Agreed, Ed. With the Gosdin Brothers is, like most of Gene's work, much underrated. However, IMO "Elevator Operator" is a bit of tongue-in-cheek songwriting not entirely typical of Clark's style.

He would do one of these occasionally (e.g. "Roadmaster"), but for the most part what is striking about his lyrics is their entirely original poesy. One wonders where Clark, who was not well-educated or, by any accounts, well-read, sourced the inspiration for lines like "She was fire on the borderline/A lion in the fall of roles/Said she saw the sword of sorrow sunken/In the sand of searching souls" or "how could we have been put upon this planet/Fools enough to think that we could be/The first to form a civilized envolvement (sic)/ from the charismatic sea".

In Paul Kendall's documentary, witnesses describe how Gene, when the muse did to him what it is muses do, would go into a trance-like state and be all but unreachable by those in the room with him for long periods of time, until the song was written. Makes you wonder where it came from.