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1971- One winter night in Rochdale while I was on the night maintenance cleaning crew and he was on security, I backed him up keeping intruders out of the building. Bob was on duty at the front desk in the elevator lobby, I was mopping the floors. I was cleaning the central staircase first floor landing. This was a room just off the elevator lobby. It had a set of stairs that led to the upper floors, one door leading to the interior of the building and one exterior fire-door leading to the outside rear of the building. I heard somebody trying to break in through the fire-door, and they wouldn’t stop when I yelled at them. I got Bob there just as they started to get the door open. He set up our defense position immediately – there was the stairs leading up into the building and a door leading to the first floor. I was told to get up the stairs onto the first landing holding my mop, with my squeegee pail full of dirty water in front of me. Ready to pour it down the stairs. “Just hold the mop like you’re going to use it!” were his instructions. He made sure the door to the lobby was open and his escape route was well lit. There was a blind corner into the elevator lobby just outside the doorway, a perfect ambush setup. This was Bob’s defense position. About this time the invaders, a couple of not too small but too straight looking characters, got the door open but stopped at the threshold when they saw us. The largest of the two wanted to bust in, but his slightly smaller buddy faltered. Bob was smaller than either of them but confronted them in a loud aggressive voice: “I told you guys when you came to the front door that you can’t come in and I mean it!”. He yelled back over his shoulder; “Andy get Billy and the dogs!!” Bob went into a spread-out fighting stance where he could cover a lot of space with all his limbs. He was setting himself to cover the escape into the elevator lobby and deal with more than one assailant at the same time. It was the image of an experienced street fighter and meant win or lose, somebody would get hurt. This likeness caught their attention, these boys had not experienced this action before. At the same time, out of view around the corner, the elevator doors opened, and people came into the lobby making enough noise to make all of us wonder if we weren’t going to get some assistance. “You’re really going to be outnumbered shortly”, Bob said. Now the smaller of the two came to his senses and recognized their position and wanted to get out of there. The bigger one was still all jacked up from wrecking the door and thought about making a rush but took a second look at Bob and backed out the door. Now I had to figure out how to get the door closed and keep it secure until we could fix it in the morning. The assailants had done a good job destroying the door jamb. Bob walked back to the front desk with his head down, shaking off the adrenaline, he knew this was a close one. He did not want to risk himself that night, unless it was necessary. This was well within his scrapper era. I jammed the door with a bar through the cross bar handle; and went to see what he knew because he had talked to them earlier that night. He said, “I could smell the fertilizer on their clothes.” Just a couple of drunk farm boys looking for some booze, pot and a good time. The kind of guys that would think any woman in the building was available and get themselves into trouble. They had not done anything and the last thing Bob wanted to do was hurt these guys. Now he had to come down, he did not like going into combat mode unless he could release his adrenaline rush. There was no Andy going to get the dogs, no reinforcements from the elevator lobby, no fight, no damage, just a magnificent ruse de guerre by our Bob, a man with a heart. 
stairwell 1st floor door 
Security desk |