The threads that bind

Dry cleaners runs for four decades on family ties, classic techniques

Beverly Mason does all of her clothing alterations on a Singer sewing machine manufactured in 1915.

It has none of the bells and whistles of modern models and it doesn't backstitch, but Mason said turning material is a small price to pay for a solid machine that "keeps chugging along" on nothing more than a monthly oiling.

The antique sewing machine is a fitting symbol of Kalispell's Masonized Dry Cleaning, where being state of the art and polished are meaningless in comparison to reliability and going the extra mile.

"We don't look like it," Mason said of the business's old-fashioned exterior and the ordered chaos of the interior, "but it amazes me how much dry cleaning we do for people from California and New York. We have a lot of very well-off customers who appreciate what we do. I don't think we would do any better if we updated."

Beverly Mason co-owns the dry cleaning and alteration business with her daughter, Cathy Weprek. They took over when Beverly's ex-husband, Gene Mason, retired in 1990.

Gene Mason opened Masonized Dry Cleaning in 1963 in a two-story brick building that started life as the Waggener & Campbell Funeral Home, built in 1913 next to Sykes' on Second Street West in Kalispell. The building's landmark status is signified with a plaque on the front from the National Register of Historic Places.

The building has a rich history.

Its upper story housed the Waggener family in luxury, with elegant woodwork and two skylights, an unusual touch for the time. Various businesses inhabited the building after the funeral home moved on in 1929. It served as a house of prostitution during World War II and was registered at that time with the federal government as a bomb shelter.

After converting what had been turned into apartments back into a one-family home, the Masons lived upstairs for many years after Gene and Beverly were married in 1968.

The business continued to be a family-run enterprise when the Mason mother-and-daughter team took over; the family ties continue. Cathy's husband, Ron Weprek, became the dry cleaner last summer. Ron's daughter Ariel is the upstairs tenant now, and she'll help out when an extra hand is needed.

"It's cool having this big family to help," Cathy Weprek said.

Her 10-year-old daughter, Mariah, is growing up among the racks of clothes, just as Cathy did.

Mariah is home schooled, and after mornings at home, she spends time at the dry cleaners, studying in cozy areas on the floor below hundreds of pieces of hanging clothes. Mariah's brother, Zane, 5, joins her there when he's not at St. Matthew's for school.

Beverly Mason said after Cathy's birth in 1970, Cathy would sometimes be placed in a basket in the front window to nap. Cathy remembers playing under laundry conveyers and making hangers when she grew older. She spent 29 years living above the dry cleaners, she recently figured.

Though she now has a home elsewhere, she still spends a good part of her life at the dry cleaners. She waits on customers and checks the finished clothing items to make sure they are spotless and well-pressed, with seams intact and buttons tightened, before customers pick them up.

"We're fairly old-fashioned so far as the clothes, as we do free repairs," Beverly Mason said. "If there's a hem out, a seam out or buttons are lost, we'll put them back on at no charge."

Other reminders of a past era are everywhere at Masonized Dry Cleaning. The iron that Beverly Mason uses for her alteration work weighs around six pounds; its steam originates from a basement boiler that also powers the steam dryers, the rest of the irons and the presses. Steam power also heats the building.

The extractor that spins shirts is 60 years old; a shirt-cleaning machine was purchased used in 1975.

The basement also houses a number of large, mostly unused machines salvaged from local sites throughout the years - boilers, washers, a flatbed ironing machine - taken apart by Gene Mason and reconstructed in the basement.

Mason said she believes the business owns the biggest dry-cleaning machine in the state. The 50-year-old Kling 100 can handle 75 pounds of clothing and it's showing no signs of letting up.

Mason guessed that the presses, operated full time by Sherry Heuscher and Amy Warren, are around 50 years old.

Heuscher has been with the business for three years; her role is to press most everything but shirts, which are Warren's specialty. She is an expert at creating a perfect crease in a pair of pants.

"It's not hard," she said. "It just takes repetition to do it right."

She presses up to 100 pieces a day in the slow season and from 150 to 170 pieces each day during the summer.

The high season for dry cleaning has changed, Mason said. When she joined Gene in the business after their marriage in 1968 the clientele was largely loggers and businessmen; December used to be their biggest month.

"We used to close in August for two weeks, and now with the summer people living here, August is our busiest month," she said. "It's a different world."

Dry cleaning is often used as a luxury service, Mason said. Some clients bring in clean clothes only for ironing. Many clients spend up to $50 a week on dry cleaning. Around 50 percent of the clothing they take in is washable, Mason estimated, with casual items such as denim jeans and khaki pants lining one rack in the back room.

With many second and third-generation customers, Mason said many regulars also become family.

"We get to know a lot about our customers," she said. "We know their marriages, their divorces, their children. It's a personal thing here, not like going to the grocery store."

Even with the relationships she's established, at age 74 Beverly Mason would dearly like to retire. She's kept working by the difficulties in finding someone to train in the alterations portion of the business. She has been taking care of the alterations since the last skilled seamstress left in June.

"I'm 25 jacket zippers behind," she said. "I have other things to do, and I don't sew as fast as I did."

Three seamstresses were partially trained in the last year, but none stuck it out. Mason's hiring dilemma is a good example of why dry cleaners tend to be "mom and pop" establishments, Mason said.

"There is a lot to learn," she said. "It can take three to six months before you're fully trained and it's not highly paid. This business is a hard business."

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.