Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (114 page)

The outbreaks in poor black communities following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Many years ago I conducted a radio news commentary program, whose sponsor was a credit clothing house. I was fired in one week. As the sponsor put it, “For Chrissake, his listeners barge into the store, payin’ cash for everything! Cash, for Chrissake! I need that kind like a hole in the head. I want the element that buy on credit, no money down. What the hell do you think I’m in business for? Get rid of this guy, he’s trouble.”

Deadbeat.

There have been rumors through the past several years that the Syndicate controls these concessions. There is a natural reluctance on the part of attendants to discuss it. A similar phenomenon is the parking lot.

“He” was another washroom attendant.

It was the week of Chicago’s Big Snow-In, beginning January 25, 1967. Traffic was hopelessly snarled. Scores of thousands couldn’t get to work.

The boundary line separating Chicago from the North Shore suburb, Evanston

A realty phenomenon in Chicago: quickly constructed four-story buildings, with an open parking lot as its ground floor. The apartments are mostly one-room and two. Charges have been made by community groups that the material is shoddy and the buildings quickly deteriorate while the fast-buck entrepreneurs take the money and run. Zoning changes, due to these complaints, have, for the time being, discouraged further construction of four-plus-ones.

Illinois Institute of Technology.

Big Bill Broonzy, the late blues artist, frequently told the story of his visit to his mother, who lived in the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was driving a Cadillac. A white policeman flagged him down. “Whose car is this, boy? Ain’t yours, is it?” “No, sir. It belongs to my boss.” “Okay.”

Lower-middle-class white neighborhoods, where blacks are not welcome.

His most recent assignment: guarding an alley behind police headquarters, “It’s their way of trying to humiliate me.”

A note of One Worldism might be in order at this point. A news item: Bangkok, Thailand (UPI)—“Police battled a gang of bandits in southern Thailand Saturday. One bandit was killed. A police spokesman said the battle began when the bandit gang, disguised as policemen, challenged a group of policemen disguised as bandits.”

Several years ago, the University of Wisconsin produced a series of films (in which I was the interviewer) dealing with people who had achieved some form of recognition in their respective occupations. It was for showing before groups of ghetto children. The results of a survey indicated that the most admired subject was the lawyer-realtor-accountant, who spoke of his possessions—and showed them. He was astonishingly inarticulate—or inhibited—about his work. The least popular subject was a distinguished black sculptor, who in his studio enthusiastically talked of his work, and showed it in loving detail. The survey further revealed that the children were avid television viewers and remarkably knowledgeable about the commercials of the moment.

“It’s not a group of people. It’s a division within a corporation. The plant manager came from Van Nuys, California. Production managers came from the South, and one came from the East. They came here with the ideas of how to make a faster buck through the backs of the workers, as I see it.”

In Chicago, the Yellow Cab Company and the Checker Cab Company, under one ownership, use the above described type of car, and comprise most of the cabs in the city.

“Most truckdrivers are generally quite courteous. They’ll drive as far to the right as possible, so if they’re moving slowly other traffic can get around them.”

An institution for the mentally disturbed.

Chicago Transit Authority

“The long hauler, if they give him a pickup to go over to Detroit from Chicago, he feels it’s a waste of time, no trip at all. He wants to load New York. He’d leave Chicago, drop a drop in Cleveland and a drop in Pittsburgh, and peddle the rest of it off in New York. Once a dispatcher told Jim—he’s a little over fifty, been long haul for twenty-five years—‘We have a little box here, not a load, weighs thirty-five hundred pounds, do me a favor, pick it up.’ Jim says, ‘I don’t have room for this box and it’s goin’ the other way. I’ll pick it up next time I’m in New York.’ He was heading for St. Louis. It takes a certain kind of individual that thinks in thousands of miles so casually, as you and I’ll pick something up from my neighbor here next week.”

“That’s a Peterbilt, the Cadillac of trucks. It’s a great, big. long-nosed outfit. The tractor alone costs 30,000 dollars.”

Frank Fitzsimmons, president of the Teamsters Union.

The conversation took place before Jimmy Hoffa was granted a pardon by President Nixon and long before the Teamsters Union came out in support of the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

The late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.

Assorted stock.

An upper-middle-class suburb north of Chicago.

It is a local of the UAW.

Her husband, an artist and professor of art at a local branch of the state university.

Carolyn Horton, her mentor.

A far North Shore suburb of Chicago; its most upper U.

“Livermore said, ‘I own what I believe to be the controlling stock of IBM and Philip Morris.’ So I asked, ‘Why do you bother with anything else?’ He answered ‘I only understand stock. I can’t bother with businesses.’ So I asked him, ‘Do men of your kind put away ten million dollars where nobody can ever touch it?’ He looked at me and answered, ‘Young man, what’s the use of having ten million if you can’t have big money?‘” (Arthur Robertson’s recollections in
Hard Times
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1970.)

“The Nixon administration has accelerated the movement toward patient, prudent evaluation, particularly in the office of Economy Opportunity . . . Prominent among the victims was the OEO, flagship of old ways but also home of the new” (Jack Rosenthal,
New York Timers
, February 4, 1973).

American Federation of Government Employees.

Personnel, Management, and Service.

Pike County Citizens’ Association.

At the time he was pitching coach for the Giants.

Owner of the Minnesota Twins.

The Giants, in first place at the time of this conversation, blew the pennant. In 1972 the Chicago White Sox and the Oakland Athletics, battling for first place, played a nineteen-inning game. It was August 11. On the following night they played another extra inning game. On the following night, the Sox traveled to Chicago and played an exhibition game with the Cubs.

Billie Jean King.

Juniors are eighteen and under.

From interview by Bob Oates,
Los Angeles Times,
July 9, 1970.

Wide area telecommunications service. A prerogative granted important executives by some corporations: unlimited use of the telephone to make a call anywhere in the world.

Internal Investigation Division of the Chicago Police Department.

A popular Chicago underground newspaper at the time.

The most militant of all the Chicago underground papers at the time.

Patrick Garrard, editor of the
Capitalist Reporter.

Mme. Lotte Lehmann often spoke of art and age. She recalled a wistful conversation with Maestro Bruno Walter. In his eighties, he reflected on the richness and wisdom of the aged artist and of the long way the young virtuoso had to go—“but he’s less tired.” It is said that Arturo Toscanini, in his last years, often was thus reflective.

The eminent tenor sax man whose highly creative years were with Duke Ellington.

The celebrated motorcycle stunt man. “He broke his back yesterday. Down in Atlanta—jumping. I was just on the phone with him, since he’s part of our group insurance policy.”

An upper-middle-class private elementary and high school.

A public high school attended predominantly by lower-middle-class boys. (It is now coeducational.)

The financial section of the
Chicago Daily News
had a full-page feature story on him.

Intensive Care Unit.

Teaching English as a Second Language.

A “super” supermarket in the community.

A Chicago area in which many of the Southern white
émigrés
live; furnished flats in most instances.

† When I was there last year for a commencement talk, the parents, many of them wives of
émigré
black lung miners, were attentive. The students were excited and voluble, what with soda pop and cake. A casual look from Pat, momentary silence—in fact, profound attention—and the ceremonies began. Later, I found out that the whispers and giggles concerned me. They were anticipating my surprise and speechlessness at the presentation of their gift—a railroad man’s gold watch, inscribed.

A posh private school—upper-middte-class.

A hospital for children with heart conditions.

A department store whose customers are primarily lower-middle-class and working-class people.

Four years before, I visited “her baby” when she was eighty-nine years old. It was a gracefully appointed apartment; she was most hospitable. Bright-eyed, alert, witty, she recounted her experiences during the Great Depression.

Joe Matthews, a clergyman, recalls his aged father’s funeral: “I sat alone with my father the day before his burial. The cosmetics shocked me. It wasn’t my father as I had known him. I wanted to see his wrinkles again. I helped put those wrinkles there. My brothers and sisters helped put those wrinkles there. My mother helped put those wrinkles there. Those wrinkles were part of me. They weren’t there that day. It was as if they had taken away my life. It was as if I were ashamed of my father as he was. No. The mortician was friendly, though bewildered. He brought me the soap, sponge, and basin of warm water I asked for. I took the make-up off of papa. I never got him to look ninety-two again. But he didn’t look fifty any more when I was finished.”

“When I went to Columbia I was at the head of my class in music history, European history, and French.”

His father, Vachel Lindsay, was a doctor as well as a celebrated poet.

House Un-American Activities Committee.

United Electrical Workers of America.

“Arkansas is the leading producer of poultry in the United States. The broiler farmer invests somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars in two chicken houses. They hold up to seven thousand baby chicks. The packing company puts the chicks in and supplies the feed and medicine. At the end of eight weeks they’re four and a half pounds. The companies pick ‘em up and pay you for ’em. Ralph Nader’s been after them. It’s almost white slavery. The farmer invests and the company can say, ‘This is a lousy lot, we’re not gonna pay you the full price.’ But you’re still putting in twelve hours a day.”

Clyde Ellis, a former congressman from Arkansas, recalls, “I wanted to be at my parents’ house when electricity came. It was in 1940. We’d all go around flipping the switch, to make sure it hadn’t come on yet. We didn’t want to miss it. When they finally came on, the lights just barely glowed. I remember my mother smiling. When they came on full, tears started to run down her cheeks. After a while she said: ‘Oh, if only we had it when you children were growing up.’ We had lots of illness. Anyone who’s never been in a family without electricity—with illness—can’t imagine the difference. . . . They had all kinds of parties—mountain people getting light for the first time. There are still areas without electricity . . .” (quoted in
Hard Times
[New York: Pantheon Books, 1970]).

An expressway leading into and out of Chicago.

The conversation took place in Chicago during his visit, the purpose of which was the delivery of some cattle.

A slum area of Chicago, inhabited primarily by poor white immigrants from the deep South and Appalachia.

In the area are halfway houses for people who have been released from mental institutions. They are hotels that in earlier times, when the neighborhood was less transient in nature, were patronized by middle-class guests. Some are operated responsibly and with a modicum of tender loving care. There are others . . .

It has been officially known as the Industrial Squad. It came into being in the thirties, during the battles to organize the CIO.