by
Studs Terkel
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What really did it for me was one call I made. I went through the routine. The guy listened patiently and he said, “I really would like to help.” He was blind himself! That really got me—the tone of his voice. I could just tell he was a good person. He was willing to help even if he couldn’t read the paper. He was poor, I’m sure of that. It was the worst ghetto area. I apologized and thanked him. That’s when I left for the ladies’ room. I was nauseous. Here I was sitting here telling him a bunch of lies and he was poor and blind and willing to help. Taking his money.
I got sick in the stomach. I prayed a lot as I stayed there in the restroom. I said, “Dear God, there must be something better for me. I never harmed anyone in my life, dear Lord.” I went back to the phone room and I just sat there. I didn’t make any calls. The supervisor called me out and wanted to know why I was sitting there. I told him I wasn’t feeling good, and I went home.
I have a daughter in college. If she goes through to June, she’ll have her master’s degree. She’s in medicine. For her, it’ll be either teaching or research. As she teaches, she can work for her doctorate. She’s so far ahead of me, I couldn’t . . .
I don’t look down on my job in any way. I couldn’t say I despise myself for doing it. I feel better at it than I did at the office. I’m more free. And, yeah—it’s meaningful to society. (Laughs.)
“I was a Pullman porter for God knows how many years. That’s why I got into this so easily. When I was first employed, the porter status was very low. Everybody called him George. We got together and got a placard printed with our name on it and posted it on each end of the car: Car served by Louis M. Hayward. (Chuckles softly.) So we could politely refer everybody to this. When I first went on the road, the porter was the first accused of anything: wallet missing—the porter got it. (Dry chuckle.) A lot of them went on pensions. A pretty good pension—from a black man’s standard. A white man might not think it’s so hot. Others have jobs in banks—as messengers.”
The job makes those who aren’t really bad bigots worse after a while. You could take a tender white boy, give him a badge and a gun, and man! he becomes George Wallace over night. You have to change the rationale by which they work. We must have a system where they get points for helping people rather than hurting them.
You can take the worst bigot in the world, and if he works in a steel mill, he can’t take it out on anything but a piece of steel. If these white guys show they can’t work with black folks, put ‘em in an auto pound. Let ’em guard the lake, put ‘em on factory detail. Don’t take their job away from ’em. They gotta eat, they gotta feed their families.
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.
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