by Studs Terkel
I always wanted to be a writer. My mother was a writer. Sold a couple of short stories. I enjoy reading—thought I might enjoy writing. I thought a little of her talent might rub off on me. Apparently it didn’t. Her desire rubbed off on me, though. (Soft chuckle.) Just an idea . . . Most people like to say how rich and rewarding their jobs are. I can’t say that. (As he laughs softly, he walks off toward the washroom.)
POSTSCRIPT: He is a widower and has five grandchildren. He lives with his two unmarried sisters; one is working, the other is on a pension.
LINCOLN JAMES
He works in a rendering and glue factory. He’s been at it for thirty-six years. “A lot of people refer to me as a maintenance man. But I call it a factory mechanic.”
Rendering is where you get the scrap—fat and bones—from the butcher shops and cook them into a grease. We receive things people normally don’t want. Years ago, we principally supplied soap factories. But today they make all different products from the residue. Tallows, glycerine, bone meal, poultry feed, fertilizer. The bones usually go to glue. Out of the marrow of the bones is where the glue comes from. People have no interest whatsoever in what they throw out. This rendering process takes it and makes millions of dollars off of it. They export this grease to foreign countries. That’s our big business nowadays.
They bring it in by truck. It’s unloaded an conveyors. Bones go one place, the fats go another. They take it through a cooking process and this is where we get the glue. It may start out like water, but when it cooks over and over, it gets almost like a syrup. It’s just a thickening process.
I started out as a laborer. I became an oiler and from that to repairman. When I labored, I transported the meat and the bones after they were separated. Women were doing that at the time. Today it’s automation. No women now. They were eliminated.
The odor was terrible, but I got used to it. It was less annoying when you stayed right in it. When you left for a week or so, a vacation, you had to come back and get used to the thing all over again. I’ve had people that say, “How do you stand it?” I say it’s like anything else. I don’t say you get exactly used to it, but it does get less annoying in time. It’s not a stink, but it’s not sweet either. It’s a different odor altogether. Whenever meat lays around for a few days it smells like that. But once you cook it, it changes to a different odor. I can’t explain . . .
I sometimes have a little fun with some of the guys. I say, “I work in one of the filthiest places in Chicago, I believe.” Some of ‘em work in tanneries and they say, “Your place is sweet smellin’ besides a tannery.” Some of the others kid me; “How do you survive it?” I say, “Did you know the percentage of stuff that we produce here you use it every day?” They says, “Oh? What?” I says, “You brush your teeth with toothpaste?” “Yes.” “You have glycerine in your toothpaste. We produce that.” They says, “Really?” “Do you eat chickens?” “Yes.” “Well, we produce the poultry food, and this is the residue of some of the stuff you see laying around here looking so bad and smelling so bad.” (Laughs.) They just look at me, mouth open. I say, “I know you have in time past kissed good with lipstick.” “Oh yeah.” “Well, look man, we used to supply one of the biggest lipstick factories of all the grease they use. Now don’t kiss no more girls.” (Laughs.)
I sometimes says, “I really don’t think you know what’s happening.” I’ll tell ’em about soaps, the stuff they use to fatten the chickens, the glue you use to lick the stamps to go on your letter. (Laughs.) We manufacture here what you use daily.
It’s all purified, of course. (Pause.) But you just think about what all this is. Could any part of this stink possibly be used in an individual’s life? You wonder sometime. But you search it down and you find it do. Yes, yes. Many other things, if you really knew from where it come, you probably wouldn’t be very interested. I had some years in a packinghouse and I see some of the stuff manufactured and I don’t relish it too much myself. I happen to be around and know what goes on.
You have to wear rubber gloves, but there’d still be an odor to your hand. You had to wash it real good in order not to smell it when you were eating lunch. The risk of infections and stuff are pretty great because of this contaminated stuff. They provide employees with tetanus shots every so often. They never had too many infections. Of course, there was a few.
Accidents wasn’t too frequent, but sometimes they got burns. Oh yes, we’ve had some. If you puts the meat in the pot and you would cook this the tank. Pull the residue out—why, we’ve had some guys get burns. It seldom, if ever, get the face. It hits the chest, down to the middle leg length. It lasted for months before some employees were able to return to work.
I’ve known them to have six hundred people here. Now they’re down to less than three hundred due to automation. Where they used to have five people separating the rubbish and things, they have only one or two doing it now. I’m assigned to breakdowns on these hydraulic pumps. If a lot of it goes bad overnight, I have to get ’em going that day. It’s not the same routine every day. You never know.
This plant runs seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. They have a scheduled five-day week. But many of them work six days and some of them seven days. Sometimes ten hours a day, sometimes twelve hours a day. In some instances, the overtime is compulsory. The equipment’s gotta be used.
You speak of my working life? I like what I’m doing. I never been laid off in thirty-six years. I look forward to going to work. I’d be lost if I wasn’t working. But I guess after you put in so many years . . .
Some of the younger help, they seems to have the attitude, “I won’t be here long.” They say, “How long you worked here?” I say, “Oh, somewhat longer than you all.” They says, “I don’t want nobody’s job that long.” They don’t feel like coming to work, they take the day off. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, it don’t make no difference. I would think they went out and had a big time. It doesn’t seem to bother them to take a couple days off. Wherein it was a rare thing for me to lose a day, years back. I don’t lose any time now.
I still think it’s a wonderful thing to be employed. I don’t know how I’d feel without it. (Pause.) But I’d like the experience. After so many years—I would just like the experience of not having to go to work. I look forward to retirement in another three, four years. I don’t know what it would really turn out to be . . .
MAGGIE HOLMES
What bugs me now, since I’m on welfare, is people saying they give you the money for nothin. When I think back what we had to come through, up from the South, comin’ here. The hard work we had to do. It really gets me, when I hear people . . . It do somethin’ to me. I think violence.
I think what we had to work for. I used to work for $1.50 a week. This is five days a week, sometimes six. If you live in the servant quarter, your time is never off, because if they decide to have a party at night, you gotta come out. My grandmother, I remember when she used to work, we’d get milk and a pound of butter. I mean this was pay. I’m thinkin’ about what my poor parents worked for, gettin’ nothing. What do the white think about when they think? Do they ever think about what they would do?
She had worked as a domestic, hotel chambermaid, and as “kitchen help in cafes” for the past twenty-five years, up North and down South. She lives with her four children.
When it come to housework, I can’t do it now. I can’t stand it, cause it do somethin’ to my mind. They want you to clean the house, want you to wash, even the windows, want you to iron. You not supposed to wash no dishes. You ain’t supposed to make no beds up. Lots of ’em try to sneak it in on you, think you don’t know that. So the doorbell rings and I didn’t answer to. The bell’s ringin’ and I’m still doin’ my work. She ask me why I don’t answer the bell. I say; “Do I come here to be a butler?” And I don’t see myself to be no doormaid. I came to do some work and I’m gonna do my work. When you end up, you’s nursemaid, you’s cook. They puts all this on you. If you want a job to cl
eanin’, you ask for just cleanin’. She wants you to do in one day what she hasn’t did all year.
Now this bug me: the first thing she gonna do is pull out this damn rubber thing—just fittin’ for your knees. Knee pads—like you’re workin’ in the fields, like people pickin’ cotton. No mop or nothin’. That’s why you find so many black women here got rheumatism in their legs, knees. When you gets on that cold floor, I don’t care how warm the house is, you can feel the cold on the floor, the water and stuff. I never see nobody on their knees until I come North. In the South, they had mops. Most times, if they had real heavy work, they always had a man to come in. Washin’ windows, that’s a man’s job. They don’t think nothin’ about askin’ you to do that here. They don’t have no feeling that that’s what bothers you. I think to myself; My God, if I had somebody come and do my floors, clean up for me, I’d appreciate it. They don’t say nothin’ about it. Act like you haven’t even done anything. They has no feelin’s.
I worked for one old hen on Lake Shore Drive. You remember that big snow they had there?24 Remember when you couldn’t get there? When I gets to work she says; “Call the office.” She complained to the lady where I got the job, said I was late to work. So I called. So I said, in the phone (Shouts), “What do you want with me? I got home four black, beautiful kids. Before I go to anybody’s job in the morning I see that my kids are at school. I gonna see that they have warm clothes on and they fed.” I’m lookin’ right at the woman I’m workin’ for. (Laughs.) When I get through the phone I tell this employer, “That goes for you too. The only thing I live for is my kids. There’s nothin’, you and nobody else.” The expression on her face: What is this? (Laughs.) She thought I was gonna be like (mimics “Aunt Jemima”): “Yes ma’am, I’ll try to get here a little early.” But it wasn’t like that. (Laughs.)
When I come in the door that day she told me pull my shoes off. I said, “For what? I can wipe my feet at the door here, but I’m not gettin’ out of my shoes, it’s cold.” She look at me like she said: Oh my God, what I got here? (Laughs.) I’m knowin’ I ain’t gonna make no eight hours here. I can’t take it.
She had everything in there snow white. And that means work, believe me. In the dining room she had a blue set, she had sky-blue chairs. They had a bedroom with pink and blue. I look and say, “I know what this means.” It means sho’ ’nough—knees. I said, “I’m gonna try and make it today, if I can make it.” Usually when they’re so bad, you have to leave.
I ask her where the mop is. She say she don’t have no mop. I said. “Don’t tell me you mop the floor on your knees. I know you don’t.” They usually hide these mops in the clothes closet. I go out behind all these clothes and get the mop out. (Laughs.) They don’t get on their knees, but they don’t think nothin’ about askin’ a black woman. She says, “All you—you girls . . . ” She stop. I say, “All you niggers, is that what you want to say?” She give me this stupid look. I say, “I’m glad you tellin’ me that there’s more like me.” (Laughs.) I told her, “You better give me my money and let me go, ’cause I’m gettin’ angry.” So I made her give me my carfare and what I had worked that day.
Most when you find decent work is when you find one that work themselves. They know what it’s like to get up in the morning and go to work. In the suburbs they ain’t got nothin’ to do. They has nothin’ else to think about. Their mind’s just about blowed.
It’s just like they’re talkin’ about mental health. Poor people’s mental health is different than the rich white. Mine could come from a job or not havin’ enough money for my kids. Mine is from me being poor. That don’t mean you’re sick. His sickness is from money, graftin’ where he want more. I don’t have any. You live like that day to day, penny to penny.
I worked for a woman, her husband’s a judge. I cleaned the whole house. When it was time for me to go home, she decided she wants some ironing. She goes in the basement, she turn on the air conditioner. She said, “I think you can go down in the basement and finish your day out. It’s air conditioned.” I said, “I don’t care what you got down there, I’m not ironing. You look at that slip, it says cleanin’. Don’t say no ironin’.” She wanted me to wash the walls in the bathroom. I said, “If you look in that telephone book they got all kinds of ads there under house cleanin’.” She said the same thing as the other one, “All you girts—” I said same thing I said to the other one; “You mean niggers.” (Laughs.)
They ever call you by your last name?
Oh God, they wouldn’t do that. (Laughs.)
Do you call her by her last name?
Most time I don’t call her, period. I don’t say anything to her. I don’t talk nasty to nobody, but when I go to work I don’t talk to people. Most time they don’t like what you’re gonna say. So I keeps quiet.
Most of her jobs were “way out in the suburbs. You get a bus and you ride till you get a subway. After you gets to Howard,25 you gets the El. If you get to the end of the line and there’s no bus, they pick you up. I don’t like to work in the city, ‘cause they don’t want to pay you nothin’. And these old buildings are so nasty. It takes so much time to clean ’em. They are not kept up so good, like suburbs. Most of the new homes out there, it’s easier to clean.”
A commonly observed phenomenon: during the early evening hour, trains, crowded, predominantly by young white men carrying attaché cases, pass trains headed in the opposite direction, crowded, predominantly by middle-aged black women carrying brown paper bags. Neither group, it appears, glances at the other.
“We spend most of the time ridin’. You get caught goin’ out from the suburbs at nighttime, man, you’re really sittin’ there for hours. There’s nothin’ movin’. You got a certain hour to meet trains. You get a transfer, you have to get that train. lt’s a shuffle to get in and out of the job. If you miss that train at five o’clock, what time you gonna get out that end? Sometime you don’t get home till eight o’clock . . . ”
You don’t feel like washin’ your own window when you come from out there, scrubbin’. If you work in one of them houses eight hours, you gotta come home do the same thing over . . . you don’t feel like . . . (sighs softly) . . . tired. You gotta come home, take care of your kids, you gotta cook, you gotta wash. Most of the time, you gotta wash for the kids for somethin’ to wear to school. You gotta clean up, ’cause you didn’t have time in the morning. You gotta wash and iron and whatever you do, nights. You be so tired, until you don’t feel like even doin’ nothin’.
You get up at six, you fix breakfast for the kids, you get them ready to go on to school. Leave home about eight. Most of the time I make biscuits for my kids, cornbread you gotta make. I don’t mean the canned kind. This I don’t call cookin’, when you go in that refrigerator and get some beans and drop ’em in a pot. And TV dinners, they go stick ‘em in the stove and she say she cooked. This is not cookin’.
And she’s tired. Tired from doin’ what? You got a washing dryer, you got an electric sweeper, anything at fingertips. All she gotta do is unfroze ‘em, dump ’em in the pot, and she’s tired! I go to the store, I get my vegetables, greens, I wash ‘em. I gotta pick ’em first. I don’t eat none of that stuff, like in the cans. She don’t do that, and she says she’s tired.
When you work for them, when you get in that house in the morning, boy, they got one arm in their coat and a scarf on their head. And when you open that door, she shoots by you, she’s gone. Know what I mean? They want you to come there and keep the kids and let them get out. What she think about how am I gonna do? Like I gets tired of my kids too. I’d like to go out too. It bugs you to think that they don’t have no feelin’s about that.
Most of the time I work for them and they be out. I don’t like to work for ’em when they be in the house so much. They don’t have no work to do. All they do is get on the telephone and talk about one another. Make you sick. I’ll go and close the door. They’re all the same, everybody’s house is the same. You think they rehearse it . . .
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When I work, only thing I be worryin’ about is my kids. I just don’t like to leave ’em too long. When they get out of school, you wonder if they out on the street. The only thing I worry is if they had a place to play in easy. I always call two, three times. When she don’t like you to call, I’m in a hurry to get out of there. (Laughs.) My mind is gettin’ home, what are you gonna find to cook before the stores close.
This Nixon was sayin’ he don’t see nothin’ wrong with people doin’ scrubbin’. For generations that’s all we done. He should know we wants to be doctors and teachers and lawyers like him. I don’t want my kids to come up and do domestic work. It’s degrading. You can’t see no tomorrow there. We done this for generation and generation—cooks and butlers all your life. They want their kids to be lawyers, doctors, and things. You don’t want ‘em in no cafes workin’ . . .
When they say about the neighborhood we live in is dirty, why do they ask me to come and clean their house? We, the people in the slums, the same nasty women they have come to their house in the suburbs every day. If these women are so filthy, why you want them to clean for you? They don’t go and clean for us. We go and clean for them.
I worked one day where this white person did some housework. I’m lookin’ at the difference how she with me and her. She had a guilt feeling towards that lady. They feel they shouldn’t ask them to do this type of work, but they don’t mind askin’ me.