The Lifts

On our trip to Britain and Ireland this summer, I remember once informing one of our Australian travel companions that the elevator in our hotel was out of order.  He looked at me with a puzzled expression, and I realized that he had no idea what an "elevator" was.  So accustomed did we become to calling them "lifts" that we continued to use that word for the rest of the trip.  Of course, we were already used to some Britishisms because we own a Mini Cooper, which has a bonnet and a boot instead of a hood and a trunk.

The lifts here have not been operational since we arrived; they are being completely reconstructed, and work has been taking place only sporadically.  Laura, the property manager at the condos, told us that it would take some time, perhaps the middle or end of March, before they have completed the work, which involves three separate contractors.  I was a building inspector for the first part of my career, worked in a structural steel fabrication plant, and built our house, so I know a good bit about home construction and plumbing and electricity.  But I don't know much about elevators, I realized.  One contractor seemed to spend day after day cleaning the elevator shaft until it was pristine, its stainless steel hydraulic pistons below the ground floor gleaming.  Another seemed to be working on the wiring, and at one point put Laura's office in darkness for a day or two in order to change out an electrical panel.

This week, work seems to be reaching some kind of culmination, with mysterious banging and clanging sounds ringing in the shaft outside our door from morning until evening, and the doors are occasionally parted open to reveal what seems to be construction of the "lift" itself, the little cubicle containing floor buttons and the ubiquitous picture of N. C. Commissioner of Labor Cherie Berry.  Her picture is in every elevator in the State.

Martha learned recently that Ms. Berry is retiring this year.  We wish her well, and hope her replacement will soon be showing up to inspect our lift.

Both doors were open and work seemed to be progressing noisily inside the shaft, with three men hard at work on something inside.  I asked if I could take some photos, and one of them, who was quite friendly, said "Sure!"

I told him I had been a building inspector in a previous lifetime but didn't know much about elevators (he wouldn't have known what a "lift" was).  "Aren't you a little nervous standing out on that platform on the fifth floor, thinking that it might drop down to the ground?"

"Nah," he replied, like a man who knows completely what he is doing.  "Can't happen!  That's only in movies.  The hydraulic oil couldn't ever leak out.  And even if it did the governor would kick in and stop it in the shaft!"  I nodded.  "Wanna take a look inside?" he asked, and invited me to look up the shaft, soaring upward for five floors.

There are two lifts at this end of the building, side by side, and one of them has never worked since we have been coming here.  I could look over and see it, as one can look through the studs of a home under construction.  Interesting!

"You guys sure are hard workers!" I said, and I meant it.  "We like doing this," the young man said.  And I think he did.  It is always encouraging to discover men who enjoy working at jobs like this one, the skills that keep our country going - operating the ferries, catching the fish, making it possible for a man who has just run ten miles to ascend to the second floor with the push of a button.   They are competent and hard working, and they are proud of what they do.

It . . . lifts the spirit!