HOW I LOVED THE
MAINTENANCE CREW
Back in 1968, it was San Francisco on the
fly. The Maintenance Crew was a bunch
of guys at the San Francisco Art Institute
who 'took care of things.' Everything from
faucets to paint to roofing and leaks. The
one guy named Jim Mahaffey - I think it
was - always drove the old maintenance
truck wrong, keeping his foot on the clutch
way more than needed. He fried the clutch
a few times; always got scorned for that.
My Studio School friend Jim Tomberg was
an Art Institute guy too. but he was spending
the year in New York. Ed Rudolph too, he
was around New York. I got to know the
different kinds of people there were.
-
Girls too, not just guys; it was a pretty cool
bunch, and those NYC streets were good
performance platforms for whatever you
were doing. Not you, I mean the general
'you.' Some Chinese girl, whose name I
can't remember, she had another friend
of mine all twisted up, out in San Francisco,
in both love and lust. But it didn't last. And
then he got another girl he felt for just as
much, and she then died! Life's a wreck
when you hit the wall.
-
We didn't have a maintenance crew at the
Studio School. A few times I remember a
plumber coming in, and he kept busy almost
an entire day working over some bathroom.
But it was pretty crummy, because a sort
of elitism took over and all the people kept
making fun of this guy, taunting him as a
mere 'plumber.' They could be bastards like
that. I felt for the guy, and by 7pm, when
he was still working, we had a lecture in
the library, with some special guest coming
in to talk. The plumber was still at work, and
making noise, and they just ripped him
up. Catcalling him for making noise. The
poor guy was only trying to fix the toilet(s)
for their sorry asses! He got angry; took his tools
and just stormed out. What a way to end a day,
and elitists will always have their way.
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