ON THE JOB-The former president's pool boy
Pool boys are supposed to conduct torrid affairs with lonely pool owners. James Razsa has passionate feelings about his client, but not the kind likely to turn romantic. Razsa cleans former President George H.W. Bush's pool, in Kennebunkport, Maine. [...]
Razsa recalls one day when former first lady Barbara Bush was on her way over, and it looked like there wouldn't be time to bring the pool's temperature up to her desired 82 degrees in time. The family's caretaker was in a panic, he says.
"He kept shouting, 'Barbara will go crazy! Barbara will go crazy!'" Razsa recalls. "This is the same woman who after Hurricane Katrina said (of the Houston Astrodome refugees), 'You know, they're underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them.'" [...]
For Razsa, his job -- the only one he could find -- put him directly in touch with the very sort of power he holds partly responsible for his, and other people's, hard times. "I look at the biggest middle finger in the world all day," is his more succinct explanation.
I ask Razsa if he has a monologue loaded up, in the event that his next encounter was at closer range. To my surprise, the idea doesn't appeal.
"What do you say? 'Thanks for School of the Americas, and Iran-Contra, and NAFTA, and shipping all those jobs overseas, and arming Saddam, and funding the Taliban?' What do you say -- 'You're a jerk?' There's nothing that can be put into a sentence that would capture the lives these people have taken, and the way of life that's been taken."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/g/a/2007/09/24/onthejob.DTL
