by Studs Terkel
“I won a scholarship to Francis Parker.68 My mother wanted me to go there. They said, ”Nobody will ever know you’re on scholarship.“ I don’t think anybody there didn’t know I was there that way. I never got invited to any of the parties. They just put up with you because you were there. Got in a lot of fights. Ended up paying for a window. After two years I quit and went to Lane Techt69 where I really wanted to go.”
I had my first full-time job as a tractor mechanic for International Harvester. They had an opening for an industrial designer. I studied that at IIT. I was to start at eighty-five hundred dollars a year, plus they were gonna pay for my education. I was supposed to start Monday at eight. They called me about six thirty in the morning and said they’ve got a guy with a college degree and ten years’ experience. I said, “You need tractor mechanics, I’ll take that job.” I bullshitted my way into it. They gave me a test which was ridiculous. Instead of making eighty-five hundred as an Industrial designer, I was making ten five to start as a tractor mechanic. (Laughs.)
I worked there for about a year. I was getting maybe a couple of hours’ sleep. I was putting in about a twenty-hour day. I was just rundown completely. I was in the hospital for three months. Had a relapse, was back in for another month. This is when I did a lot of thinking. I decided to go into business for myself. I rented a place for forty-five dollars a month and I opened up a repair shop for motorcycles, lawn mowers, and bicycles. That was nine years ago. I was about seventeen.
This drive I had—maybe it went back to Francis Parker. Seeing those kids drive up in chauffer-driven cars—what I thought were the finer things. I wanted to make something of myself. I felt if I worked hard while I was young, I could take it easier later on. If I’d come from a wealthy family, I probably never would have had this drive. The other kids were laying around at the beach and screwing around. Here I was already in business. I felt I really accomplished something.
My interest in motorcycles was for the money originally. I saw this was going to be a big field. Later, business becomes a game. Money is the kind of way you keep score. How else you gonna see yourself go up? If you’re successful in business, it means you’re making money. It gets to the point where you’ve done all the things you want to do. There’s nothing else you want to buy any more. You get your thrill out of seeing the business grow. Just building it bigger and bigger . . .
When I started making money I just went crazy. I bought a limousine and had a chauffeur. I bought two Cadillacs and a Corvette. Bought a condominium in Skokie. I just bought a home out in Evanston. I’m building a ranch out in Arizona. Once you get somethin, it’s not as important as it was. You need something else to keep going. I could never retire. It gets inside you. If you don’t progress every day, you feel you’ve wasted it. That’s a day you’ll never get back.
You get enemies in the business, especially if you’re successful. Ones that have grown up and started with you. You want to be liked and you want to help people. I’ve found out you can’t. It’s not appreciated. They never thank you. If you’re successful in business, you’re around phonies all the time. There’s always some guy slappin’ you on the back, tryin’ to get you to buy something from him or lend him money.
You remember old friends and good times. This relationship is gone. The fun you used to have. They’re envious of what you have. They wonder, why they didn’t do it. When I opened the repair shop in Old Town I was paying my partner $250 a week. I gave him a car and helped him with his tuition in college. Someone offered him double what I paid. I said, “If you go, there’s no comin’ back.” So he left. We grew up together, went to grammar school. I lived with him. There’s no loyalty when it comes to money.
I’m younger than most of the guys who work for me, but I feel older. It’s like a big family. I have the feeling they’re not here for the money. They want to help me out. They respect me. They feel that what I’m doing is, in the end, gonna work out for them. I don’t like an employee that comes in and it’s a cut and dried deal: “I want so much a week,” and walks out at five ’.
I usually get out of here at one ’ in the morning. I go home and eat dinner at two. I do my best thinking at night. I can’t fall asleep until seven in the morning. I turn the TV on. I don’t even pay attention to it. They got the all-night movies. You actually feel like an idiot. I just sit there in the living room, making notes, trying to put down things for the next day to remember. I plan ahead for a month. Maybe I’ll lay down in bed about four in the morning. If something comes in my head, I’ll get up and start writing it. If I get three, four hour’s sleep, I’m okay.
That’s when I come up with my ideas. That’s when I put this Electrocycle idea together. I sold Sun Electric on the idea of building them for me. Then I sold Evel Knievel on the idea of putting his name on it. He’s on nationwide TV.
Knievel is a good example of doing something for fame and money. He takes all the beatings and breaks himself like he does because he feels it’s that important to be famous and make money. When you really enjoy something, it doesn’t seem like work. Everybody in the world could do something if they wanted to. I guess there’s some people that don’t want to do anything. If they could, they wouldn’t be fighting with each other.
The world is full of people who don’t have the guts or the balls to go out on their own. People want to be in business for themselves, but they don’t want to take the chance. That’s what separates me from the majority of people. If I’ve got an idea, I’ll go ahead and put everything on the line.
A lot of young people are getting into business now. The shops and bars and places where young people go. Who knows better than a young person what’s gonna attract young people? Companies are beginning to realize this.
The hardest problem I had was getting mechanics. If I hired an older guy, a good mechanic, I couldn’t tell him what to do. He might have been doing it for twenty years, and he didn’t want to hear from a kid like me. But if I took a young kid who knew nothing but had ambition, I could make a better man for me out of him. This is what the bigger companies are finding out.
What motivates a lot of young people who work here is they see somebody like me who made it. They think, Christ! What the hell’s wrong with me? When the article came out about me in the paper,70 Jesus! I had so many calls from young people, “This is great! I’m gonna get my ass going.” I had a call from a sixteen-year-old kid. He felt he really wanted to do things. I was amazed at the number of young people who read it.
A guy I went to grammar school with—hadn’t seen him since sixth grade —was out in the hall here. His brother has cancer. He was telling me how happy they both were to read something like this. It gave ’em a boost. They had known somebody that had made a success.
This hippie deal and flower child, I don’t believe in giving anybody any-thing. I think everybody should work. The world problem that bothers me more than anything is the attitude of younger people. The opportunities they have, and no desire. I hate to see anybody that feels the world owes them a living. All this welfare. The largest percentage of them don’t want to do anything.
I’m down at the office Saturdays too. Sundays, about half the time. The other half of the time maybe my wife and I will go horseback riding or visit a friend’s house. Even when you’re visiting with them, you can’t get away from your work. They ask about it. It’s a kind of a good feeling. There’s not too many Sundays like that. I’ve been traveling more than ever with these franchises.
When I first started to get successful, people in the business tried to hurt me. One of my biggest kicks is getting beyond them. There’s nothing they can do. I’m in a position where there’s no competition. If somebody tries to do something to me, bum rap me, why hell, I can just open my franchise right next door to ’em.
When I was younger—I was applying for a Yamaha franchise or a Honda—these dealer reps would come in and ask for Ken Brown. I’d say, “I’m Ken Brown.” They’d say, “I want to talk to your
father.” I fought to get in Old Town. The chamber of commerce didn’t want me there. They still had this black leather jacket image. They felt all these Hell’s Angels would be coming down and wrecking. We opened up and had three hundred thousand people there on a weekend. You didn’t even have to advertise. I had the place full. They saw money being made there. A young punk comes in and rents an alley for $125 a month and I made about $125,000 over the summer out of that alley—leasing bikes. That really killed ’em.
When you’re young and in business, it’s not an asset. The first time I walked into a bank they didn’t want to deal with me. I used to be nervous. I’d look at the guy across the desk with a tie and suit and everything. You could see what he was thinking. You oughta see that guy now when I come in. (Laughs.) When I go into banks now, I feel I’m better than them. And they know it.
You’ve been noticing my Mickey Mouse watch? (Laughs.) I like something like this because nobody would expect me to be wearing this. No matter what I’ve done, it’s always been they never expected it. When I rented the Amphitheatre for the first show, they turned me down. I rented the Colosseum and had a success. The next year they were happy to deal with me.
It bothers them that somebody new should come in and be so successful. It wasn’t easy. When other people were going out and just having fun and riding motorcycles and getting drunk and partying, I was working. I gave up a lot. I gave up my whole youth, really. That’s something you never get back.
People say to me, “Gee! You work so damn hard, how can you ever enjoy it?” I’m enjoying it every day. I don’t have to get away for a weekend to enjoy it. Eventually I’ll move out to Arizona and make that my headquarters. I’m young enough. I’ll only be thirty-one in five years. I can still do these things—horseback riding, looking after animals. I like animals. But I’ll never retire. I’ll take it a little bit easier. I’ll have to. I had an ulcer since I was eighteen.
(Indicates bottle of tablets on the table. It reads: “Mylanta. A palliative combination of aluminum, magnesium, hydroxide to relieve gastric hyperacidity and heartburn.”) I chew up a lot of Mylantas. It’s for your stomach, to coat it. Like Maalox. I probably go through twenty tablets a day.
I guess people get different thrills out of business in different ways. There’s a lot of satisfaction in showing up people who thought you’d never amount to anything. If I died tomorrow, I’d really feel I enjoyed myself. How would I like to be remembered? I don’t know if I really care about being remembered. I just want to be known while I’m here. That’s enough. I didn’t like history, anyway.
KAY STEPKIN
We’re in The Bread Shop. “We’ve taught all sorts of people how to make bread. The Clay People are across the street. They teach people ceramics. The Weaving Workshop is a block down. They give lessons in weaving and teach people how to make their own looms. Nearby is The Printing Workshop. They teach . . . It’s an incredible neighborhood. Within four blocks, there’s every possible type person, every nationality.”
There are posters in the window and stickers on the door: “Peace and Good Will Toward People”; “Children of the New Testament”; “Needed: Breadmakers, Hard Work, Low Pay”; “We have bread crumbs and scraps for your birds.”
There are barrels of whole wheat flour. There are huge cartons and tins of nuts, vanilla, honey, peanut butter. Varieties of herb tea are visible. On the counter are loaves—whole wheat, cinnamon raisin, oatmeal, rye, soy sunflower, corn meal. “People come up with suggestions we love to hear. People will say, ‘Why don’t you make this? Why don’t you make that?’ We try it out. We average 200 to 250 loaves a day. We use any ingredient that’s in its natural state. We don’t use white flour.”
Among her customers, as well as health food stores, are conventional groceries, including a huge supermarket. “The stores pick it up. We don’t have a car. It’s about half-wholesale and half-retail. The retail part is the most enjoyable, because we meet people and talk to ’em and they ask questions.” A matronly woman who has just bought a loaf pauses. “I tried this soy sunflower bread about three weeks ago and it’s really great. Gave it to two people as Christmas gifts.”
There is an easy wandering in and out of customers and passersby, among whom are small boys, inhaling deeply, longingly, in comic style. It is late afternoon and a few of her colleagues are relaxing. She is twenty-nine years old.
I’m the director. It has no owner. Originally I owned it. We’re a nonprofit corporation ‘cause we give our leftover bread away, give it to anyone who would be hungry. Poor people buy, too, ’cause we accept food stamps. We sell bread at half-price to people over sixty-five. We never turn anybody away. A man came in a few minutes ago and we gave him a loaf of bread. We give bread lessons and talks. Sometimes school children come in here. We show ’em around and explain what we’re doing . . .
Everything we do is completely open. We do the baking right out here. People in the neighborhood, waiting for the bus in the morning, come in and watch us make bread. We don’t like to waste anything. That’s real important. We use such good ingredients, we hate to see it go into a garbage can. And it may be burned and go into the air some way.
We have men and women, we all do the same kind of work. Everyone does everything. It’s not as chaotic as it sounds. Right now there’s eight of us. Different people take responsibility for different jobs. We just started selling tea last week. Tom’s interested in herbs. He bought the tea.
We hire only neighborhood people. We will hire anyone who can do the work. There’s been all ages. Once we had a twelve-year-old boy working here. A woman of forty used to work here. There isn’t any machinery here. We do everything by hand. We get to know who each other is, rapping with each other. It’s more valuable to hear your neighbor, what he has to say, than the noise of the machine. A lot of people are out of work. Machines are taking over. So we’re having people work instead of machines.
The bread’s exactly like you would make it at home. You can make it sloppy or very good. If you’re into bread making, you know just when to start and when to stop kneading and how much flour to add. The machine just can’t do as fine a job. I started doing things for myself when I realized our food supply is getting more and more poisoned. I didn’t have anybody to show me. I just made the dumbest mistakes.
“It was about nine years ago. I would read books on it. But there was no one to talk to. I was doing different jobs. I was teaching. I was a waitress. I never did anything satisfying. About two years ago, I started realizing how bad things really are out here—on the planet. (Laughs.)
“I see us living in a completely schizophrenic society. We live in one place, work in another place, and play in a third. You have to talk differently depending on who you’re talking to. You work in one place, get to know the people, you go home at night and you’re lonely because you don’t know anyone in your neighborhood. I see this as a means of bringing all that together. I like the idea of people living together and working together.”
We start about five thirty in the morning and close about seven at night. We’re open six days a week. Sundays we sell what’s left over from Saturday and give bread lessons. We charge a dollar a lesson to anyone who wants to come. It about covers the cost of the ingredients. Each person makes three loaves of bread. We tell why this shop uses certain ingredients and not others. Just about everything is organic. We have a sign up saying what isn’t.
We try people out. We take them as a substitute first. You can’t tell by words how someone’s gonna do. We ask people to come as a sub when someone is absent. Out of those we choose who we’ll take. We watch ‘em real close. We teach ’em: “This is the way your hands should move.” “This is how you tell when your bread’s done, if it feels this way.” “Why don’t you feel my bread?”
We try to discourage people from the start, ‘cause it’s hard having a high turnover. If someone applies for a job, I tell ’em all the bad points. Some of ’em think it’s something new or groovy. I
let ’em know quickly it’s not that way at all. It’s work. Each person’s here for a different reason. Tom’s interested in ecological things, Jo enjoys being here and she likes working a half-day . . .
I get here at six thirty. I stand at the table and make bread. I’ll do that for maybe two hours. There might be a new person and I’ll show him . . . At eight thirty or so I’ll make breakfast and read the paper for half. an hour. Maybe take a few phone calls. Then go back and weigh out loaves and shape ’em.
We each make seven dollars a day. At first we didn’t make any salaries at all. After two weeks, we each took out five dollars. It sounds unscientific, but most of us could get by. Everyone was living with someone. We all get help from one another. We also buy the ingredients at the store. We get our food real cheap. We can each take a loaf a day out of the store. The store pays all our taxes.
Our prices are real reasonable. I went into a grocery store and saw what they were selling bread for. Machine-made whole wheat was selling at forty-five cents. So we made it at fifty cents a loaf. It would cost fifty cents to make that bread at home using the same ingredients. We priced it that way on purpose.
We have about eleven different kinds of bread. All the other loaves are sixty cents a pound. If we were doing real good, we’d lower the prices. It’s been working out. Wholesale is a dime less. We put a resale price on the bread ’cause some people were selling our bread for ridiculous prices like eighty and ninety cents a loaf. Now they’re only allowed to sell it for a nickel more than we sell it here. We check the stores. I always like to see the bread and how they display it.