by
Studs Terkel
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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.
I don’t look at housework as a drudgery. People will complain: “Why do I have to scrub floors?” To me, that isn’t the same thing as a man standing there—it’s his livelihood—putting two screws together day after day after day. It would drive anybody nuts. It would drive me wild. That poor man doesn’t even get to see the finished product. I’ll sit here and I’ll cook a pie and I’ll get to see everybody eat it. This is my offering. I think it’s the greatest satisfaction in the world to know you’ve pleased somebody. Everybody has to feel needed. I know I’m needed. I’m doing it for them and they’re doing it for me. And that’s the way it is.
If there were no stock market, I think the economy would be stifled. It would prevent the growth of our companies in marketing the securities they need for their expansion. Look at Commonwealth Edison. It came out just the other day with a million shares. Without the stock market, the companies wouldn’t be able to invest their capital and grow. This is my life and I count myself very fortunate to be in this work. It’s fulfilling.
stockbroker. lol
Nobody believed PCCA53 could stop Bethlehem from strip mining. Ten miles away was a hillside being stripped. Ten miles away is like ten million light years away. What they wanted was a park, a place for their kids. Bethlehem said, “Go to hell. You’re just a bunch of crummy Appalachians. We’re not gonna give you a damn thing.” If I could get that park for them, they would believe it’s possible to do other things.
They really needed a victory. The had lost over and over again, day after day. So I got together twenty, thirty people I saw as leaders. I said, “Let’s get that park.” They said, “We can’t.” I said, “We can. If we let all the big wheels around the country know—the National Council of Churches and everybody start calling up, writing, and hounding Bethlehem, they’ll have to give us the park.” That’s exactly what happened. Bethlehem thought; This is getting to be a pain in the ass. We’ll give ’em the park and they’ll shut up about strip mining. We haven’t shut up on strip mining, but we got the park. Four thousand people from Pike County drove up and watched those bulldozers grading down that park. It was an incredible victory.
You always hated to say anything against the owners because you were made to feel you were lucky to be playing baseball. You should be thankful for it. Never mind you’re not getting a fair shake, you’re lucky to be there and you shouldn’t ever, but never, criticize the major league owners or the administration. One of the first things my coach in college told me when I went into pro baseball: “Don’t be a clubhouse lawyer.”
A clubhouse lawyer was a troublemaker. Don’t make waves, man. Don’t rock the boat. Just go play, do your job, and be happy, you hear? That stuck with me. I was a good boy. There were very few clubhouse lawyers. They were branded right away as being loud-mouthed hotheads who didn’t care about the game. It seems to me a person who speaks out against injustice is not a clubhouse lawyer. He’s just exercising his rights.
Recognition, fame—I think of all the time I stood outside my house in Charlestown, Indiana, a two-tone brick, and I threw a baseball where the different colors met. I hit it over and over and over again. We caught flies where it got too dark to see, just hours and hours and hours and hours . . . that’s what most of us have done.
sweet
It’s been a good life. Maybe I could have done better, have a better record or something like that. But I’ve really had very few regrets over the past twenty years. I can enjoy some of the arts that I had shut myself off from as a kid. Perhaps that is my only regret. The passion for the game was so all-consuming when I was a kid that I blocked myself from music. I cut myself off from a certain broadness of experience. Maybe one has to do that to fully explore what they want to do the most passionately.
I know a lot of pro athletes who have a capacity for a wider experience. But they wanted to become champions. They had to focus themselves on their one thing completely. His primary force when he becomes champion is his ego trip, his desire to excel, to be somebody special. To some degree, he must dehumanize himself. I look forward to a lower key way of living. But it must be physical. I’m sure I would die without it, become a drunk or something.