In 1968 when I had just graduated from St. Petersburg High I had a summer job as an elevator operator at the Dennis Hotel in downtown. It was 7 stories tall and about 80 units and nobody ever checked in, all the guests were seniors and lived there fulltime. The elevator was an old-timer that had the cage door and I opened by hand and next to the door was a handle control that I moved to make the elevator go up or down. It took a little practice to get the elevator to come to a stop that was level with the floor. If it was off by an inch or two nobody would step out.
Every evening most all the guests would come down to the lobby and watch Lawrence Welk on TV. There would be about 50 people watching that show and when it ended, they all wanted to go on the elevator back to their room. That was the big rush for the day.
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