Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (99 page)

A gravedigger is a very important person. You must have hear about the strike we had in New York about two years ago. There were twenty thousand bodies layin’ and nobody could bury ’em. The cost of funerals they raised and they didn’t want to raise the price of the workers. The way they’re livin’, everything wanna go up, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen.

Can you imagine if I wouldn’t show up tomorrow morning and this other fella—he usually comes late—and sometimes he don’t show. We have a funeral for eleven ’. Imagine what happens? The funeral arrive and where you gonna bury it?

We put water, the aspirins, in case somebody pass out. They have those capsules that you break and put up by their nose—smelling salts. And we put heaters for inside the tents so the place be a little warm.

There are some funerals, they really affect you. Some young kid. We buried lots of young. You have emotions, you turn in, believe me, you turn. I had a burial about two years ago of teen-agers, a young boy and a young girl. This was a real sad funeral because there was nobody but young teen-agers. I’m so used to going to funerals every day—of course, it bothers me—but I don’t feel as bad as when I bury a young child. You really turn.

I usually will wear myself some black sunglasses. I never go to a funeral without sunglasses. It’s a good idea because your eyes is the first thing that shows when you have a big emotion. Always these black sunglasses.

This grief that I see every day, I’m really used to somebody’s crying every day. But there is some that are real bad, when you just have to take it. Some people just don’t want to give up. You have to understand that when somebody pass away, there’s nothing you can do and you have to take it. If you don’t want to take it, you’re just gonna make your life worse, become sick. People seems to take it more easier these days. They miss the person, but not as much.

There’s some funerals that people, they show they’re not sad. This is different kinds of people. I believe they are happy to see this person—not in a way of singing—because this person is out of his sufferin’ in this world. This person is gone and at rest for the rest of his life. I have this question lots of times: “How can I take it?” They ask if I’m calm when I bury people. If you stop and think, a funeral is one of the natural things in the world.

I enjoy it very much, especially in summer. I don’t think any job inside a factory or an office is so nice. You have the air all day and it’s just beautiful. The smell of the grass when it’s cut, it’s just fantastic. Winter goes so fast sometimes you just don’t feel it.

When I finish my work here, I just don’t remember my work. I like music so much that I have lots more time listenin’ to music or playin’. That’s where I spend my time. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I play Spanish bass and guitar. I play accordian. I would like to be a musician. I was born and raised in Texas and I never had a good school. I learned music myself from here and there. After I close the gate I play. I don’t think it would be nice to play music when the funeral’s goin’ by. But after everything . . .

I believe we are not a rich people, but I think we’re livin’ fair. We’re not sufferin’. Like I know lotsa people are havin’ a rough time to live on this world because of crises of the world. My wife, sometimes she’s tired of stayin’ in here. I try to take her out as much as possible. Not to parties or clubs, but to go to stores and sometimes to go to drive-ins and so on.

She’s used to funerals, too. I go to eat at noon and she asks me, “How many funerals you got today? How many you buried today?” “Oh, we buried two.” “How many more you got?” “Another.” Some other people, you go to your office, they say, “How many letters you write today?” Mine says, “How many funerals you had today?” (Laughs.)

My children are used to everything. They start playin’ ball right against the house. They’re not authorized to go across the road because it’s the burial in there. Whenever a funeral gonna be across from the house, the kids are not permitted to play. One thing a kid love, like every kid, is dogs. In a way, a dog in here would be the best thing to take care of the place, especially a German Shepherd. But they don’t want dogs in here. It’s not nice to see a dog around a funeral. Or cats or things like that. So they don’t have no pet, no.

I believe I’m gonna have to stay here probably until I die. It’s not gonna be too bad for me because I been livin’ twelve years already in the cemetery. I’m still gonna be livin’ in the cemetery. (Laughs.) So that’s gonna be all right with me whenever I go. I think I may be buried here, it look like.

Nobody likes to grow old, but I’m afraid I grew old at a very early age. The years went by quickly when I was very young, and all too quickly in the years when I should have been having fun. I became a concerned old man at a very early age. I began to grow gray when I was twenty-one . . .

 

“After three years as one of the Quiz Kids, I was eleven and pretty obnoxious, I’m afraid. When you’re seven years old, these things are tolerable. When you’re eleven and becoming an adolescent, these things become intolerable. It was considered wise that I retire earlier than age fifteen, which was considered the graduation age for the Quiz Kids. I wondered what happened. From then on, I was just plain Bruce Fletcher
.”

 

My big ambition was to go to New York and Columbia University. When a Midwestern hick arrives in New York, you start at the bottom—and I did. I worked in a factory and was amused by the way it was run. Eight ’ the bell rang, all the machines started, and you started working like little machines yourself.

I found a job at a very exclusive men’s club for the social register only. What amused me was something that existed far beyond its time: servants were treated as servants. I cleared twenty-nine dollars a week plus two meals. They were slip-cowish, and this hateful chef sought to give it to the employees. Things became so desperate that one of the servants went up to a club member with some sausage that you wouldn’t feed a puppy that was starving, and he said, “Here,
you
eat this.” Six months was a bellyful, I assure you.

I liked the factory much better, aside from the money. I was glad to be a cog in the wheel. At least it wasn’t humiliating. I felt that I could just go through the day’s work, make enough money, oh, that I could go to the Met three times a week or Carnegie Hall, and I could more or less live my life properly when my time was my own.

I was a young Columbia man while I worked in a cafeteria from 6:30 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. I was much respected by the management, even though I drove the people that I worked with insane, because I had standards they couldn’t cope with. I cannot stand laziness and neglect when I’m breaking my neck and somebody else is holding up the wall. I would scream bloody murder and carry on like a demon and a tyrant.

Through Columbia,
⁸⁰
I got a job as a proofreader at one of the biggest law firms in New York. Whatever the case, the law firm brought me back to the fact that I was not just somebody’s scullery maid. The people either liked me very much or hated me with a purple passion. But I was respected. I’ve been respected on every job I ever had.

It wore out my eyes, just like you had them grated on a grindstone. You have to read small print all day long and keep your eyes glued to it. Also, we had handwritten documents that the lawyers would send in. Some of their handwriting was like Egyptian hieroglyphics. We ran into ridiculous situations. If something went wrong, we would be blamed and heads would roll like cabbage stalks.

I left under circumstances of considerable honor. I was given a farewell luncheon by half the staff of the law firm, meaning the lawyers themselves. I was asked to make a speech and I was much applauded.

The most I made was seventy-five dollars a week. I consider making good money in this life where you can walk into a supermarket and you can fill up the grocery cart with everything you choose without having to add the prices of every item. This should have gone out in the thirties, when there was never enough money to go around. Ha ha. I did in New York what I do now. I add up the prices when I put things in the grocery cart to make sure that the purse matches the fancy.

 

“Since coming back to Chicago in 1968 I have considered myself in retirement. At thirty-six I was no longer young. People hire people at age twenty. They don’t hire people age thirty-six. Oh, I’ve felt old since my twenties
.”

 

I now work in a greenhouse, where we grow nothing but roses. You walk in there and the peace and quiet engulfs you. Privacy is such that you don’t even see the people you work with for hours on end. It is not always pretty. Roses have to have manure put around their roots. So I get my rubber gloves and there I go. Some of the work is rather heavy.

The money isn’t good. The heat in the summer almost kills me. Because there you are under a glass roof where everything is magnified. There’s almost no ventilation, and I am literally drenching with perspiration by the time the day is over and done with. But at least I don’t have somebody sneak up behind you and scream in your ear abuse. I had enough of that.

The reason I like this job is because my mind is at ease all day long, without any tensions or pressures. Physically it keeps me on my toes. I’m a little bit harder and tougher than I was. I’m on my feet all day. I have an employer who’s the best one I ever had in my life. There has never been the slightest disagreement, which is a miracle. Everyone says, “Bruce is hard to get along with.” Bruce is not difficult to get along with if I had intelligent people to work with, where people are not after me or picking on me for that and that and another thing.

I tend to concentrate so much on what I’m doing. That’s why I scare very easily. If anyone comes up behind me and speaks to me very suddenly when I’m at work, I’m concentrating so thoroughly I nearly jump through the roof.

I start at seven fifteen in the morning, and the first thing I do is cut roses. They have to be cut early in the morning. The important thing is to cut them so that they’re rather tightly closed. Bees and butterflies don’t last very long because there’s no nectar and pollen. We cut the roses when they’re so tightly closed that they can’t get at them. If they’re kept in refrigeration and in water with the stems trimmed properly, they’ll be fresh a week later.

Of course, there’s always the telephone. That is a big problem. The greenhouses extend what seem to be miles from the telephone, but you can always hear it, even at a distance. It means a great big long run to get it, and pray that they won’t hang up before you can answer it. That usually means orders to be taken. Sometimes the day gets too much and I feel I want to die on the spot.

When the day is over I go to the library. If it’s a night of operas or concerts, I time myself accordingly. I always do as I did in New York. Unless I had to go stand in the standing room line at the Met, which meant getting there right after work, I’d go home, take a nap, so that I won’t fall asleep at the performance. And then come back and get as much sleep as I possibly can. The day isn’t complete unless I fall asleep with the reading light on and a book in my hand.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. It would be much more convenient if I had cancer and passed away and say, “Oh, how tragic,” and I could have the peace of the grave. I don’t know. I’d love to be back in radio, in the classical music business. I blossomed forth like the roses in the greenhouse . . . I was in my own kind of work.

Peace and quiet and privacy have meant a great deal to me in the years since I made my escape. I didn’t feel free as one of the Quiz Kids. Reporters and photographers poking you and knocking you around and asking ridiculous questions. As a child you can’t cope with these things. I was exploited. I can’t forgive those who exploited me.

I would have preferred to grow up in my own particular fashion. Had I grown up as others did, I would have come out a much better person. In school, if I would fail to answer a question, the teacher would lean forward and say in front of the class, “All right! Just because you were one of the Quiz Kids doesn’t mean that you’re a smart pupil in my class.” I wish it had never happened.

(Softly) But we were unique at the time. The Depression was over. America was the haven and all good things were here. And I was the youngest of the Quiz Kids. Of course, I’m a has-been. The Quiz Kids itself has been a has-been. But it brought forth something that was not a has-been. It achieved history, and that is where I’m proud to have been a part of it. (Laughs.) Ah, the time of retirement has come and I’m in it! I’m in it!