In the late fifties the seven-story, 1917 downtown YMCA in Fort Wayne, Indiana was like a big college dorm. The resident population was made up mostly of out-of-town students at the various university extensions and business colleges, guys in town for North American Van Lines' driver training school, and transient military. It was a fun, rowdy kind of place to live, and it had the gym, pool, and a cafeteria that was inexpensive and first-rate for quality of food. I lived there for about a year and a half during my machinist-toolmaker apprenticeship at General Electric. The Y had a barber shop, a laundry/dry-cleaning drop-off, a comfortable TV lounge, and movies on weekend nights, and it was right downtown when there were still 5 movie theatres and all kinds of shopping and food-and-drink establishments nearby. A full-time maintenance staff kept the place clean and spiffy.
The building still had its original elevator, with brass gate, hand-crank controller and electro-mechanical call-button panel. I paid my $11 weekly room rent (about 8x10, twin bed, chest of drawers, chair & table, small closet, community shower & bathroom down the hall) by operating the elevator on weeknights. Traffic was sparse most of the time on my shift, and I could perch on my stool with my books and study. It was a fun job for then, because I got to know just about everybody who lived in the building.
On evening just before I went on duty, the elevator's counterweight stuck on the way up, and on the way down the elevator went into free fall between the sixth and second floor. The operator and a couple of passengers got bruises and bloody noses, but there were no serious injuries and no permanent damage to the machinery. The elevator was out of service for a couple of days while they repaired and inspected it, and then it was business as usual.
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Getting thrown out of railroad stations since 1979!
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