Martha Mondays: Elevators

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about elevators, but the last time I rode in one it suddenly occurred to me that nobody under the age of 50 would be likely to remember when they were not automatic but were run by real, live people. My daughter thinks she probably saw one of the last of those, with a metal grillwork door and a white-gloved operator at the controls, at the Banff Springs Hotel when she worked summers in Banff in the late 1960s.

Those doors were scary. As you stood waiting for the elevator to come, you could see through them to the empty shaft with cables dangling into the void below, and you hoped they would support the elevator while you were on it. An arrow on an overhead dial indicated its slow ascent as it rose with grunts and groans and metallic clangs of gates opening and closing at every floor. You could peer down and see the roof rising up, but arrival on your floor did not necessarily mean you could step aboard. First, the elevator had to be manoeuvred into position so that it would be level with the floor, a procedure that often required several jerky attempts, and if these were not quite successful the operator would caution: “Watch your step, please.”

In hotels and office buildings the operator was usually an old man, and in department stores a young woman who would sing out: “Second floor: housewares, bedding, towels, curtains, and yardgoods,” while manipulating levers sticking up here and there and turning a kind of wheel with a knob on it that was attached to the wall. It all looked terribly complicated to the unenlightened. I thought they must have to take an intensive training course–at least I hoped they did.

Remember the piped-in music when automatic elevators first came into use? Perhaps it was felt that we would be lonely in there without an operator. My daughter claimed she could tell elevator music from dentist office music, and elevator music was worse. Be that as it may, I’m glad I can now ride up and down in silence. Probably nobody under age 20 remembers that music either.

~ Notes from Over the Hill, pages 16-17

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Martha Mondays are feature at the Siretona blog. Siretona Creative is a publishing and production company that empowers women in the arts to build community among generations and nations. Martha’s book was one of our first major projects: a collection of Martha’s articles that “offer a dose of humour and insights to ease doubts as the golden years approach” (Dr. Lynda Haverstock). Sounds pretty intergenerational to us. So we crafted it carefully, including a specially commissioned and researched typeface that would both beautiful and easy to read.

For more information about Martha’s book, visit www.marthamorgan.ca.

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