5: The Wake-up Machine

 

It was Groundhog's Day, 1976, the day I started at the Crazy Alarm Company. Paul Nash told me they had an opening, and suggested I apply. He had worked there when he first came to Canada escaping the draft, but went on to become a loyal guard at the Royal Ontario Museum. Paul Nash and I had been friends since our first encounter at Mars one Sunday in the early Seventies. We both had on trench coats at the time and stopped at Mirvisch Books to buy the New York Times. Both of us went to Mars Restaurant for liver and onions. As we looked up from separate tables the conversation went something like this: "Didn't I see you at Fatal Bert's last week?"
             "Yes. I play there sometimes."
             "Well I play there too."
             "Yes, I've seen your act. I'm not only a songwriter, I'm writing a novel."
             "I'm writing a novel too.
             Paul said, "The Alarm Company is the ideal place to write your book. Or you could leave one of your guitars there and practice all night." Both Paul and I were on steady midnights, so we would get into a lot of long telephone calls while we were "working.” 

             The Crazy Alarm Company overlooked an MG sports car lot, just north of Yonge and Bloor right beside the subway tracks. It was on the second floor, through double doors, the inner one having a semi impregnable metal latch and an aqua colored peephole. The only way to get inside was to be "buzzed in" after being "visually identified." The sooty Venetian blinds were always closed, for "security reasons." Below the east window, passing subway trains would rattle the tin pot on the hot plate, which rested on a midget refrigerator next to the solitary latrine, which was lit by a bare light bulb. Florescent lamps flickered constantly and were usually in the "off mode," whenever I happened to be on duty. (I maintained that it was easier to visually recognize an alarm's bleeping light from a condition of less luminescence. Therefore I often had my eyes fully closed.) A large oak desk dominated the office, the kind teachers used to have at school. While on duty, I was inclined to have my feet on the desk, straddling the typewriter, with my back leaning as far as the spineless retractable-wheeled office chair would go. My right foot would be by the red phone, the left by the black phone. It was possible to answer the phone without getting up by slipping my toes under the receiver and lifting up my leg so the phone could be transferred to my hands. If an alarm sounded I would often propel myself to the board, like a squid, without having to stand up. In the center of the office on a pillar between the windows there was the "Wake-up Machine."
              The Wake-up Machine emitted ear-splitting blasts every fifteen minutes throughout the midnight shift. The device was a foot square box with an aluminum plate in front, with a shrill siren inside. When it sounded, my imperative was to silence it by pushing the little red button. If I neglected to silence it, an alarm would go off in a far off city, prompting another Midnight Shift operator in a sister company to call. Assuming of course the Designated Other Agent (DOA) was awake. If the Wake Up Machine was not properly silenced the Police would be summoned. The Wake Up Machine had the same tonal pitch as the alarm indicator sirens, so that when it was sounding simultaneously with an actual alarm, I may not have known if it was a real cause for alarm. There were two ways to silence the Wake Up Machine. The first was to place clear adhesive tape over the little red button to project the false illusion that everything was functioning according to procedure. The second was to have a yardstick at hand, and whack the button as hard as possible. The latter was my method of madness. Numerous whacks of the yardstick left a hideous dent on the face of the diabolical apparatus.

 Most evenings I would arrive fifteen minutes before midnight. Often I would be at a coffeehouse performing, at a movie, or out with friends and would stop on the way at a convenience store or restaurant for take-out food for my "lunch." The Central Station monitor I relieved was supposed to give me a report of what was going on, this Alfredo usually did; then we would sometimes toss a Frisbee around as fast as we could from a distance of fifteen feet. Alfredo would cover for me if I were running late.
              The first thing I would do is put the 600 or so cards into the slots that corresponded to the vaults, and test the alarms. Testing the alarms would send a signal to the banks and cause a buzzer to sound, so that I would have fifty or sixty alarms ringing at once. Then I’d mop the floor, read the newspaper and make a journal entry. Apart from the occasional alarm and testing the alarms throughout the night I would have four or five hours of free time.
           So that I would never forget the Crazy Alarm Company, one night I drew a self-portrait in my journal, sitting at the oak desk, beside the Wake Up Machine. On the night that I wasted my time doing that I failed to notice a sign on the board that said. "Alarm out of order, ask for police surveillance." The head technician asked me when he came in if I had followed those instructions, and I had to admit that I hadn’t noticed the sign.
If I were to forget to put a card in its proper place this would be the ensuing conversation: "You missed putting a card in this slot."
           "I must have forgot."
             "How could you forget, you had the whole night to do it."
             "I try to do my best."
              "If it happens again we'll have to do something about it."
              "Like what?"
              "Nothing."
Judy, the Morning Shift Operator would come on at seven. She was tall and statuesque and was strikingly beautiful in appearance, but considered herself to be as she put it— "ugly."
           One morning Judy walked into the mess that I had left and said, "Boy, you better get your act together." She was probably referring to the floor not being mopped. I usually mopped the floor listening to Paul McCartney’s Silly Love Song, or Someone's Knocking on the Door. But there had been thunderstorms and several alarms went off, the police had to be called, bank representatives had been woken up and drive to the bank to check if everything was secure, then reported back to me. I was responsible to write all the details in the logbook.
             Many of my entries were written with green ink with a fountain pen in a mock flowery cursive, to drive the management nuts. (I also put green food coloring in my private stash of milk to prevent the technicians from pilfering it, but they probably drank it right out of the carton and never noticed.) So I had written up at least six alarms and had several people on the at one time, while additional alarms were going off. I didn’t need someone walking in and dumping on me first thing.
             I told the woman to "Get Lost" in no uncertain terms.
             She asked, "What did you say?"
             "You heard me."
             "I’m going to tell Jay Gurakski."
             "Go ahead." I said. 
             Judy moped at a desk for an hour reading her Harlequin Romance novel and totally ignored me. She never called me "boy" again. 
Between seven and eight in the morning the alarms would start to go off as businesses opened their doors and bank vaults were open. Then, until nine fifteen it was crazy with several alarms going off at once. Each "opening" had to be date stamped, and had to give us a clear signal, or we would treat it as a hold-up. Sometimes they would open late and would have telephone us. The openings were quite busy and needed for or five people, so I was slated to be there until nine thirty.
          As soon as I got back from my Bicentennial Tour, they started hassling me. I had persuaded them into letting me take a three-week vacation after only working there two months. My supervisor would browbeat me about picayune things — he would hit me with those cards that you're not supposed to mutilate or fold. I wrote a letter to the management. The 'Ultimatum' stated that after two weeks I would no longer work beyond eight hours a day. It further stated that working nine and a half hours a night was detrimental to my well-being. Gurakski looked at the ultimatum and said, “There have been complaints about you in the office, you told one of the girls to ‘Get Lost.'” I thought his eyes would pop out. He said it's hard to get someone to do the openings, and that when I took the job I knew what the hours were. I was tempted to tell him that the other morning while walking home I ran smack into a telephone pole.