Loren Pierce's key ring jingles and echoes as he pushes his cart through the empty halls of Natrona County High School.

Today, 1,500 students will flood the halls, scuffing the newly waxed floors, dropping papers for him to pick up.

But for now the school is quiet. Quiet and very, very clean.

It shines and sparkles because all summer the staff of 15 custodial workers has been busy.

"I honestly believe no one in town works harder than us in the summer,"

custodian Linda Edwards said.

They are custodians in the broad sense of the word: entrusted with keeping and caring for the county's most treasured school building and the people who work and learn there.

The school with the Gothic arches and 1924 cornerstone is a memory for thousands of alumni across Wyoming, but the people who keep the historic building running spend more than just four years passing through.

Some have worked here 20 years and longer, not just maintaining the building but keeping it alive for generations of students to come.

The heavy lifting starts just after students leave for the summer, when the building is tired and beat up from nine months of steady use.

They take it from the top floor, where it can be 100 degrees or more on a summer day.

First the crew changes light bulbs, then washes the walls and desks, cleans the carpets and the lockers, the floors and the windows.

In teams, they work their way down from the third floor to the second, first and finally to the basement. The building isn't just dozens of classrooms, it's a swimming pool, library, auditorium, offices, gyms, art studios, bathrooms and locker rooms.

The building is so big - nearly 280,000 square feet - that some of the staff only see each other on their breaks. They head down to their basement lounge and pull up a chair at a round table, which on a good day has a box of Daylight Donuts delivered by an appreciative principal.

There, the crew can check the "Bible," a daily calendar of special events to plan around, like a band concert or basketball game. They can buy a pop for 60 cents from the '80s-era Pepsi machine in the corner. They can read a thank-you note signed by the entire girls' basketball team: "We are so thankful that you are a part of the program."

Custodian Jan Gilland uses her break to study from Spanish books given to her by a teacher on the floor she cleans. Mostly the workers just take a load off.

Summer is the toughest part of the year. It's not just the thorough scrubbing. While the district's maintenance crew handles big repairs and major projects, the crew must be able to swap furniture and heavy cabinets between rooms, make small repairs and get deliveries of books and computers where they need to be.

Then, before they know it, it's fall and a return to the daily disaster left by hundreds of teen-agers. The schedule shifts to meet the mess head on.

The first custodian will come in to open the school at 5 a.m.

Custodial manager Jim McCash, a former maintenance foreman at the Pathfinder mine, is there during school hours, 7 a.m. to 3:30, to handle requests from school staff. He's proud of his crew after the summer: "You can just look at the building and see the difference."

Nine custodians work the night shift. Sometimes they see teachers there, working late into the night to plan the week's lessons.

Loren Pierce handles weekends: Friday through Monday, 10 hours a day.

That's one of the more unpredictable shifts, with never a dull day.

Consider the boys' locker room after a football game.

The wrestling mats after a match.

The auditorium after a Miss Wyoming pageant.

"I hate glitter and feathers," Pierce says.

He isn't just a custodian at work: he's an inventor, figuring out how to repair an old piece of equipment. He's a stagehand, moving heavy scenery.

He's a locksmith, opening doors for teachers who forget their keys.

And, some days, a babysitter.

"It's bad enough we have to babysit the kids," he says. "We have to babysit the teachers."

Pierce marvels at the students. How some are destructive, getting even with the building, he puts it, because they have to go to school.

How others are kind, helping him carry a heavy garbage can, or just complimenting him on how nice the floors look.

Pierce is from Lusk, but his daughter went to school here and earned nearly an A average. Now she's married, lives in Denver and owns a bakery. Now there are other students in the halls.

If Pierce grumbles, it's because he cares about the kids and takes pride in the building where they spend so much of their youth.

He pushes his cart down the hall, pointing out the sturdy construction.

"You don't see cracks in the walls like you do in any of the other buildings, because it is well built. It's built really solid," he says. "Do you see any cracks? You really don't."

Natrona County High School was built to last, to outlast the next crop of students who will come in today the ones who don't want to be there, and the ones who pitch in because they feel part of a community.

Thanks to a summer of hard work, the custodial staff is ready for them.

"Most of these kids are really great," Pierce says. "They help you and you help them and they'll give you a bad time and you can give them a bad time.

You know, it's nice to work with young people that appreciate it. I don't know that all of them do, but there's a lot of them that do."

Reach Barbara Nordby at (307) 266-0633 or at barbara.nordby@casperstartribune.net.