WINDOW CLEANING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 190, 13 August 1934, Page 11

WINDOW CLEANING.

SEVEN STOREYS UP. WHERE A FIRM GRIP COUNTS. "COME UP AND SEE ME." Seven storeys up on a Wellington building a man stood on a ledge holding on to life with one hand. With the other he was describing arcs with a piece of cloth. On the pavement a watcher was estimating the drop and vowing that he would not become a professional window cleaner, like the worker above poised between heaven and earth, even if that was the last vacant billet. According to a young man who burnishes the windows of tall buildings six days a week, and who is one of a number who make a living in that manner (says the "Dominion"), the occupation is not as perilous as it would seem to the unitiated—that is, if one's nerves are strong. He acknowledged that there were more comfortable ways of earning a livelihood, and agreed that the safety of the job lay in not looking down or thinking too 'much of the consequences of a slip. His only complaint was that window cleaning was deadly monotonous. "As you might believe," he said, "I am not doing this out of choice, but when a man can't make a living at his regular trade, he's got to take anything that will tide his wife and family over the times. Special qualifications ? No, just a good constitution, a firm grip and a pair of canvas shoes. A few of the gang which are employed on this business by the firm which has contracts to clean windows of most of the city buildings, are one-time sailors, but I am not. Seamen take naturally to this job because they are used to working at heights. Firemen are often recruited from the sea for the same reason." Some Buildings More Risky. Ho said he worked through the city and returned to a building about once a month. By long association with varying types of architecture he knew what risks could safely be taken on windowsills, and where added precautions must ho observed. Certain buildings, which ho named, were not liked because of the precarious footing they afforded. On others it was mere child's play to "work" them. No, he was never roped to a building, as one saw in the films. It would be more trouble than it was worth. There was no difference, as far as practical effect was concerned, between a 1200 feet fall from tho top story of the Empire State building in New York and one of 00 feet from tho State Fire Insurance offices in Wellington. Both would involves hearses. Wellington's winds blustering through the streets like minor hurricanes in a canyon had not yet cost him the loss of a day's work, the window-cleaner said. Occasionally it was unpleasant to feel one's body swaying in a gale high above the traffic. The job was retarded, never halted. Pelting rain, and once an earthquake, were the only forces of Nature which drove the window-cleaner from his perch. How the Earthquake Felt. "Tho Murchison earthquake was the only happening which up to the present time has really frightened me." he continued. "Two of us were holding on to a window frame near the top of one of the tallest buildings in Wellington when it came. The sensation was as though we were falling backward into space with tho building bearing down with us. Both of us lost no time in crawling inside through a window." There is not a housewife in all the King's Dominions who possesses a tithe of tho practical knowledge of glass and the ways of brightening it that comprises the working capital of the professional window-cleaner. "Glass .. . glass .. . glass! lam sick of the sight of glass!" the cleaner commented in a tone heavy with resignation to chamois leather and elbow-grease. "And then at some week-ends when I have come home to forget the job my wife will say, 'How about giving the windows a rub '!'. That is the lust straw. "I don't know there is much I can add about my job," said the window-cleaner, returning to his task, "but if you want more information —come up and see me some time."