Caretaker 24
(Yea its kind of a rip off of Fox's 24 but this will be a little less violent.)
As told by Matt Dellaquila
7:00 AM: Sign Language Convention
The TV's were all set up in the auditorium, the baptism pool was ready, and the deaf friends started to come to Stanley. They came from as far north as Montréal, and as far south as Florida. This would be something.
9:00 AM: Breakfast.
Someone made me breakfast! Nice.
11:00AM: Dan Derzawhite
A friend of mine from when I did temp work at bethel came up to the office, we sat in the office, at lunch time we ordered a sack of 30 white castle burgers.He is what I like to call easily excitable. A Very positive guy.
4:30 PM: Carrying A Ladder
After the assembly, we had to clean up. I didn’t realize that the brother that was pointed in my direction was a deaf brother. We had to carry a 10 foot ladder from the stage, to the boiler room. I don’t know sign language, so the best I could do was communicate with hand signals. I carried the front, he carried the back, I kept looking back to make sure that he didn’t bump the ladder into anything. If he did, he wouldn’t hear it! While carrying the ladder, i would give him a thumbs up, to make sure things are going well. When we finally got to the boiler room, I used the one sign that I know, that is... How to say thank you. In response to that, the brother gave me a thumbs up in return. Now that’s irony.
5:00 PM: Inspections
I get a call on the radio that the upper mezzanine is ready to be inspected. So I make my way over there, and meet Tom, from Rhode Island... seems like a nice guy, early 20's. We talk, he asks about my assignment.... As we are standing there, an older French woman comes over to us... asking questions about the lobby. She goes on to tell us she’s just showing her friends around, who are visiting.... I was happy to tell them about Stanley... and show them around a little... Then we meet her 2 grand daughters that speak English well... that are also visiting. Yowza.
5:15 PM: The Alarm.
Soon after an alarm goes off in the building. There is suddenly a drop in air pressure. Which sounds like something terrible on a submarine... but its even worse at an assembly hall. It means that the HUGE basement restrooms have stopped working. And pretty soon sewage will start backing up into the building. A brother gets on the radio with the alarm blaring in the background... my overseer also has his radio on and tells me to run down to the boiler room to fix what needed to be fixed. I say goodbye to the French visitors and their yowza grand daughters... and run down to the boiler room. I told tom I had to run, he gave me his number and said to come visit RI in the summer.
I get down to the boiler room, tragedy was averted, and the problem was found and fixed. But the French were lost forever.
5:25 PM: Rescue of A Deaf Boy From A Dumb-Waiter.
First of all I think it’s important to clarify what a dumb-waiter is. It has nothing to do with serving, or tables or waiters... It’s those small elevators that big buildings have to move boxes. Anyway we have one here at Stanley.
Another call comes over the radio that there is someone stuck in the dumb-waiter. I didn’t respond, neither did my overseer, because at first we thought it was a joke. After the call was repeated, I made my way down to the 1st floor where the brothers were loading the sign language TV's on the dumb-waiters.
Later we found out that... while loading the dumb-waiters... One of the brothers was joking, and told this other deaf brother that he should get in the dumb-waiters... So the boy got in and shut the inner door. Then for kicks... This brother on the outside closed the outer door and sent the elevator up..... When the deaf brother inside felt it moving up.. he got scared, and opened the interior door, only to find he was in between floors. He started yelping for help.
When I got there, we couldn’t communicate with him, because it was pitch black and he was deaf. And we couldn’t move the elevator because it won’t move until the inner down is closed.
5:40 PM: After Calling Our Elevator Guy, We Found a Solution.
There was a small access panel to the elevator shaft in which we could get to the motor and with a pipe wrench we might be able to over ride it. When I got up to the room with my overseer... he said that this looked like a job for a little Italian. After hearing this, I took my suit jacket off and realized that this suit would soon be ruined. I climbed through the access door with a pipe wrench, looking down the 20 feet to where the elevator was stuck. This was quickly becoming mission impossible.
6:00 PM: Dan Was Sent Up To Keep Me Company In The Room Outside The Access Panel.
It was hot, I was sweating, I didn’t want to drop the wrench down the shaft.It would dent the elevator and scare the kid. After taking off my tie, and glasses, the crank fest continued. Meanwhile Dan kept me company by telling stories, and about the latest "girl". Oh it was quite a scene.
Remember this is an elevator for moving food mostly. So it has large gears that only move the pull rope at a slow speed. So with each revolution of the pipe wrench, the pull rope moved only about 1/8th of an inch. Mind you I had to crank this pull rope thing about 8 feet.
6:30 PM: We Finally Get The Elevator Back Down,
The kid gets out. He turns out to be 19 years old. He had his cell phone with him, and was text messaging people in His hall to help him. When one person wrote to him, that "he needs to try to close the inner door," ... He replied with “I’m sorry, please don’t be mad at me".
About this time I got out of the shaft, covered in soot, soaking with sweat, in my suit. By the time I got back to the 1st floor, the boy was gone. I never met him. But we all got a good laugh.
Then later that night I went to a fondue party.But that’s the subject for another hour on 24.
Stay Tuned for the next episode of Caretaker 24...
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