East-wing shed — Master Chef plywood and shipping-crate boards in the walls

Exploring the metal-roofed shed attached to the east wing of the plant in May 2014, we found interior partition walls built from salvaged sheet goods and crate stock. One section still carries a large piece of printed plywood for Master Chef — small SERVING copy above two red H forms flanking AND, then MASTER CHEF and COFFEE in heavy black caps — fastened in place upside down beneath dark joists so the lettering reads inverted against the grain. In another section, a shipping crate had been broken down and its boards nailed up as sheathing; stencil lines remain legible for HOFFMANN & HAYMAN (the first line breaks at the edge of the board), 601 DELAWARE, SAN ANTONIO, VIA WESTERN, routing inbound freight to the Delaware Street works. A third scrap preserves unrelated markings — NEW MEXICO, SAFARI, 1953, ALB. MENGER — mixed into the same improvised wall. That fragment adds a new mystery: what was shipped from New Mexico in 1953 in a crate carrying those stencils before it was broken down for sheathing — the board records a year and a place, not the contents, and Safari / Alb. Menger do not yet resolve to anything in our notes. Later frames show the printed Master Chef panel removed and laid flat so the full face reads without the timber framing.

The hand-painted Master Chef “We Serve” sign acquired a few weeks later on the West Texas picker circuit is a different kind of object — paint on plywood for display — but the shed boards show how shipping and factory salvage kept turning up in the building itself. Together they bracket how Master Chef graphics moved between crates, signs, and ad hoc carpentry on site.