Oh, I think it"s important. Books are things that keep us going. Books -I haven"t got much feeling about many other things. I adore the work. Except sometimes it becomes very lonesome. It"s nice to sit beside somebody, whether it"s somebody who works with you or whether it"s your husband or your friend. It"s just lovely, just like a whisper, always . . . If you were really brainy, you wouldn"t waste your time pasting and binding. But if you bind good books, you make something good, really and truly good. Yes, I would like to make a good book hold good and I would like to be involved in a pact that will not be broken, that holds good, which would really be as solid as the book.
Keeping a four-hundred-year-old book together keeps that spirit alive. It"s an alluring kind of thing, lovely, because you know that belongs to us. Because a book is a life, like one man is a life. Yes, yes, this work is good for me, therapeutic for old age . . . just keep going with the hands . . .
NINO GUIDICI.
We"re behind the counter of a corner drugstore. It is a changing neighborhood. To the east are upper-middle-cla.s.s high rises; to the west are the low-income people. Along the big street that divides, the transient young are among the most visible. "It"s hard to believe I spent forty years on this street." He has been a pharmacist since 1926. He is seventy years old.
In the bins to the rear of the counter are shelved thousands of bottles allocated according to the name of each large drug firm. "It"s been estimated there are 5,ooo to 7,500 varieties of pills. When I"m stuck-in the old days I wasn"t-we go to the Red Book. It lists the names and tells you who makes it and how much it is."
The corner drunow. The small store is on its way out. Can"t do the volume. In the old days they took druggists as doctors. How many come in today and say, "I have an earache, what would you recommend?" Or, "My child has a cold." Gone with the wind. Still, the customer"s the same as when I got started. Like that man that came in. He wants a paper tonight. He said, "Be sure and save me a paper." He"s a regular. If I forget it, I might as well forget to fill a prescription. It"s a big mistake. Still very personal with me.
All we do is count pills. Count out twelve on the counter, put "em in here, count out twelve more . . . Today was a little out of the ordinary. I made an ointment. Most of the ointments come already made up. This doctor was an old-timer. He wanted something with sulfur and two other elements mixed together. So I have to weigh it out on the scale. Ordinarily I would just have one tube of cream for that.
Doctors used to write out their own formulas and we made most of these things. Most of the work is now done in the laboratory. The real druggist is found in the manufacturing firms. They"re the factory workers and they"re the pharmacists. We just get the name of the drugs and the number and the directions. It"s a lot easier. In the old days you filled maybe twenty, twenty-five prescriptions a day by hand. Nowadays you can fill about 150. This time of the year they"re most antibiotics, because people are having colds.
In the old days we just used simple drugs, simple ointment base like vaseline, lanolin and mixed them together. They didn"t have the properties that you find today. You"re really an order filler now. (Laughs.) I"m not knockin" the pharmacist, but it"s got so highly developed . . . We just dispense, that"s all.
I like it better this way. If you had to make up everything and the physician had to write down a prescription with all the ingredients, you could hardly exist in this economy. Everything is faster, it"s better. People wouldn"t get relief out of medicine in them days like they get today.
"In the days I went to pharmacy school, you only went two years. Now it"s six. In my day, they"d give you basic metals and salts. You knew certain salts were good for a cough and you mixed it with distilled water and that"s how you"d make your medicine. The young ones know a lot more chemistry. They"re much better educated than we were. They"re prepared to go to the manufacturing end of it. Young kids in high school, they learn how to make things which I don"t know anything about. (Laughs.) LSD and all that. These kids know more about how to make dangerous drugs than I do. (Laughs.)"
When I first started out, you dispensed very little medicine for children after they were seven or eight. We didn"t have ointments to fix up pimply faced kids with acne and things like that. Now, some children have a little pimple and they"re sent to a skin man. We fill a lot of ointments for "em. We sell a lot more cosmetics than we did. That used to be a small part of the business. Now it"s at least fifty percent. I"d say about twenty percent come in for prescriptions. The other people just come in for their everyday needs.
People come in the store and, unless I know who the person is, I"m pretty near afraid to wash out their hand. The laws tell you to tell them to go to a doctor. Gee whiz, here"s a guy ain"t got thirty-five cents. I had a butcher over here, he"s cut his artery with a knife. Boy, he was bleeding like the devil. Tell him to go to a doctor? He"d bleed to death. I stuffed it with rags. Jeez, the guy pretty near died on top of it. It was all right. I might have saved him, but you don"t get credit for anything like that. Suppose he died in the back room. Boy. I try to give first aid. Then you try to tell "em to get a teta.n.u.s shot. Jeez, nine times out of ten you"re talking to somebody who can"t afford it. I"ve taken things out of people"s eyes. I"ve always been pretty good at that. Others tell me, "Boy, you"re crazy."
His colleague, Grace Johnson, enters and puts on her white gown. She has been a pharmacist for thirty years. "There was only three of us girls in my cla.s.s of 36o men. The men customers always hesitated coming to me. I would always know what a man wanted because he would avoid me. (Laughs.) When I started in my father"s store, I"d be compounding something in the back and he"d call me out. The men would turn around and walk out. They thought I had two heads. Women have always accepted me.
"When I say I"m a pharmacist-ooohhh!!! Oh, that"s marvelous! You must really be a brain or something. The idea of a woman pharmacist. It"s like being a woman doctor. But I don"t think a pharmacist really gets credit enough for what we do, as a liaison person between the patient and the doctor. If the doctor makes a mistake and we don"t catch it, they can sue us. They don"t sue the doctor because they stick together.
"The big change in thirty years is in the merchandise. We have such a variance today. Whoever heard of selling a radio in a drugstore? (Laughs.) And whoever heard of these thousands of drugs? A pharmacist once said to me that if the atom bomb were dropped on this neighborhood in the middle of the night, no one would know it (laughs), because ninety-nine percent of the people take Seconal, Nembutal, right? They just automatically pop them in their mouths, if they need them or not. Almost everybody is on some drug. Everybody has a nerve problem today, which is the tensions we live in."
I enjoy working. (Laughs.) I like to be around people. I coulda quit work five years ago. It"s not that I don"t like home, but it"s monotonous to sit around. With your Social Security and what taxes I pay, I"m just as well off if I didn"t work. But I like to come down. I"m not saying I love people, but you miss "em. Some days you go home and say, "Oh gee, I"ve seen so much today. So many guys drove me nuts," and that and that trouble. I like that. The minute you don"t see anybody and you"re not talkin" to people . . .
Jeff, the manager, who is thirty, interjects: "I don"t know anybody who doesn"t like to be away from work-except Nino."
A lot of people, it"s drudgery to go to work. Not me. I don"t say I love work, I don"t say I hate work. I do it. It"s a normal thing for me than just not doing anything. I figure that I"m kinda needed. If you don"t show up, you might be putting somebody out a day. If I took off and walked down the street for an hour, I like to hear him say, "Where in the heck have you been? Gee whiz, it was busy. I needed you." Some fellas would call that a bawlin" out and get mad. I wouldn"t. If you come down and they"d say, "We really didn"t need you," I might as well quit. I like to feel kinda needed. It kinda feels good. You say, well, you"re of some value.
A lot of people just can"t wait to get sixty-five and quit. They"re just tickled to death. I don"t know what for. Then they get home, and I"ve seen wives, they"re sorry their husbands are home and more or less in the way. The average man at home, like myself, when he"s through doing this kind of work, there"s not really much I can do now. That"s why you like to feel wanted.
"I first started workin" in drugstores when I was twelve years old." He had lived in a small town in southern Illinois. His father, a stone cutter, had died in his young years. "I"d open the store, sweep up the sidewalk, mop the floor." In Chicago he attended pharmacy school while working at night. "I used to see my father work hard and people on farms and miners work awful hard for a few dollars a week. I was getting the same amount of money just standing around waiting on people, saying h.e.l.lo. To me that seemed an easy way to make money."
I never wanted to own my own store. I had chances, but I stopped and I figured. I"d have to pay interest on the loan. I couldn"t run it by myself. I didn"t want my wife workin" twelve hours a day. A lot of my friends, their wives got in and they pitched and worked hard and they got someplace. They"re welcome to it. It wasn"t my philosophy.
I"ve been boss all right. I managed stores. I used to see girls on the soda fountains at five, six dollars a week. That was the going pay. I"m the kind of guy, I couldn"t ask anybody to work for nothing. To be a success, you have to take a lot of advantage of help. Don"t get me wrong. I"m not saying that to be successful you have to be a rat, but you have to do things-I realized long ago I wasn"t that type of man. Not that I"m such a good man. I"m not a good person, but I don"t want to ask people to do things I wouldn"t do.
"I got quite a bit of colored trade right here, people who work in the neighborhood. They tell me, "You know why I"m buying here? They rob me in my home neighborhood." It"s the truth. In the old days, I worked out there. I know they take advantage of the poor people in those stores."
I know I"m not going to be a millionaire. To make a lot of money you have to have a lot of ambition. With me, as long as I pay the rent, eat, go to a ball game, go to the race track, take the old lady out once in a while, and the bills are paid-well, what else do you need? I want to have enough money where I wouldn"t have to be a b.u.m on the street or where I wouldn"t have to take a gun and hold somebody up to get a dollar. It"s a wonderful feeling to go out and earn the amount of money that it takes for you to live on. That"s my opinion-maybe it"s as stupid as a hundred thousand dollars, and there"s nothin" more stupid than a hundred thousand dollars-but it"s my opinion.
I never cared about being rich. I know that sounds silly. I have a friend, he says, "I never seen a fella like you, who don"t care for money." That"s a lie. I like money. I know you gotta have a certain amount of it. But how much does a guy need to live? I have a kid brother, he"s a go-getter. He can buy and sell me half a dozen times. It isn"t that I"m lazy. I"m kind of a dreamy guy, you"d say.
I think I"ve succeeded. If they didn"t want me any more, retirement wouldn"t bother me. I"d go to the ball game, I"d go to the track, I"d do a little fishing. There was a little time in my life when I was kinda worried. There used to be an ad in the papers: Pharmacist-do not apply over forty. I was forty-five when that happened. I thought, this is getting to be a young man"s game. But I was lucky. Nothing ever happened.
If I had to do it all over again, I"d be a doctor. I took pre-medics. Then I thought, Oh, four more years is just too rough. But I can"t complain. I"ve been lucky. I haven"t contributed anything to the world. There"s a few men who do. They"re men who are intelligent and probably could have made all kinds of money. But they spend their whole lives in educating. They gave their whole lives to society. You don"t read about them going on big trips. You don"t see "em so much in the society column. We have some awful ignorant men too. It"s funny how they get to be the head of nations. It"s crazy, right?
I"ve been selfish, like the average man. Probably just thought of myself. Takin" it easy, havin" a good time, eat and sleep. There are so few men that have been really good, I can"t name "em. My work"s important to me, but it"s such a little thing. It"s not important to the world.
Ms. JOHNSON: Of course it is, Nino. You"re very important. How many times have you corrected the doctor on things he"s written? As far as this store is concerned, you"re more than important. (To the others) People love him. He has a terrific following. They bring their babies in, they bring their grandchildren in to meet him.
JEFF: Seventy percent of the people come in here because of Nino.
I don"t know about that. Look around-at the people who do great things for humanity.
Ms. JOHNSON: Oh Nino, you do something for humanity every day you stand there.
(Abashed, he looks heavenward.) Oh listen to that, will ya? Oh my gosh. Jeez.
POSTSCRIPT: There was talk of an old colleague who has since died. He was the strict one. "Some of our worst arguments was on account of me not being strict enough. Somebody"d come in and say, "I can"t sleep tonight." He wouldn"t give "em anything unless they had it in writing. They"d walk around the block and come back to me. I"d say, "I know you, you"re solid. Oh sure, here"s one or two." I would take a chance on humanity. I don"t think that"s a sin."
EUGENE RUSSELL.
He is occasionally seen on the streets of the city, walking or on a bicycle. What distinguishes him, aside from his casual work clothes, is a wide belt, from which hangs a case containing the tools of his trade-pliers, wire cutters, and sc.r.a.pers of various kinds. He is a piano tuner and has been at it professionally for fifteen years.
"I am a piano technician. He is a dedicated piano tuner. (Laughs.) Piano tuning is not really business. It"s a dedication. There"s such a thing as piano tuning, piano rebuilding, and antique restoration. There"s such a thing as scale designing and engineering, to produce the highest sound quality possible. I"m in all of this and I enjoy every second of it.
"I was a musician for many years, a jazz clarinetist. Played a lot of Dixieland. Every piano I came to was just a little bit unsatisfactory to work with. I"ve been tuning since I was fourteen years old, more to satisfy the aesthetic part of playing than actually commercializing on it."
His wife Natalie joins in the conversation.
EUGENE: Every day is different. I work Sat.u.r.days and Sundays sometimes. Monday I"m tuning a piano for a record company that had to be done before nine ". When I finish that, I go to another company and do at least four pianos. During that day there"s a couple of harpsichords mixed in. In the meantime, I"ll check with my wife, who stands near the phone. I might see a fill-in sometime in-between. By the time I get through it"s pretty dark.
I"ve been known to go entirely asleep and continue to tune the piano -and no one would know. (Laughs.) If I"m working on some good Steinways, my day goes so fast I don"t even know where it"s gone. But if I"m working on an uninteresting instrument, just the time to tune it drags miserably. There"s something of a stimulus in good sound.
I had a discussion with another tuner, who is a great guitar man. He said, "Why are we tuners?" I said, "Because we want to hear good sounds." I went into a young student"s home and rebuilt an old upright, restrung it. It sounded lovely. A week later he wanted to sell the piano. I said, "Why?" He said, "I"ve heard the sound I want to hear."
It doesn"t have to be a grand. It can be a spinet, it can be an old upright, it can be an antique piano from the late 1700s-maybe a harpsichord. They all have to be tuned as often as possible.
The nature of equal temperament makes it impossible to really put a piano in tune. The system is out of tune with itself. But it"s so close to in tune that it"s compatible. You start off with a basic A-440 and you tune an octave down and then tune a relationship of that combination of tunes. Go up a fifth, down a fourth. Go through a circle of fifths within a given octave. When you get that to balance out in fourths and fifths, you take it in thirds, in sixths-so that it"s balanced. Then you go out in the rest of the octaves and tune the rest of the piano. All you have to be able to do is count beats.
NATALIE: It"s an electronic thing now. Anyone in the world can tune a piano with it. You can actually have a tin ear like a night club boss. I have no ear at all, but with one of these electronic devices, I could tune a piano.
EUGENE: It"s an a.s.sist, but there"s no saving of time. You get to a point where you depend on it like a crutch. Somebody using it for a long time may think it"s valuable.
I don"t think anyone can teach you to tune a piano. I"d say practice more than training. You go in, you get your feet wet, and you just practice, practice and practice until it becomes a natural thing with you.
NATALIE: Gene has one of these extraordinary ears. It"s as close to absolute pitch as I think any human ear can be. Any sensible boy can really learn to tune contemporary instruments, but very few people have learned to do what Gene does. We know of only three other technicians in the country who do what he does with antique instruments, and two of them are retired. Sometimes he has to make the machinery, make the tools. He"s worked on virginals and very, very early harpsichords. It"s really a lost art. It doesn"t seem to be the thing that attracts young men. Gene has had a series of apprentices, but they lack patience.
EUGENE: There are fewer younger men in tuning because you don"t make money fast enough in the beginning. Most people in it are musicians, who are having a hard time and are looking for something in their idle time. There"s as much piano tuning as there ever was. It"s strange, but during a recession or depression, the piano tuning business goes ahead. People have more leisure time and they want to develop their artistic capabilities. And they want their pianos tuned. A piano can last for several generations if it"s properly cared for. It isn"t like a car that becomes obsolete next year. It"s possible for a piano to keep going for two hundred years. Old people are going into things they know are ageless. Most of the older musicians are going into piano tuning because you can make a living at the age of a hundred. In fact, the older you get, the mellower.
NATALIE: He doesn"t mind a bit when he"s called a piano tuner. But little kids are very status-minded. When people say Billy"s father tunes pianos, my child wants to go up and kick them. Almost anybody"s father, if he has normal intelligence, could tune a piano. But no one can do what Gene does. We"re terribly proud of him. My child is very clear and precise about the nature of his daddy"s work. We think that"s rather nice, too. I had no, idea until I was a teen-ager just precisely what my daddy went off on a train to do every day. Presumably it was legal. (Laughs.) That was all I knew. But Billy knows and he"s proud.
EUGENE: It"s immaterial to me what I"m called. If anyone wishes to call me a piano tuner, it"s perfectly all right with me. I am not the slightest bit status conscious.
NATALIE: Oh, but he"s had some very strange experiences with high rises. We"d decided Gene must carry his tools in an attache case. When he"s gone in for a club date in a dinner jacket to play at someone"s party, he"s treated with great courtesy. But when he walks in with his tool kit, dressed like Doolittle the Dustman (laughs), they look at you and wonder. What is he really?
EUGENE: Oh yes, I have to check through security in some of the high rises. I sign my name and where I"m going and what time I got there, and when I come back through security, I sign out and everything. If I had a business suit on and an attache case, I could go on the elevator directly.
I realize these buildings have to have security, so I forget my personal feelings. Although once in awhile I resent the idea of going down into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Sometimes you have to go to the receiving room and sign in. It wastes so much time. It takes forever to get where you"re going on a service elevator. I have gone to an apartment as a guest on an elevator. But as soon as I have that tool chest in my hand, I have to take the service elevator. It"s the same doorman. Oh, once in a while I get mad . . .
NATALIE : My son and I are buying him an attache case for Christmas. We"re afraid he"ll lose his temper one day and something foul may happen.
"I"ve been stopped by the police and they"ll ask me, "What"ve ya got in "at case?" And I"ll say, "A do-it-yourself burglar kit." And they"ll say, "Dump your case out." " I had this metal cylindrical tube, which I keep blueprints in. They actually stood fifteen feet away with drawn guns while I took the cap off to show them there was nothing in it. (Laughs.) "I walk along with my work clothes, with my tool chest. They"ll pull up. "Whatcha got inna case?" "Tools." "What kind of tools?" "Working tools. They"re for my business." They don"t ask you what your business is. They want to see your tools. After I show them the tools, they"ll say, "What business are you in?" "I"m a piano technician." "Are ya sure?" "Yes, I"m sure." "Where do you live?" "Up the street." "Show us where ya live." I brought them over and they had me dump all my tools out on the lawn. They looked it over very carefully and they said, "I think you"d better come down to the station." "I don"t think I"d better." "You could very easily break into houses with "these." "I know that, but I never have and ! I have no reason to break in a house. These are legitimate tools for a legitimate business, which keeps me going very nicely." "You show us where you live." So they ring the buzzer and they holler, "Does Eugene Russell live here?" "Yes, he lives here." "We were just checking out." And good-by. I knew it was a routine checkout so it didn"t bother me. There was no reason to be angry."
EUGENE: It"s a compet.i.tive business. If you"ve got a plum and some other technician wants it, he"ll go after it. I can"t do that. There"s plenty for everybody. I try to keep my fee to at least ten dollars an hour. Somebody who"s been a customer of mine for many years asks, "How much do you want?" I always say, "You know." They look at what the check was before and that"s what they pay.
NATALIE: Gene is terribly modest, which is why I"m being so terribly pushy. There"s a technician we know who has two shops. He would call Gene in to redo the unsatisfactory work he did for his customers. But he"s a marvelous merchant. He"s terrific, an absolute whiz of a businessman. Gene didn"t tell you, but he"s also a dealer on a very small scale. With keyboard instruments, buying and selling them. Right from our home, from the kitchen, I buy them and sell them. It is more cutthroat than you would believe, especially the antique business.
EUGENE: Square grand pianos and things like that. I have a lovely old square grand with an organ built into it, unusual- NATALIE: I do an awful lot of work just as a piano broker right here in the kitchen. Bill tells me a piano"s for sale and people call him and want to buy them. That phase of the business is exceedingly cutthroat. Oh, frightfully.
When you"re a broker, you don"t take t.i.tle to the merchandise, you don"t warehouse it, you don"t usually move it. It"s like dealing in securities. And I don"t always collect because I"m not a businessman. We buy old instruments too, and Gene restores them and we sell them. We work in our home. Anywhere, garage . . .
EUGENE: I don"t see any possibility of separating my life from my work.
NATALIE : Because we are-as the French say-of an age, so many people say, "Mrs. Russell, how did you and your husband hit on such a lovely retirement business? What did he do before he retired? Is he a retired army-type?" They think it"s something adorable. What a sweet old-couple to open an antique shop, who"s gotten into this sweet little old-fashioned craft sort of business.
EUGENE: Sort of a hobby, they think. Because it"s so enjoyable. I get a big kick out of it, because there are so many facets. Other people go through a routine. At a certain time, they punch a clock . . . Then they"re through with it and then their life begins. With us the piano business is an integral part of our life.
NATALIE: Oh yes, yes, yes. He obviously does it with a great deal of relish and enthusiasm. We have the feeling that millions of people are putting in time at work they don"t especially adore. And they look forward when they retire to opening a little antique business or something else that they will truly delight in. Because that"s the great American fantasy. They say all Americans secretly want to own a night club. I never did. But I"m not very American. I worked in them and so did Gene, and perhaps that"s why. Another myth is that all American girls want to be stewardesses or girl singers. I don"t think that"s true-not if you"ve done either. (Laughs.) But apparently the most middle-cla.s.s American dream is opening up a dear little antique shop, somewhere safe and pleasant. We know several dealers who live a divine life. They"re moneyed people and it"s a perfectly adorable little hobby for them. They"re never in their shop. You see the same merchandise year after year. Nothing"s moving. If you think of an antique shop as a source of income, you can"t approach it that way. It"s cutthroat-frightfully. It doesn"t mean you have to be crooked to succeed, but there"s a tremendous amount of it. Gene knows the field and he can spot fakes.
(Laughs lightly.) I"m less of a scientist than Gene, less of an engineer. More of a business person, yes. But I rather like it. Frankly, I"ll tell you something. When I retire, if we can ever afford to, I"m sure not going to go into the music business or the antique business. No.
EUGENE: I don"t think I"ll ever retire. I"m like the window washer who was asked, "Do you enjoy washing windows?" He said, "No, I don"t." They said, "Why don"t you quit your job?" He said, "What else is there to do?" (Laughs.) I love that.
(Quickly.) Of course, I enjoy my work. And I know others in the field have a high opinion of me.
NATALIE: When we got married, he was working with a band, though he had a shop. I started apartment hunting. I said he was a merchant or that he was a technician because everybody said, "My G.o.d, don"t tell them your husband"s a musician. You"ll never get an apartment." There"s a strong prejudice against musicians. They think they"re birds of pa.s.sage, perhaps, or that he"ll give drunken parties. There"s still an aura of sinfulness about it.
EUGENE: Everything we do in our lives has something to do with respectability. What it appears to someone else is not too important as long as we do a good job and as long as we do it honestly. It"s the real life. If you"re using people and you gain by exploitation-I couldn"t live that way.
I"ve never really had anybody put me down. There seems something mystic about music, about piano tuning. There"s so much beauty comes out of music. So much beauty comes out of piano tuning. I start working at chord progressions . . .
NATALIE : He"s learning Bach.
EUGENE: I know enough chords to get the sounds that I want to hear out of it. I was tuning a piano for a trombone player who once played for Jan Savitt. As I was tuning, I played around with Savitt"s theme song, "Out of s.p.a.ce." I got those big augmented eleventh chords progressing down in ninths. It"s a beautiful thing. He came dashing in the room. "Where did you hear that? How did you know it?" I hear great big fat augmented chords that you don"t hear in music today. I came home one day and said, "I just heard a diminished chord today!"
I have a mood of triumph. I was sitting one day tuning a piano in a hotel ballroom. There was a symposium of computer manufacturers. One of these men came up and tapped me on the shoulder. "Someday we"re going to get your job." I laughed. "By the time you isolate an infinite number of harmonics, you"re going to use up a couple of billion dollars worth of equipment to get down to the basic fundamental that I work with my ear." He said, "You know something? You"re right. We"ll never touch your job." The cost of computerized tuning would be absolutely prohibitive. I felt pretty good at that moment.
BROKERS.
MARGARET RICHARDS.
She has been a realty broker for the past five years. Widowed, she has two grown children. "This is a new career." She worked in her younger days, "before I took something like twenty years out to raise a family." She works for a firm, along with twenty-seven colleagues. "It"s very aggressive, in the nicest sense of the word. Good thinking, new thinking. They believe in advertising. I think we"re performing a great service in the area."
She has lived in this area for thirty-four years. Her husband was a banker, from whom she inherited a comfortable income. "My family will eat and be housed and be clothed whether I sell real estate or not." It is an upper-middle-cla.s.s enclave of suburbs to the north of a large industrial city.
"To qualify as a broker, you go to school and take the state exam. You have to understand surveys, you have to understand mortgages, you have to understand t.i.tle charges, closing costs. You have to understand about zoning."
Being a realtor is something I enjoy very much. It probably has something to do with being nosy. The niftiest part is to be in on the ground floor of this decision making. A house is the largest investment a family can make. They say college education has taken that over, it"s gotten so expensive. Well, number two is to buy a house. It becomes pretty vital in the lives of these people.
There has not been a good image in the past of realtors. Do you suppose it fell in with the same thing as a used car salesman? Somebody who is just buying and selling? Yet they always ask your advice. Nothin"s so bad about that. (Laughs.) About neighborhoods, schools, parks. The most rewarding thing for me personally is to work with young people buying their first house. You find out just how important a fireplace is. Who needs a bas.e.m.e.nt? (Laughs.) "We really don"t have to have a garage, but we"ve got to have a fireplace." (Laughs.) That kind of thing.
One of the nicest parts is the continual influx of people from all over the country, all ages. It would be easy to stagnate in a village, where you only see people of similar backgrounds. I find it stimulating to be exposed to someone that isn"t cut out of the same piece of cloth as I am.
I thought, Why not try real estate? Houses, I love. I"m probably a frustrated architect at heart. (Laughs.) I started as a secretary and then went into the sales end of it. It"s infinitely more lucrative. The commission is six percent of the first fifty thousand dollars and five percent on anything above that. Always meeting new people, always meeting new situations, that"s the kicker.
This is a very compet.i.tive area. There are a good many seasoned, highly professional realtors in this area. So you do step on each other"s toes. It"s seldom intentional. If somebody picks up the Sunday paper and reads an ad about a house listed with me and they call me, I can tell in two minutes whether they"ve been looking for houses with someone else. If they don"t volunteer the information, I"ll ask them. I encourage them to call their own realtor. If they"re working with one who has given them good service, has given them time, for heaven"s sake, stick with him or her. My time is too valuable to spend with people who are shopping with other brokers. The odds are not so good there. I will do my best for anybody who sticks with me. I"ll give them my very best service and I"m ent.i.tled to their loyalty.
As we get into integration, that kind of thing, realtors take the stand that they represent buyers and sellers. They do not have a stand to take themselves. A realtor is hired. It"s not up to him to educate you about who you want to sell your house to or who you shouldn"t. There"s a feeling that realtors ought to take a more active stand. Our position is: he owns it, we don"t. We simply represent him-within the framework of the law, of course. I have never been instructed not to sell to a black family or to a Jewish family. I"m not nave. I"m sure there must be cases. But it has not happened to me. Our average house is fifty thousand dollars apiece, so you"re limited right there.
This Sunday I will hold a house open from one to four. It will be advertised in the newspaper. I will be there to answer questions. Individuals who are looking for a house will undoubtedly come. Other brokers will bring their clients. I"m representing the seller. We cooperate. Hopefully the owners of the house will not be there from one to four. It"s better for them. That"s a hard experience for an owner-somebody walking through and saying, "Why did she ever pick this color for the living room?" You"re there taking the names of people going through. Watching the house, showing it to its best advantage. Although I don"t hesitate to point out what I think are bad features.
About twenty years ago there were many part time ladies in this field. Ladies who had lunch with friends and somebody said, "I"m looking for a house." So you found them a house and that was your contribution and your workday. This is frowned upon and no longer condoned. If you"re going to hold a realtor"s license, you declare this is your occupation and you"re doing nothing else. I think that"s good. Men who are supporting their families doing this should not be undermined by the ladies luncheon realtor.
A woman realtor makes very good sense. Women know more about kitchens than men. (Laughs.) By and large, it"s the woman who buys the house. Most men, in my experience, let the wife decide, as long as the price is right and the schools are okay and he can get to the train. She"s going to be spending the time in it. What pleases her pleases him. Naturally a woman can better understand a woman"s needs and find what she"s looking for.
You"ve got business transfers. These are an active thing. Maybe the guy"s been promoted and comes in from Connecticut. They lived in a very attractive thirty-five-thousand-dollar house and, boy, they can spend sixty thousand now. They begin to cry a little when they see what they"re gonna get for sixty thousand dollars. (Laughs.) It isn"t as pretty as the thirty-five-thousand-dollar home they left in Connecticut. Status is important when they first come looking. They"re apt to get over that when they see that some of the best areas have ugly stucco houses. But they"re close to the schools, close to the beach, there"s good transportation, and good things going on for the kids. Status goes out the window. They want to know if there are children on the block. We don"t get many questions about ethnic groups. Status goes out the window.
Of course you get tensions. I just had a three-thousand-dollar deal fall apart. It didn"t look good from the beginning, that"s the only thing I can say about it. (Laughs.) It"s been listed with me for six months. Another broker brought in an offer on it. I actually didn"t spend more than eight or ten hours on this deal. But if you compound the time I"ve spent holding this house open, writing ads, showing it, answering phone calls, writing letters-yeah, yeah, it"s a lot of time, yeah.
Some days are just like lightning. This last year, from the first of April until the middle of August, I had one Sunday at home. I can"t show a house much before ten or eleven " on a Sunday morning. But I"d be showing three or four houses between eleven and one. Then I"d be going to a house I"d be holding open maybe from two to five. Then somebody"d come in, they"d like to look at others. First thing you know it"s seven thirty and I"d be dragging in. It can be very tiring.
On these open house mornings when you"re going into house after house, there"s an old trick. You go in on the first floor and then you go to the second floor, instead of going to the bas.e.m.e.nt. From the second floor you can go down two flights to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Then you just have to come up one. If you go to the bas.e.m.e.nt first, you"ve got to climb two flights. (Laughs.) It keeps you in shape. (Laughs.) It"s very important when you"re showing a house that you be spry, that the stairs may not seem too high. If you go clombering, breathing heavy up the stairs, she may think, "How am I going to get my laundry up those stairs?" So . . .
I hear people say this is just like selling cars, nothing to it. I think there"s a great deal to it. To me, the most exciting thing in the world is picking up the phone and having someone say, "Some friends are coming to town. Can you help them?" I hear some realtors say, "I hate showing somebody the first time." What that really means is: I hate meeting them, feeling uncomfortable. I"m excited about that couple I haven"t seen. I"m excited about seeing them and getting to know them. I think that"s fun. As long as I can make those stairs. (Laughs.) JAMES CARSON.
He has been a yacht broker for forty-one years. "I perform essentially the same service as a real estate broker. I locate yachts for customers. Every sale I make takes approximately 170 hours of effort. I can show the same yacht to twenty people before I have a buyer. The average number of yachts I sell a year is twenty. I"ve sold roughly eight hundred since I"ve been in the business."
He sells used yachts, valued at fifteen thousand dollars or more. "I don"t have a showroom. It is where the yacht is at the moment. In the summertime they"re usually in harbors. In the wintertime they"re put in storage. I don"t like to sell "em if they"re more than ten years old.
"There"s salesmen that sell new yachts and they"re dealers. They work right from the factory and they"re required to buy so many yachts. I tried that and gave it up. It"s not for me. You"re on a treadmill. To keep your dealership you have to sell X number of new yachts a year. If there"s a recession, the bank takes away most of the dealer"s money. It"s a pretty rough business. The dealer, unless he has a loyal manufacturer, can get in big trouble. I"ve seen many of "em take on a dealership and then have the factory selling yachts right in his territory through a phony dealership. This ends up in bitterness and law suits. All that glitters is not gold when you sell yachts."
I find unfortunately, after forty-one years in this business, that up to eighty percent of the people take advantage of a situation. (Laughs.) It"s a sour way to look at humanity, but it"s the way I have found it.
Most of the time the seller calls me. Or else I"m a yacht locator. A buyer calls and says, "I"m looking for a thirty-four-foot Tartan sloop. This is what starts me off on my 170-your search. I maintain my own file system. My radius is about three hundred miles. Some of these people want you to pay their fare back and forth. I could go broke flying people around the country.
I had a brother-in-law, when he was bored on a Sunday afternoon, he"d go look at houses. There was no intention of buying one, but he took up a lot of the real estate broker"s time. In my younger days, when I was naive, I spent a good deal of time not only showing yachts but taking people out for a two-hour cruise on the lake. Also feed "em at the yacht club. They"d walk away without a thank you and you"d never see "em again. That"s human nature. Now I don"t take anyone out on a yacht unless there"s a deposit subject to inspection.
The seller pays the commission. It"s a fixed price-seven percent. That"s what I started with forty-one years ago and that"s what I"ll end with. Others charge ten percent. I make a living out of it. I feel that maybe I should charge more, but I"m getting ready to fold up and that"s it.