The Beverly Hills Fine Art Show was one of our top shows every year, held in the park on Santa Monica Blvd. It was common to see actors strolling around enjoying the arts. And there were plenty of folks from abroad. Sales were always brisk. Let’s just say there were few moments to catch a bite to eat!

On this occasion I was assisting my then husband, Tony Cacalano with his work.
All went well until the show closed Sunday & it was time to pack it all back up. Tony went to retrieve our van from the parking garage several blocks away. He always hated that long walk after a long day.

He returned empty handed to announce that our van was dead! Not good for many reasons! Shows do expect you to “clear out” in a timely fashion and typically after 2 hours you begin to see large street sweeper trucks heading your way. At shows you are often parked in the street to load (not the usual parking spots) while those streets are blocked off. Our breakdown & load up was at least a 2 hour ordeal. At Beverly Hills you had to haul it all from “somewhere” in the park. No messing up the actor’s park! So a normal break down at Beverly Hills became 3 hours. I believe it was a good hour before the tow truck came to help. It was discovered that the problem was a dead battery. I guess we were a bit relieved that this was the extent of it. After a ride to the auto store we were finally good to load.
Needless to say, the cops were all around us while we loaded protecting us from the monster street sweepers. Thanks be to them! I have actually been at shows where I was running my goods to the sidewalk to escape their peril! (More about that later) This mishap day did pass on to better ones.