I used to work for a cabinet maker/ fine object d'art/ antiques faker who
had a studio on the 6th (top) floor of a building on 24th st.  All of the
lumber he used had to be brought up on top of the elevator cab as the boards
were too long to fit into the cab and out the little hatch in the ceiling.
The feeling of riding atop the cab while attempting to corral the boards to
keep them from catching on the walls and binding up against the pull of the
cable (a frightening possibility that was the cause of the sculptor Marc
DiSuevero's livelong limp) combined with the awareness, otherwise lacking
while riding within the blissfully ignorant space of the cab, that an
elevator is nothing more than a tin can hung on a string within a very long
and deep hole, was one that I doubt I will ever forget.  The operator had to
stop the cab more than 1 floor below the one we were going to as, if he
proceeded too far, the boards would hit the top of the shaft with the same
disastrous effect.  I had no way to communicate with him except through the
fearful scream I let out whenever it seemed that we had gone past the point
at which I thought we ought to have stopped.  After that experience, when I
opened my own studio I did it on the ground floor.

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Met History <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, January 21, 2000 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: Elevator operators & the old sod


>In a message dated 01/21/2000 12:50:58 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>> Any body out there got stories of adventures on steam elevators?
>>
>>  ][<en
>
>"There's a drunken Irishman at the bottom of every elevator."
>(Real Estate Record & Guide, 1888)