by
Studs Terkel
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You got some guys that are uptight, and they’re not sociable. It’s too rough. You pretty much stay to yourself. You get involved with yourself. You dream, you think of things you’ve done. I drift back continuously to when I was a kid and what me and my brothers did. The things you love most are the things you drift back into.
Lots of times I worked from the time I started to the time of the break and I never realized I had even worked. When you dream, you reduce the chances of friction with the foreman or with the next guy.
It don’t stop. It just goes and goes and goes. I bet there’s men who have lived and died out there, never seen the end of that line. And they never will—because it’s endless. It’s like a serpent. It’s just all body, no tail. It can do things to you . . . (Laughs.)
I don’t understand how come more guys don’t flip. Because you’re nothing more than a machine when you hit this type of thing. They give better care to that machine than they will to you. They’ll have more respect, give more attention to that machine. And you know this. Somehow you get the feeling that the machine is better than you are. (Laughs.)
You really begin to wonder. What price do they put on me? Look at the price they put on the machine. If that machine breaks down, there’s somebody out there to fix it right away. If I break down, I’m just pushed over to the other side till another man takes my place. The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running.
Is the automobile worth it?
What it drains out of a human being, the car ain’t worth it. But I think of a certain area of proudness. You see them on that highway, you don’t look and see what model it is or whose car it is. I put my labor in it. And somebody just like me put their area of work in it. It’s got to be an area of proudness.
Some of the major ports like Calcutta, Karachi, we stay eight days, twelve days picking up cargo. I’d stay aboard ship. I’d go to movies almost every night ’cause I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble. I was just a poor ass seaman. (Laughs.) I’d do other things, naturally. (Laughs.) There’s always women. (Laughs.)
“Women-chasing was my weakness. You can love your wife, but a man is like a dog. He’ll chase anything with a skirt on it. Drop the skirt, he’ll still chase. I’ve never cared for women singly. There’s always two or three at a time. I found in traveling the most beautiful women are less sexy than others. In India, they’re beautiful, delicate. Chinese women, delicate—like a piece of porcelain. In bed? Nothing. In these countries, you find a great deal of prostitutes, because they need it for survival. The seaman doesn’t meet the better class, the families. His time is limited.”
A stop at the Wisconsin state line, a place to eat. Big trucks stop there. Maybe meet a bunch that have been in the steel mill all night. Coffee-up, tell all the stories, about how badly you’re treated in the steel mill, tell about the different drunks that try to get under your wheels. Then move towards your destination and make the delivery at seven ’ in the morning. We’re talking about thirteen hours already. My routine would be to drop two days like this and not come home. Halfway back from Milwaukee take a nap in the cab at a truck stop. You use the washroom, the facilities, you call your dispatcher in Gary, and pick up another load. Went home for a day of sleep, wash up, get rejuvenated, live like a human being for a day, come back to the mill after supper, and be off again. During the last ten years almost everybody bought a sleeper truck. It has facilities behind the seat. If you were to get a hotel room every night you were on the road, why, you’d be out of business shortly.
evocative
In my younger days I used to be a wizard, I used to really roll. I could spin a car with one hand and never miss a hole. When I got in a new car, I thought it was my car. It was a customer’s car and I was only going upstairs. I know it wasn’t mine, ‘cause at that time I didn’t even own a car. And when I owned a car, I couldn’t own over a hundred-dollar car. So it was a great feelin’ to drive anybody’s new car. When I’d take that car to drive, I thought it was just a dream car.
It is a very big feeling about a man when he drives in with that car and he get out and he might be in his tuxedo. As a younger man, when a customer’d come in, I’d say, “Gee, that’s a beautiful car, sir.” I’ll just go sit in that car, maybe I’ll just back it up a couple of times. ‘Cause we was never supposed to take the car off the premises, which I never did myself. ’Course, when you got five or six men there, it might be one might go off.
I was sittin’ in that guy-with-the-tuxedo car. He got out of it, him an’ his girl friend goin’ night clubbing. And that car smelling real good with cologne and the windows be up. And I just be looking in that car, you know, the music be up. I’d pull back in the lot, back to the front, maybe I’ll go back in the stall. I’d say, “Why can’t I be a rich man, get me a lot of money, get me a new car?” ’Cause I rode an old car for eighteen years. The feeling of sitting in that rich man’s car, that’s a great feeling. Different feeling between the workingman’s car and the rich man’s car. It’s something strong in your mind that someday you may get one. It was a hundred to one that you would get it unless somebody will you something or you would be a stickup man.
valet story inspo
After twenty-five, thirty years I could drive any car like a baby, like a woman change her baby’s diaper. I could handle that car with one hand. I had a lot of customers would say, “How you do this? The way you go around this way?” I’d say, “Just the way you bake a cake, miss, I can handle this car.” A lotta ladies come to you and a lot of gentlemen come to you, say, “Wow! You can drive!” I say, “Thank you, ma‘am.” They say, “How long you been doin’ it?” I say, “Thirty years. I started when I’m sixteen and I’m still doin’ it.”
All day is my car. I drive my car to work, and when I get out of my car, it’s a customer’s car. When I leave work at night, I’m in my car. When I get to work in the morning, it’s the customer’s car. All my waking hours is cars. When I go out, my wife drives. I get in the back seat and play with the kids. I drove all week, I tell her, why don’t you drive? If I have an argument on the job, I never discuss it with my wife because she has enough problems, with the kids. And I’m too bushed.
I was selling a photocopy machine for $1,250. My commission was $300. The total value of the machine was $480. I thought, Jesus Christ, there’s something wrong here. If it costs $480, why can’t it be sold for $480—for as small a margin of profit as possible, not for as much profit as possible? I’m looking toward a utopian society, ain’t I? I didn’t feel proud of myself.
I was one of their soldiers. I read the sales manuals. If the customer says this, you say that. Turn him around, get him in the palm of your hand, and —boom!—get him to sign on the dotted line. You give him bullshit. You wiggle, you finagle, you sell yourself, and you get him to sign. Pow! you won a round. The next day is another round. What the hell am I doing? I don’t enjoy it. My marriage is turning sour. I’m making good money. I have a company car. This is what my wife wants, but I feel bad. I begin to question things. It blew the whole marriage.
I never talk about it to anyone. People would think I’m a communist or I’m going crazy. A person that’s making money shouldn’t question the source of it. I always kept it to myself. This was the American Dream. This is what my father was always pounding into my head.
I was one of the organizers here (laughs) when the union came in. I was as anti-union in the beginning as I am union now. Coming from a small farming community in Wisconsin, I didn’t know what a union was all about. I didn’t understand the labor movement at all. In school you’re shown the bad side of it.
Before the union came in, all I did was do my eight hours, collect my paycheck, and go home, did my housework, took care of my daughter, and went back to work. I had no outside interests. You just lived to live. Since I became active in the union, I’ve become active in politics, in the community, in legislative problems. I’ve been to Washington on one or two trips. I’ve been to Springfield. That has given me more of an incentive for life.
I see the others, I’m sad. They just come to work, do their work, go home, take care of their home, and come back to work. Their conversation is strictly about their family and meals. They live each day for itself and that’s about it.
It would be very tiring if I had to say, “Would you like a cocktail?” and say that over and over. So I come out different for my own enjoyment. I would say, “What’s exciting at the bar that I can offer?” I can’t say, “Do you want coffee?” Maybe I’ll say, “Are you in the mood for coffee?” Or, “The coffee sounds exciting.” Just rephrase it enough to make it interesting for me. That would make them take an interest. It becomes theatrical and I feel like Mata Hari and it intoxicates me.
People imagine a waitress couldn’t possibly think or have any kind of aspiration other than to serve food. When somebody says to me, “You’re great, how come you’re just a waitress?” Just a waitress. I’d say, “Why, don’t you think you deserve to be served by me?” It’s implying that he’s not worthy, not that I’m not worthy. It makes me irate. I don’t feel lowly at all. I myself feel sure. I don’t want to change the job. I love it.