The tortured journey of our liquor sign.

Lots of people comment on the LIQUOR sign at The Good Life Experience; you might have noticed it, keeping watch over -and welcoming you to- The Whisky Shack or The Pavilion Bar.

It’s become a gentle icon of The Good Life Experience. We had quite an adventure getting it from MA, USA to Flintshire. Charlie and our former Marketing Director Sophie were on a vintage buying trip to the US in early 2016 when they spotted it.

Sophie takes up the story;

We spotted the sign outside a vintage store, resting by the side entrance and looking pretty crumpled and sad. It was huge and it looked restorable and so we thought ‘maybe we can get that back to Wales for the Whisky Shack... it would be perfect wouldn’t it?’

We dwelt on it overnight and with each fleeting thought of it resting unloved, outdoors in Massachusetts, we took one step closer to having to have it.

As Charlie remembers;

So we went back the next day and made a deal and then we had to figure it out how to get it back to our truck. We were at Brimfield, America’s biggest antiques fair and our U-Haul was about a mile away.

The sign was bigger than we remembered and a lot heavier than we expected. We tried carrying it but could barely shift it. So we called a guy we’d worked with for years, a huge man -he’s probably six foot six and he’s definitely strong- and he came and met us. And, after a bit of humming and hawing he got a friend to tie it to his back and then he just carried it to the van in a kind of liquor-sign-based-piggyback.

And it was something like 100 degrees in the sun. Unbelievable.

Sophie continues;

We got it to the truck but the truck was incredibly full anyway and we just about got it in, resting on top of all of our other stuff. Even this took about an hour and four people to achieve.

Anyway... we were due to meet our container truck the next morning to load all of our stuff before flying home, so we headed back to the motel.

We were really pleased with the sign and kind of high-fiving each other, looking forward to a shower and reminding ourselves how brilliant both we and the Liquor sign were. Back at the motel we decided to take a look at it again. But in transit the sign had shifted and jammed against the back roll-down door of the truck and now it wouldn’t open, not one inch.

As usual a few truckers were hanging around in the parking lot and they all had ideas but no one could achieve anything. The door would not open and our container was coming first thing the next morning.

Charlie adds;

So now all of our stuff was stuck in the truck, the container was due to arrive and we were tired. I tried calling U-Haul and got stuck on one of those perpetual loops; for hire press 1, for complaints press 2... nothing useful, no one there to help us remove a giant liquor sign from a sealed truck; in fact no one to speak to at all.

So, we drove to the nearest U-Haul depot, around 20 miles away, at break neck speed (or near to it, I’d already been stopped by the police once that trip and I find cops with guns scary). They were about to close but we made it and they guy at the desk took one look at the truck and kind of said ‘bad luck guys, that looks bad; gotta go home now. See ya’.

I thought we were completely f**ked, we’d have to cancel the container and change our flights.

Sophie Remembers;

So, back to the motel. We were both in quite bad moods now. Well, Charlie was although he denied it. And then, just as we were about to give up we thought ‘what if we drive at high speed across the parking lot and then slam on the brakes. That might shift the sign forward and then the door would open’. Like all brilliant ideas, I think we both claim this one was ours.

Anyway, after a few goes -very fast, very sudden braking- it worked. The door sprung up, the arrow sat innocently on top of our stuff and we WHOOPED. We asked some other guests to help us lift it out and that was that. Phew!

Charlie finishes the story;

I slipped a disc loading the container the next morning. That was painful. I blame the liquor sign. Anyway, two weeks later it was in Hawarden and after a few days restoration and rewiring it was ready to go.

Was it worth it?

Well, yes... sort of.