‘I did have a little old lady pull a shotgun on me once, she thought I was a cat burglar.’

Mike Edwards, the first black quarterback at Sweetwater High School in National City, traded his dream to become a professional football player for a squeegee after partying undid his grades and he lost his scholarship at the University of New Mexico. He took a job cleaning windows in San Diego nine years ago, perfecting his “cutting” technique with ground-floor storefronts before graduating to 4-, 6- and 26-story buildings. At age 29, he is ambivalent about the once-thrilling danger of his job now that he has a wife and daughter, and he says he just doesn’t have the stamina he did when he was 21. He vows to be off the high-rises in three years, but he is trying to organize a union for local window washers. He said he wants go back to his engineering studies, buy a window-washing company and let someone else do the labor. He was interviewed by Times staff writer Nancy Reed and photographed by Dave Gatley.

They call us artists because of the way we use our tools. Most people use squeegees straight across, but we use a style, like an artist with a paintbrush. We have our little Walkman radios on, and we do it to the music. Most people applaud.

You have to be left- and right-handed, ambidextrous. It gets to be fun then, you get to free-lance with the wind. And once you get to the bottom you go, “Whew! We made it.”

The hardest thing about window cleaning is not to have the fear.

I use a tennis ball as a float to show the level of my water in the bucket. When I can’t see it any more I know my water level is low. It stops me from looking over all the time. You don’t want to see how far you are away (from the ground) every time you dip in the bucket. That gets scary--you see all this concrete and cars moving and stuff. It gets the tendency to play with your mind. Then, you get nervous for a minute, but you gotta get yourself together and know you are still up there.

You keep your composure, or it could cost you your life.

At the Hotel Inter-Continental, the way that building is shaped like a football, the wind comes around it in a vacuum. We were on the 16th floor going up and noticed the wind was picking up. It caught my end and I was 12-foot away from the building. When you get that far, you have to prepare yourself on the stage to keep your balance and hold your hands out so you don’t slam back against the glass.

I fell one time, about 38 feet. I was on this lady’s roof, and she had those tile shingles and there was an early mist off the bay. I slipped off the three-story roof. My jaw hit the roof and I was dazed, but I noticed I was falling. So instead of falling backward off the edge, I pushed myself away from the building and in the air I gathered myself up and fell on my feet. I didn’t get injured, but it cost me $380. I tore up the lady’s flower bed and broke her patio table. She sent me a bill.

My old lady works at County Mental Health and we go to these doctor parties and they ask me what I do and I tell them I am a window cleaner, and everybody says, “Oh, my God!”

They say you’re crazy, are you on drugs? It makes me feel better because it’s something that they don’t want to do.

My biggest ambition was to play football. But just the other day I was thinking, you know--I always said when I was a kid looking up at window washers, I always thought they’re kind of crazy but they get a lot of attention. Now, I’m one of those crazy guys.

I am kind of a thrill seeker, I like the danger. A lot of people when they see us working, they turn away because they’re scared. I did have a little old lady pull a shotgun on me once, she thought I was a cat burglar.

But most the people are happy to see us. They are happy to have a clean aspect on life.

I am getting ready to go back to school this summer. I don’t want to be doing this until I am 40. Now, you’ve got to climb over these buildings every day, sometimes the elevator doesn’t work, and you’ve got to climb the stairways. It can get to be hell sometimes. My stamina and strength isn’t what it was when I was 21 or 22. Lets say you start at 7 in the morning and finish about 4. Your evening is completed. You are ready to come home. Once I sit in that chair, that’s all she wrote, I am asleep.