Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (85 page)

In the evening I like to turn on the news for a half-hour or so. That Watergate’s gettin’ on everybody’s nerves lately. I don’t even understand what it’s about, to tell you the truth. They say politics is politics. I’m tired of it. Tonight I suppose I’ll listen to the White Sox game and lay around. At ten o’clock the Cubs will go on television. They play San Francisco. On Sunday I’ll go to church.

I like baseball. I can listen to baseball on the radio and television and I don’t get tired of it. In the wintertime I love bowling on television. Oh, I love that bowling. I remember one year we went out to Mundelein, Illinois. That’s the only place in my life I saw bowling on the outside. Believe it or not, I bowled on those wooden alleys.

During the summer I used to go fishin’ an awful lot. I had a brother-in-law, he was a great fisherman. For ten long years we spent two or three weeks in Hayward, Wisconsin. We had the nicest times ever. And then come back home and wait for next year. On the first day of December, 1961, he was drivin’ to work and had a heart attack. He smashed into a car, he hit a post, and he ran right into a tavern, and that was that.

Just about ten years ago I went to a golden jubilee wedding. My mother’s only living sister’s daughter. What an affair that turned out to be, somewheres in Elmhurst. Believe it or not, there was a dozen scrap books on two tables. It brought back memories of my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, sisters, and all. And now all of that’s gone. I call some of my relatives now and then. I got quite a number of them. I usually take a little ride to the cemetery to visit my wife’s grave. And I go to the other cemetery a week or so later to see my folks’ grave, and that’s that.

Sunday evenings my landlord—I’ve known him since childhood—he likes to shoot pool. I do too. We don’t shoot pool for nothin‘—a buck a game. Sunday I beat him three in a row and he was cryin’ about it all the way: “You dirty dog.” (Laughs.)

I go to the tavern Saturday or Sunday. I meet my old gang there. There’s another fella, may his soul rest in peace, he died about six months ago. He liked pool very much. I’d beat this guy and he’d start hollerin’, “That nasty old man beat me again.” (Laughs.)

There are times when we make a foursome. Each guy takes a coin, tosses it up, and you pick your partner that way. You lose, you buy the drinks. If you win, you get the drinks for nothin’. There’s conversation in-between. I liked pool when I was a kid and I still like it today. I won’t say I’m a sharpie. I won’t challenge Minnesota Fats, but I’ll play the average guy in the tavern.

Like Sunday, we had a lodge meeting. There was seven of us. Each guy puts two dollars in the pot and we drink the rest of the afternoon with that. I like about three or four shots a week, and three, four games of pool and that’s my evening.

The tavern I go to is just three blocks away. I walk there, but I’m driven home by my landlord. So we don’t have to worry about gettin’ held up. The idea is you gotta be careful so you don’t keep all your money in your wallet. Sometimes you gotta put a ten spot behind the collar. I got held up in this neighborhood on the twenty-second of March about four years ago. I’m glad they didn’t beat me. They took the money but they gave me my wallet back. I was so scared I didn’t even know they put it back in my shirt.

I have two friends that are living on the South Side, just about a block away from the National Biscuit Company. I get a big thrill of it when I go by there. Boy, you should see the nice aroma from that place.

I go by my cousin, he stood up at my wedding. I spend two, three hours with him and he says, “I’m gonna call Whitey.” He’s another retired man. He’s got that goddamn habit. He’s at the park every day in the week watchin’ them pinochle players and card sharks. My cousin calls him up, he comes over, and we start shooting the boloney all over again.

Like I say, when we were young fellas, there used to be one of them amusement parks. I’ll never forget that place as long as I live. I had an occasion to take my girl friend out there. That was about 1920. They had that ride they called the Big Dipper. That thing went up and then down and up again. She had a great big white hat and a great big wide brim and she had what they call a stole, some fur piece. When that goddarn thing went down, she like fainted. I had to hold her. I had to hold her hat. I had to hold her fur piece. I had to hold myself. When we got off, the words she used are not allowed to be printed. Outside of that, she was a sweet kid. About fifty-three years ago. This is what we talk about.

Another man that stood up at my wedding, he’s also retired. But he has asthma or something. Believe it or not, he pulled out a grocery bag about that big and he said, “Joe, here’s what I got to compete with.” He just dumped the contents out and he had about twelve different bottles of medicine. He says, “Joe, you don’t know how lucky you are.”

Sometimes when I get kind of wild, I take a train and go out to Glen Ellyn by my daughter. I surprise her because I hate to impose on people. I got two granddaughters. When I go out there, how they beg me, “Grandpa, stay for dinner.” I say, “Not this time. I’m goin’ home by train the same way I came out.” Occasionally I stay there.

There’s two Slovenian families across the street. They’re brother-in-laws. They love to come to the tavern with their wives and have a drink or two. One of them got a real beautiful voice and he loves to sing. So we start singing in the tavern and their wives join in. Believe it or not, we dig up songs that are fifty years old. (He sings.)

(He pauses, stops.) Somehow or other, I’m losin’ out on that song. But that’s all right.

I go to fires every once in a while. That fire we had on Milwaukee Avenue about three months ago, that was supposed to start in the morning. I was there at four o‘clock that afternoon. I was surprised that goddarned all the windows was broke and yet the smoke was comin’ out there heavy as hell, but you don’t see the flame. They had about thirty units there. You get the news on the radio. I was gonna go to that Midway Airport accident. My two friends, they said, “Joe, you can’t see nothin’ there no more. That’s all cleaned up, leveled off and everything.” They work fast on that.

I tell you what I did see. In 1915 I was workin’ as an errand boy. I saw that Eastland disaster about two minutes after it happened. I was right on the bridge when it toppled over. You should hear the screams. I was chased off. That was that Western Electric picnic outing. Seven hundred or something was drowned.

I usually go to the Exchange Bank downtown just to get myself a nasty headache. I have a brother there. He makes up packages of dollar bills in a canvas bag and puts a wire around. One-dollar bills come four hundred in a package. Sometimes he’s got stacks about two foot long and two foot wide and three foot high. You can imagine he’s got a couple of million there. That’s the headache.

This coming December, it’ll be three years I made the trip to California. I got a sister out there. I stayed out there over the Christmas holidays and we went to Disneyland. Believe it or not, honest to God, I didn’t think such beautiful things existed in this world of ours. It was somethin’.

I’m hopin’ to be around here for at least five more years. I don’t care. Twenty more years? Oh God, no. When people get old, they get a little bit childish.

I have a very, very good, darn good memory. I’ll tell you another one. On the eighteenth of June, 1918, I went to a dance. Another guy and me. There was two girls dancin’. They were sisters. He grabbed one, so I grabbed the other. You know what they played. (Sings) Smile a while, you bid me sad adieu. I kissed that girl on the cheek. She told the world and me, “If I don’t marry you, Joe, I’ll never marry another person in this world.” She was seventy years old last week. I called her up, wished her a happy birthday, and that’s all. I could’ve married her, but—

I know a lot of songs. Sometimes when I’m washin’ dishes, that’s when the old time songs come to you. (He sings.)

That’s all. That’s over. There’s more I know. I pride myself with that. Many of my friends will tell you, “If there’s anything you want to know, ask Joe.”

 

My first job was in a dog kennel, cleaning up the shit. It was just for a couple of days. My real first job was in a factory. I was hired to sweep the shit off the floor. They saw I was a good worker and made me a machine operator. I was eighteen and a conscientious objector. I told ’em at the factory I didn’t want to do any war work, any kind of contract with any military institution. I tried to adhere to my politics and my morality. Since that time and through different jobs I’ve been led into compromises that have corrupted me.

They said, “You don’t have to do any war stuff.” They were just not telling me what it was, figuring I’d be cool. I was going along with it because I wanted to keep my job. I didn’t want a confrontation. I was punching out some kind of styrofoam. It was for some burglar alarm or something weird. You twist it around and ream it out. I was getting really angry about it. It’s just not worthy work for a person to be doing. I had a real battle with myself. If I had any real guts, I’d say, “Fuck it,” and walk out. I would be free. All this emotional tension was making me a prisoner. If I would just get up, I would put this down and say, “This is bogus, it’s bullshit, it’s not worthy. I’m a
human being
. A man, a woman shouldn’t have to spend time doing this”—and just walk out. I’d be liberated. But I didn’t.

One afternoon I was sorting out the dies and hangin’ ’em on a pipe rack. In order to make room to hang more up, I had to push ’em like you push clothes in a closet. It made a horrible kind of screeching sound—metal on metal. I was thinking to myself—somewhat dramatically—This is like the scream of the Vietnamese people that are being napalmed. So I walked over to the foreman and I said, “Look, no longer is it enough not to do war work. The whole plant has just not to do any kind of work associating with killing people of any kind. Or I’m not gonna work at all.” It was sort of like a little strike. I said, “I’m going home.” He said, “Yeah, come back in a day or so.” So I came back in a day or so and some high-up guy said, “Maybe you better look for another job.” I said, “Okay.” That was my first real job.

I worked in VISTA for a couple of years. I got assigned as a youth worker, with no real supervision, no activities. I just collected my paycheck, cashed it, and lived. I suppose I did as good as anyone else with a structured job. Freeing myself of a lot of thought habits, guilt, and repressiveness. Getting better acquainted with my own feelings, my own sensations, my own body, my own life. After they fired me, I worked with guerrilla theater. I worked for a leftist printer. It didn’t work out. I didn’t have a car, didn’t have money. Couldn’t get a job. Not that I was really trying. Finally I was recommended for a job as copy boy on a Chicago paper.

I had very long hair at that time. It was halfway down my back. In order to get the job, I tied it up in such a way that it was all down inside my shirt. From the front it looked like a hillbilly greaser kind of haircut. The kind like Johnny Cash has. I borrowed some ritzy looking clothes, advertising agency clothes.

I went down to the paper and I talked to this guy and told him how much I wanted to be a journalist. It sounded like some Dick and Jane textbook. A lot of people like to pretend that’s the way the world is. He liked me. He thought I was bright and hired me. I had a tie on.

Within a couple of weeks after working there, I reverted to my natural clothes. I was bringing organic walnuts and organic raisins and giving it away. Coming to work was for me a kind of missionary kind of thing. Originally I was gonna get some money and leave, but I had to get involved. So I tried to relate.

After a couple of weeks, the editor called me into this office. He said, “Read this little speech I wrote and tell me what you think of it.” It was just a bunch of platitudes. Objectivity was the one thing he mentioned. I started telling him stuff: I think a newspaper should be this, that, and the other thing. We talked about an hour. I thought we were in fine agreement, that he was eating it up. I was paraphrasing exactly what he said. In the business world, you gotta play the game. I was leading around to asking for a scholarship.

We were exchanging rhetoric about how wonderful a newspaper is as a free institution and all this bullshit.
All of a sudden
he said, “I was walking through the office last week and I said, ‘Who is that dirty, scummy, disgusting filthy creature over there?’ And I was told that’s one of our new copy boys. I was told he was bright and energetic.”