completely different thing to stare at the steel panel knowing you can't even put on the appearance of doing something. Early elevators, and by early I mean pre-1950, required an operator. They were controlled by a cake-pan-sized motor with a pro– jecting handle. These elevators had no automatic landing mechanism, requiring good timing on the part of the operator. In New Orleans I used to ride the "oldest" elevator in the city once a week-who knows if it really was the oldest, but it did require an operator and some were better than others at stopping it in the right location. Sometimes you had to step up a few inches, sometimes down six, and these huge gaps were always accompanied by apologetic grins and red faces. The eleva– tor serviced the building on the corner ofMagazine and Common Streets in the business district; a homeless shelter that was put out of commission by Katrina and lack of need. I went to the Brantley Center once a week at 5:30 in the morning-it was dark when I got there but bright when I left a couple ofhours later, and I always felt like my time there existed in another reality that did not touch the world I lived in the rest of the day. I do not know how much water that building got-maybe none-and I do not know what business has replaced the Brantley or where Murphy, the front deskman, evacuated to, and I do not know if that elevator is still working. Hydraulic elevators use pressurized water that fills the cylinder at a rate fast enough to move the car 200 feet per minute. Now they don't even use water, but oil– smooth, black, thick, hard to clean. I haven't been back to the AMC theatre in Fort Worth since that experience, but after the film Mom and I rode the escalator back up to the ground floor and she didn't even want to look at the elevator doors. 1he policeman who "rescued" us was wearing a helmet and biker shorts, and he commented that the elevator gets stuck all the time. I wonder who else had the same experience Mom and I did, how long they were stuck, if it was just the week before or the day before, or if it happened again on the same employee's first day ofwork. I doubt the next person quoted William Carlos Williams and I doubt they could guess how the elevator was powered. 28
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=