The Studs Terkel Reader_My American Century

by Studs Terkel

  If the stock market went back to 1,200 tomorrow, it will be all right. It’s high-volatile. There’s a scare and a correction. People will take less risks in the future, which is what they should have done in the first place. It probably won’t happen again in the next ten years.

  In 1929, you didn’t have world trade in cash, futures, and options. If Germany makes a decision, it affects America, because of telecommunications, the computer. You have a decision to make quickly. But no matter what policies are made, the market is gonna adjust to it. So it’s a much safer world. The reason for the thirties Depression was the government not allowing the free market economy to work its way out. The Depression wouldn’t have lasted that long.

  In contrast to 1929, there is far less playing the stock market. The big traders are now in pension funds. They have made so much money that in the long run, they’ll be okay.

  October 19 has changed our policy. Now we are addressing our budget deficit. The market will discipline the politicians. People will tighten their belts in some spending. They’ll buy less VCRs, less Sonys, less Mercedes. But they won’t be stinting on U.S. clothing, U.S. food, services.

  If we lowered the taxes and cut down on government spending, the business sector will explode. The first thing I’d cut would be the military spending. Blowing up bombs in practice doesn’t help the economy.

  I wouldn’t cut welfare payments. When you give money to somebody on welfare, she spends it to buy food and clothing. Jobs are created. I would change the way the government gives them the money. I wouldn’t spend a buck and a half to give her a buck. I would just mail her the check. I would always give poor people money because they spend it.

  I see a couple of years sideways and then we’ll adjust. We’ll pull out better than 1929.

  SAM TALBERT

  He is a member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). It is a maverick group of truckdrivers, who are challenging the administration of Jackie Presser and the Teamsters hierarchy.

  He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. He is fifty-five, divorced. “I raised may own two children”: a son, thirty-one, and a daughter, twenty-eight. He Lives by himself.

  I drove a truck all my life, ever since I was fifteen. What little education I have isn’t formal. It’s all from behind the barn. For years, I didn’t know much about labor, but here and there, I’ve picked up a few things.

  I know more about farmers than anything else. My dad and mom lived on a farm all their lives.

  Most people around here voted for Reagan. I visualized him as being something like American apple pie. He just said things that I had always, since I was a kid, thought was right. Now I feel I’ve learned a little.

  Some people are advancing and others is backtracking. It’s just like in our unions, I think we’re going backwards. Everybody’s just tending to their own business, meantimes the ones that are gettin’ the profits from all this is banding together and controlling the majority. You have young people that come on the job, started out with decent wages, that takes it for granted. They think the company is giving this to them out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t know that down the line somebody had to fight to get this.

  I’ve seen these young fellows as soon as they get there jump in and buy ’em a new house. They get married, they have two or three kids. Well, the company come along and ask for concessions. These fellows that thought this company was giving this money to start with, say, Okay, I’ll do it, because I’ve got to meet these payments. They just give to the company and give and now the company has a hold on everybody. The younger people is the majority that hadn’t had to fight for what the older people had to do.

  They’re tryin’ to get the right-to-work law passed in this state. People thinks if they get this law passed, some of the companies moved out of the valley, shut down, will come back. They seem to think the high cost of labor is what’s makin’ all these people move out. So they’ve a tendency to lean against the unions, ordinary working people. They get it from what they read in the papers and what their bosses tell ’em.

  I learnt that things I dreamed of when I was a kid just wasn’t there, because we live in a land of plenty and there just isn’t plenty for everybody. Just like the poor old farmer, for instance. I’d see him feedin’ the country and just havin’ nothin’. I used to wonder about these things. I’d think, well, what in the heck. They talk about workin’ hard all your life and the American dream. Here’s old Sanford down the road. He’s worked hard all his life and the poor old fellow can’t make it. Things just didn’t fit together.

  They give me the Silver Star in Korea. Yes sir. But I’ll tell you what, if I had to do it all over, I don’t think I could do the same things that I done then. We had no business there, because some fellow wanted to make war materials, is the way I see it. They brainwashed me into believin’ those people were my enemy and they wasn’t.

  Those people didn’t want to fight and I didn’t want to fight. Just for instance, they promoted me to staff sergeant. I wouldn’t sew my chevrons on. They said, “You won’t get this extra pay if you don’t put ’em on.” I put ’em on because I was poor and I’d send my money home to my mom.

  They said, “Well, what do you think of this war over here?” I said, “I oughta be home and the fellows that start it, come over here and let them fight it. ’Cause I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to wade this mud, I don’t want to be here in this heat in the summer. I want to go home, I don’t care about your war.”

  This instance, it sticks with me, inside of me, and I think of it quite often. This ROK74 soldier, he was a good friend of mine. He was attached to our unit. We were sitting eating one day, we was backing up this hill so we could go in to attack, and they brought us up some hot food. Boy by the name of Sneed from Alabama said, “Yong, if it wasn’t for us over here, you wouldn’t be eatin’ this food.” So Yong, he looked at us and said, “You’re all my friends and I don’t wanna hurt your feelin’s. I like your good food. But those people over there’s my people. I just wish all of you would go home.” [Deep sigh.] It sticketh in my heart like I don’t know what.

  I didn’t pay much attention to Vietnam. I was like a lot of people in our tribe. It didn’t affect me directly. I was working, I was getting a paycheck, business was good, was hauling plenty of chemicals out. I was getting overtime. I didn’t really pay much attention.

  I really started paying attention when these younger fellows starting runnin’ to Canada. At first I thought, those terrible people. But after a while, I thought, well, now, if I had to go back, what would I do, knowing what I know? I started puttin’ those two things together. Now those fellows that went was educated people. They knew what was happenin’. I knew what was happenin’, too, because of my experience. I thought, well, hell, I’d go to Canada, too, before I’d go back.

  Mostly people worry about what’s gonna happen tomorrow. If you belong to a union for twenty years, you never asked for nothin’ and you file a card against your company that’s right, they subject to tell you that you’re a troublemaker, you’re liable to put this company out of business.

  First time it happened to me, I thought what the heck is this thing? Then the TDU started fillin’ me full of knowledge of my rights, and what’s wrong and what’s right. And they mentioned some books to read.

  Things out here is gettin’ tougher. The Volkswagen plant just moved out, it went to Mexico. True Temper Corporation, they just sold out, operating someplace else under another name. Another plant sold out to a Swedish company. People who worked in those plants are in service places, like hamburger joints. They get far, far less money. Poverty wages, I guess you’d call it.

  My daughter and my son are both workin’ for Carbide. They’re doin’ okay. I try to talk to them, it’s like tryin’ to talk religion to some people. They don’t want to hear it. They’re livin’ high on the hog. They work long hours and it’s rarely we discuss anything. They’re both very generous. They’re people that w
ould help their neighbors. They’d loan you their automobile or money or buy food for you or anything—but they’re just not involved in anything.

  They’ve asked me a few times why I’m doin’ it. Passin’ out literature, writin’ letters to the papers. I get some write-ups. They read about me. I had one in the paper today about Jackie Presser. I called him a dirty dog. Every advantage I get to put out word on him, I do it.

  I have had threats. I was goin’ to have my windows knocked out. I better stay in the house at night. I had a threat from the local president that I’d lose everything I’d worked for, that I’d lose my pension.

  Oh, they tried to intimidate me. But they don’t know, the more they try, that just gives me the juices to keep goin’. That makes me not want to quit.

  I don’t hunt, I don’t fish. I wouldn’t catch a little fish and tear its mouth up, or I wouldn’t shoot a deer. On the other hand, I’d like to go up there and shoot some of those union officials.

  I get tired, I get aggravated, I quit sometimes, for two or three days, but, then, I can’t quit. I feel there’s a principle, they’s morals involved, they’s human lives involved. I feel like I’m doin’ a little somethin’ that’s contributin’ to the cause of the workin’ class of people.

  One time, I wasn’t gettin’ enough contributions to keep our newsletter goin’. I said, Hell, I’m tired of fightin’, I’m gonna quit. The word got around.

  One Saturday mornin’, I heard a knock on the door. This big redheaded fellow said, “Sam, we wanna talk to you. There’s five fellows with me.” They had three hundred dollars among them, said, “We want to give you this. We heard the rumor that you were disgusted and wanted to quit. We come out to ask you not to quit. You keep on doin’ what you’re doin’.”

  It’s been my dream to find a young fellow interested. Now we have a lot of educated people in our union, as truckdrivers. We have people that are good talkers and I’d love to get one of them that can talk, can talk with compassion, to where he can lay his feelings out, to work with me. And let me work with him and try to build him up to be the leader in our local.

  I’m one of those fellows that can get a whole lot inside of me. I can have this feeling, that I don’t know how to get it out into words how I feel.

  I think things is going to continue to be bad until the majority of the people gets pushed down to where they’re all equal. Am I making any sense? It’ll have to be like when I was a kid. We was all poor and we had to stick together and look out for each other.

  Everybody’s afraid, everybody’s holding on tight to what little they have, but when you’re pushed down to where you don’t have nothing you don’t have any choice but to band together.

  It scares me sometimes thinkin’ people are never goin’ to learn. I sometimes get to thinkin’ people’s gettin’ too hard-hearted. There’s no trust in anybody. Used to be hitchhiking, you’d get a ride. Now they’re afraid they’ll be robbed, but people has always been robbed all their life. So it’s hard for me to pass up a hitchhiker.

  One day last week, I was in the grocery store. This fellow come in, he’s pretty well dressed, nice, tall, handsomelike fellow. He said, “I was told from the register to come back here, that you-all might cash a check for me. I’m hungry, I don’t have a nickel in my pocket and I’d like to get a five-dollar check cashed.” She said, “No, there’s no way we can do that.”

  I said, “I’m goin’ to give you five dollars.” He said,” You gotta be kiddin’.” He wrote me a five-dollar check and said it’s good. He asked me, “Why did you do that? Here they won’t cash my check and you, an individual, you will.” I said, “Buddy, I’ve hitchhiked, I’ve come from a poor family, I’ve been all over the country, and I have been fed by people. I have not had a penny in the pocket and people say here’s fifty cents.” He said, “I hope I can repay you, this generosity.” I said, “Don’t give it back to me. Give it to somebody else along the road.”

  POSTSCRIPT

  Since his conversation took place, the Teamsters Union had the first rank and file election in its history and the old guard was ousted by the reform slate, with the help of the TDU (Teamsters for a Democratic Union).

  LARRY HEINEMANN

  His demeanor, at first glance, is a cool customer’s. As he recounts the Chicago moment of nineteen years ago, a feverishness sets in.

  His family background is blue-collar. He is married and has two small children.

  He has written two novels, based upon his experiences in Vietnam. His second, Paco’s Story, won the 1987 National Book Award.

  I’m forty-three, close enough to be called a boom baby.

  I was in college for the same reason everybody else was: to stay out of the draft. Ran out of money. Got drafted in May of ‘66. I was twenty-two. My younger brother and I were drafted at the same time. He couldn’t adjust. He came back from Germany with a discharge in his hand on the same day I left for San Francisco. We had two hours in the kitchen to sit and talk. He was home and I got a year overseas. Vietnam. I was in combat from March of ’67 to March of ’68, a couple of months after the Tet offensive began.

  I left Vietnam on a Sunday afternoon at four o’clock and was home in my own bedroom Monday night at two. Half the people in my platoon were either dead or in the hospital. It was disorienting, I must say.

  In my household, there was never any political discussion. We were raised to just submit to the draft, stiffly and strict. I went there scared and came back bitter. Everybody knows it was a waste.

  I wasn’t willing to go to jail. Nobody told me I could go to Canada. Out of four brothers, three of us served in the armed forces. My youngest brother, a two-time marine, was wounded, sent back, and has had a very hard time of it since.

  It was clear from the first day that it was a bunch of bullshit. We were there to shoot off a bunch of ammo and kill a bunch of people. We were really indifferent. The whole country was indifferent: Why are we fighting in Vietnam?

  When I got back here, I was scared and grateful and ashamed that I had lived, ’cause I started getting letters: So-and-so got hit, So-and-so burned to death. My good friend flipped a truck over an embankment and it hit him in the head. I had been given my life back, I felt a tremendous energy. At the same time, I felt like shit.

  Right after I got back, I was in Kentucky where my wife was going to school. Martin Luther King was shot dead—was it April 4, 1968? I was gettin’ a haircut for my wedding. These guys in the barber shop were talking, I remember: Somebody finally got that nigger.

  Black cities were just going up in flames. And then Bobby Kennedy was shot. It was almost as if I had brought the war home myself. I didn’t want any part of it whatever.

  I didn’t get involved with any antiwar movement. I felt I would be breaking faith with my friends who were still overseas. Now I’m sorry I didn’t.

  Some guys are bemoaning that they didn’t share the rite of passage, fighting in Vietnam. They regret they have no war stories to tell. I would trade them my stories for my grief any time.

  The summer of ’68, I got a job driving a CTA bus.75 It was the worst decision I ever made. I had come from a place where I drove a fifteen-ton armored personnel carrier, and we didn’t take shit from anybody. I had a .45 and a shotgun while I drove. We had the road to ourselves. I was living every eighteen-year-old’s fantasy about having a big ugly-sounding car and being able to drive anywhere we wanted. The whorehouses were all in a row and it was one car wash after another. I didn’t wanna take shit from anybody.

  The one thing they teach about bus driving is that you’re a public servant, okay? Any asshole with a fare can give you shit and you have to sit there and take it. Anyone gave me an argument, I threw ’em off the bus. This transfer’s no good—woooshh!—get out! I was never that way before Vietnam.

  Halfway through that Chicago summer in ’68, the streets were just crazy. I was driving a bus. The drivers were all tense. There were still reverberations of the King assassination. A week
before the convention, the black drivers called a wildcat strike. Anywhere you went, there was this undercurrent. I was at the end of my rope.

  That night, I’m driving down Clark Street, past Lincoln Park. I look out under the trees to see what’s happening. You could see the silhouettes of cops, cop cars, and kids. I heard there was tear gas and cops beating up kids. When I was in Vietnam, we used tear gas to flush people out of tunnels.

  You know that somebody’s in a spider hole and you’ll just go Lah-dee, lah-dee. I don’t know how it’s spelled, it means come out. If they didn’t, you’d pop tear gas. It would make you extraordinarily sick. It has a very distinctive smell. Like the one this night.

  Near Lincoln Park, I could see the cop cars and the kids. As we came closer, I pulled the brake and said, “I’m sorry, we’re not goin’ anywhere. I’m not gonna get mixed up in this at all.” I waited until the whole carbony smell died down.

  The passengers hollered go on, go on. I said no, no, no, no. “You don’t want to get a snort of that tear gas, it’ll make you sick.” I stayed at that corner maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. Guys behind me were pissed off, but passed me up. The supervisor argued with me. I fully expected people were gonna get killed.

  I think the police riot was the next night. I came to this light, through the south end of the Loop. All four curbs were bumper-to-bumper buses, which held maybe sixty guys. They were just filled with cops and all the lights were off. All I could see was riot gear: helmets and billy clubs. One guy looks through the window as if I’m a hippie who has stolen the bus. It was the look on his face: Who are you? What are you doing here? I just showed him my CTA badge. If I didn’t—[laughs].

  I knew exactly what was gonna happen. These guys were gonna do the same thing I had done overseas. They were gonna go wherever they were gonna go and they were just gonna smash people. I just turned my bus around, the hell with it.