As John Nelson gets up to say goodbye, he apologizes for his appearance.
”Don`t think I`m always looking drawn and haggard,” he says. ”Today, I`m a very nervous individual because of this uncertainty.”
Nelson looks much older than his 64 years. He is wearing a tattered blue dress shirt buttoned to the neck. His gray sport coat and black dress shoes were donated to him by the barber shop he has frequented for many years.
Earlier, inside the downtown diner, the out-of-work elevator operator had insisted on paying for his coffee and his wife`s strawberry milkshake.
He might not have a job, but he he still has his pride.
You might remember Nelson`s philosophic musings and his photo from a Tribune feature about the old Unity Building as it was being readied for demolition last September.
”The past is unacceptable to the ideas of progress,” he said then.
When buildings outlive their usefulness, the wrecking ball is called in. For the John Nelsons of the world, fate is sometimes less kind.
John Nelson is a dinosaur. He`s been an elevator operator for 48 years, starting at a small hotel in Freeport, and he`s been a union member for 45.
In the early `50s, there were about 5,000 elevator operator jobs in the city, said John Dwyer, vice president of Local 25 of the Service Employees International Union. But automation rendered the job irrelevant, and now Dwyer estimates there are fewer than 300 elevator jobs in the city-many of them on freight elevators.
Only one hotel, the Drake, still has its manual elevators.
”Hurry up over there and see `em,” Dwyer says. ”It won`t be long.”
Nelson has inquired at the Drake. And the Allerton Hotel and the Hotel Inter-Continental and many other buildings. He has applied at about 60 places, he says, and met rejection at each one.
He`s not that picky. He doesn`t have to have a fancy uniform. He`d even accept work outside his field and has sought employment at Burger King and White Hen Pantry.
”I could be a watchman,” he says. ”But I couldn`t be a bouncer.”
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The thing, though, that Nelson does best is operate an elevator, a job that used to take a certain amount of skill before it became a push-button service.
”I was rated in my many years as being superlative in my work,” he says. ”You have to be able to stop the elevator at the point where it`s level with the floor.
”Operating manual, local high-speed cars with leveling marks in buildings is a specialty of mine. Just as I`ve said it: Operating manual, local high-speed elevators with leveling marks in buildings-a specialty with me.”
Even without leveling marks, he says, ”I can usually adapt and be very good.”
Nelson doesn`t think he has much time. His finances are complicated by the psychiatric problems of his wife, Margaret, 68, who visits a doctor five times a week for her paranoid schizophrenia. They live together in a room at the Cass Hotel, 640 N. Wabash Ave., and split meals at the diner. He`s decided he can`t afford to retire.
”I wouldn`t be able to carry on my obligations and responsibilities as I see them to provide for my wife,” he says.
He earned $7 a week in his first elevator job. By the time the Unity Building closed, he was earning $9.70 an hour over a 44-hour work week.
”I`ll consider less than that,” he says. ”At least I can survive. This way I can become a street person in short order if I don`t secure a livelihood, and I`d hate that for myself and I`d hate that even more for my wife.
”I`m willing to consider anything. The pay is definitely open.”