Heave Ho, Ho, Ho : Raising a 30-Foot Tree at Hotel Del Takes 16 Men, 2 Hours, 2 Cases of Beer

So you think you’ve got it bad, crawling into the musty attic each year to search in the boxes for that artificial Christmas tree. Or picking one off a corner lot and trying to figure out how to get it back home in your four-cylinder hatchback.

You should talk to Bob Livingston.

As assistant vice president of engineering at the Hotel del Coronado, Livingston is in charge of putting up the hotel’s 30-foot Christmas tree in the main lobby.

Shortly after midnight Thursday--after the hotel’s Thanksgiving dishes were washed and its 1,000 guests had padded off to their rooms--Livingston assembled his crew of maintenance men at the front desk to do just that.

“Everybody is experienced at it,” Livingston said of his men. “They know what they are doing. It always goes that smoothly.”

While Livingston was cool, there could be no denying that raising the hotel’s immense Christmas tree is still a pretty tricky operation.

16 Men on Overtime

This year, he worked 16 men overtime, and, even with good-natured military precision, it took two hours to set the tree in place.

To prepare for the job, maintenance men had cleared all the furniture out from under the Del’s 50-year-old, 400-pound crystal chandelier, which presides over its lobby of dark Illinois oak. Taking down the chandelier to make room for the tree is the most difficult part of the evening’s business.

Work began in earnest at 12:10 a.m. Friday.

First, Livingston’s crew put together a large steel scaffolding, which will be used by the people in charge of decorating the tree. A hotel spokesman said the decoration team will work four days nonstop to arrange 10,000 lights and hang 300 ornaments, all of which will be characters from the Wizard of Oz, the theme of this year’s tree.

The reason for the theme: Frank L. Baum wrote a part of the Oz series while living at the Hotel Del.

Bolting the Frame

Once the scaffolding was secured, Livingston’s crew brought in the sides to a large box frame, which measures 89 inches by 88 inches and is 8 feet tall. The workmen began bolting the frame together at 12:15 a.m. and finished 46

minutes later, when they took an old quilt and nailed it taut across the bottom of the frame.

The chandelier was lowered from its ceiling perch via cable, which was hooked up to a powerful winch on the hotel’s third floor. It is lowered periodically during the year for cleaning and on Friday morning, a workman stationed himself by the winch to wait for Livingston’s word to hit the button.

Livingston eventually barked his orders over a walkie-talkie, and the 400-pound centerpiece was lowered into the frame by 1:13 a.m., its weight suspended on a steel pipe that rested on top of the box. The quilt acted as a gentle cushion to catch the strings of crystal beads that hang from the chandelier.

The chandelier will be stored at the hotel until the end of the month, when it will be cleaned and hoisted to its customary spot in the lobby.

Until then, the Christmas tree will take its place. Like last year, the hotel chose a fir tree from Julian for the honor.

Livingston’s crew brought the tree into the lobby through open double doors in the adjacent Crown dining room. The tree was lifted into place by raising the cable, and by 1:31 a.m., the tree was upright, its base sitting in a special wooden box that was later filled with water.

Nothing was left to do except some touch-up work for Livingston’s crew. The men made sure the tree would not fall down by securing its top branches with four cables strung to hooks on the ceiling.

And they touched up some bare spots near the bottom by drilling holes and inserting a few branches that had to be sawed off during the operation.

At 1:55 a.m., the hotel had its tree in place. Two hours later, another crew would come to the lobby to install special curtains surrounding the tree to keep it under wraps until its scheduled unveiling at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

But there was still one more thing for Livingston’s crew of 16 maintenance men to take care of before they went home, another detail that Livingston was sure not to overlook during the entire operation.

That was the two cases of Corona beer he had ordered to help celebrate the occasion.