspaper on the back seat of his car so he could get them home without wrecking his car upholstery.
After a few years, we moved out of the apartment in the back and rented an apartment across the street. Dad then rented a section of the store to a gal named Wanda, who made and sold candles in a section of the store. She used our old living quarters as her production shop.
The Delivery Vehicles
When Dad opened the 4th and Gish property, his delivery vehicle was a big, white 1949 Kaiser. The rear trunk and back window area opened up like the rear of a normal station wagon, so Dad could easily slide chairs and tables into the back of the car. As a former sign painter, Dad had painted Chrome City advertisements and pictures of nook seats and chairs all over the body of this Kaiser. Warren and I use to call the Kaiser the "Circus Wagon."
By the time we were at the El Camino Shop, Dad had bought a ´56 Plymouth Station Wagon, which was roomier and could accept more products for deliveries. However, in 1963, he found his dream vehicle for making nook seat deliveries. The 1963 Studebaker Lark Wagonaire station wagon hit the market, and it featured a retractable rear roof system (like a sunroof, but at the top rear of the vehicle). (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1963-1966-studebaker-wagonaire1.htm) This allowed Dad to, with ease, deliver curved and U-shaped nook seats to customers, and travel long distances to do so. On warm summer days, Dad would open the roof and let us boys stand up in the Wagonaire, allowing the wind slap our face, as he would drive around town. There were times that my brother or I were called upon to stand up in the station wagon, with the roof retracted, and hold a nook seat firmly in place, while making a delivery.
Chrome City Customers
We often would ride with Dad as he delivered chairs, tables, and nook seats all over Santa Clara Valley. I accompanied Dad more than Warren, as my brother was by then working at other jobs. During those trips, Dad taught us how to read maps, plan cross-city trips, and figure out weird city street numbering patterns. Dad also taught us how to load chairs and tables in his various delivery vehicles, so we could get a maximum load of furniture delivered with each trip. On the delivery trips around the Santa Clara Valley, Dad would often stop at Stickney´s Coffee Shop and buy a pecan pie as a reward for our hard work, and take it back to The Shop, and we all would get a big slice. Of course, Pecan Pie was Dad´s favorite, so it was a huge reward to him, too, for a job well done.
No doubt, Paul Weitzel delivered many custom-made dinette sets and nook seats for Santa Clara Valley homes. He was just as busy recovering and delivering dinette chairs that suffered damage from active families. Normally, when we arrived at these residences with a delivery, it was only the wife who was home. The husband was at work. In those days, most families were a one-income household. We encountered a wide variety of customers, most of whom loved Dad´s work and the products they received. But in every business there is always one you remember…
I recall that we delivered a custom order to a well-to-do family in the Valley foothills. The order was a large, two leaf, Grey Pearl Formica table with chrome molding and 8 matching dinette chairs. The order was so large we had to make two trips from The Shop to the house. Once we got the table and chairs in place and Dad was ready to render his bill and receive a check. At that point, the lady of the house said that the welt around the edge of one of the chairs seats was not perfect; an inch of it looked flat where the rest of the welts were round. The welt probably got flattened in the car during the delivery and the lady discovered it while we were making our second delivery trip. Dad told her the welt would expand and round out with time, but she was unhappy. Dad offered her a discount, but to no avail. She refused the order completely. We then had to make two trips to take the order back to The Shop. Dad called later to talk to the husband, but the lady had her way and he also refused the order. The table and chairs were placed in the Showroom and we eventually sold the dinette set to a drop-in customer. That had been a large, expensive job for Dad to make, that he had to end up selling it at a lesser price to move it, since it was specially built for that woman´s house.
For that one disgruntled customer, there were hundreds of memorable deliveries. One delivery we made occurred early on a Saturday morning. When we arrived, the lady of the house had breakfast ready and insisted we eat breakfast with her before we unloaded the furniture. The cooked bacon was perfect. After breakfast, she asked Dad for the bill so she could write him a check while we were unloading her new dinette set. She never even bothered to inspect the table and chairs. She told dad that his work came highly recommended.
On another call to the Los Altos Hills, we were delivering some recovered chairs, red linen design as I recall. The family had a big, green, talking parrot roaming the house that had a large vocabulary. The parrot chatted with us all the time we were unloading the furniture, saying things like, "Pretty hot day," "Pretty chair," "Let´s be friends," "Chase the dog," and "It´s time to feed Baby." On the way home from that delivery, Dad told me about the parrot that he owned when he met Mom. Dad´s parrot was trained to whistle at pretty girls, and ride on the top of Dad´s car when he drove around town. Mom didn´t have the same affection for birds that he did, and insisted he part ways with the parrot before they got married.
As business grew, Chrome City became the seating provider for many large and up-scale restaurants and bars in the Santa Clara Valley, like the Golden Doors Restaurant and the Penthouse, to name a couple. When Dad delivered to restaurants and bars, they were less picky about the perfect appearance of the finished product, even though Dad provided excellent craftsmanship. Restaurant owners knew that the customers would rip up the tables and chairs and the owner would be calling Dad to come out and recover the seats within a year´s time. Besides that it was always dark inside a bar and the patrons could hardly see the color of the furniture.
Paul Weitzel also built nook seats and bar stools for many of the gambling casinos at Lake Tahoe. Warren and I traveled with him as much as we could when he would make casino deliveries. Sometimes we would have to wait outside the casinos, or sit in the car when he was working, due to the strict casino age laws, but we enjoyed going with him on those long trips. Often, the casinos would call Dad about chairs or bar stools that were cut or torn. We would drive to Tahoe and pick them up, bring them back to The Shop. Dad would reupholster them, and then we would drive them back to the appropriate casino. By word of mouth, Dad got jobs, too, in Southern California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and eastern Nevada.
The advantages of being sons of an upholsterer were that our book covers for school were made out of Naugahyde, instead of the paper ones that students cold buy at the school store. As my brother and I became of driving age, our car seats were fully upholstered in the latest and greatest looking Naugahyde material and designs. It was our childhood, and we were famous as the children of the Mayor of Chrome City – the locals called us the Chrome City kids.
Retirement
After many years of operation, sometime in the ´80´s, Paul and Bea sold the El Camino building, bought a smaller shop in Santa Clara on Park Avenue, and ran that smaller operation until Dad retired. Upon our departure, the El Camino facility became Anderson´s TV Store, and now is a Kelly-Moore paint retail store. Even after Dad retired, he continued to recover a few kitchen chairs at his home in Santa Clara, and painted signs for the church, where he was a member and a Deacon.
We had a wonderful adventure growing up and learned so much from our parents. We especially learned the value of helping each other. Family owned businesses thrive because of the family. The legacy of Chrome City lives on. Thousands of homes in the Santa Clara Valley enjoyed the superb upholstery talents of Paul W. Weitzel, from the late ´40´s and into the ´90´s. Paul Weitzel recovered his last kitchen chair for a neighbor, less than a year before he died in 2002.
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