Max Walker

I worked at a company that still had stuff like this, the tangible residue of a Golden Age. Typical thing, company started in the 1920s, had a major heyday in the 1950s-1960s when the entire country was booming. Ancient black and white photos of ancient sales meetings featuring crowds of grinning long-dead salesmen in long-demolished hotel ballrooms hung on seldom-traveled carpeted hallways. The proverbial split-level "corner office" was enormous with its own broad conference table and bathroom the CEO could disappear into mid-meeting like slipping behind a mirror at Versailles. The office was full of rich mid-century modern details like heavy drapes, sharp lines and dark wood paneling. Padding around the building you would find glassed-in fish-bowl offices and incredible conference rooms complete with built-in bars for serving three martini lunches to grandees with gleaming coifs of Vitalis. I felt like a dirty shepherd wandering the toppled ruins of Rome.