But the warm personal touch never existed in corporations. That was just a sham. In the last a.n.a.lysis, you"ve got to make a profit. There"s a lot of family-held corporations that truly felt they were part of a legend. They had responsibilities to their people. They carried on as best they could. And then they went broke. The loyalty to their people, their patriarchy, dragged "em all down. Whatever few of "em are left are being forced to sell, and are being taken over by the cold hand of the corporation.
My guess is that twenty corporations will control about forty percent of the consumer goods market. How much room is there left for the small guy? There"s the supermarket in the grocery business. In our time, there were little mama-and-papa stores, thousands and thousands throughout the country. How many are there today? Unless you"re National Tea or A & P, there"s just no room. The small chains will be taken over by the bigger chains and they themselves will be taken over . . . The fish swallows the smaller fish and he"s swallowed by a bigger one, until the biggest swallows"em all. I have a feeling there"ll always be room for the small entrepreneur, but he"ll be rare. It"ll be very difficult for him.
The top man is more of a general manager than he is an entrepreneur. There"s less gambling than there was. He won"t make as many mistakes as he did before in finance and marketing. It"s a cold science. But when it comes to dealing with people, he still has to have that feel and he still has to do his own thinking. The computer can"t do that for him.
When I broke in, no man could become an executive until he was thirty-five, thirty-six years old. During the past ten years there"ve been real top executives of twenty-six, twenty-seven. Lately there"s been a reversal. These young ones climbed to the top when things were good, but during the last couple of years we"ve had some rough times. Companies have been clobbered and some have gone back to older men. But that"s not gonna last.
Business is looking for the highly trained, highly skilled young executive, who has the knowledge and the education in a highly specialized field. It"s happened in all professions and it"s happening in business. You have your comptroller who"s highly specialized. You have your treasurer who has to know finance, a heavily involved thing because of the taxation and the SEC. You have the manufacturing area. He has to be highly specialized in warehouse and in shipping-the ability to move merchandise cheaply and quickly. Shipping has become a horrendous problem because costs have become tremendous. You have to know marketing, the studies, the effect of advertising. A world of specialists. The man at the top has to have a general knowledge. And he has to have the knack of finding the right man to head these divisions. That"s the difficulty.
You have a nice, plush lovely office to go to. You have a private secretary. You walk down the corridor and everybody bows and says, "Good morning, Mr. Ross. How are you today?" As you go up the line, the executives will say, "How is Mrs. Ross?" Until you get to the higher executives. They"ll say, "How is Nancy?" Here you socialize, you know each other. Everybody plays the game.
A man wants to get to the top of the corporation, not for the money involved. After a certain point, how much more money can you make? In my climb, I"ll be honest, money was secondary. Unless you have tremendous demands, yachts, private airplanes-you get to a certain point, money isn"t that important. It"s the power, the status, the prestige. Frankly, it"s delightful to be on top and have everybody calling you Mr. Ross and have a plane at your disposal and a car and a driver at your disposal. When you come to town, there"s people to take care of you. When you walk into a board meeting, everybody gets up and says h.e.l.lo. I don"t think there"s any human being that doesn"t love that. It"s a nice feeling. But the ultimate power is in the board of directors. I don"t know anybody who"s free. You read in the paper about stockholders" meetings, the annual report. It all sounds so glowing. But behind the scenes, a jungle.
I work on a yearly retainer with a corporation. I spend, oh, two, three days a month in various corporate structures. The key executives can talk to me and bounce things off me. The president may have a specific problem that I will investigate and come back to him with my ideas. The reason I came into this work is that all my corporate life I was looking for somebody like me, somebody who"s been there. Because there"s no new problems in business today. There"s just a different name for different problems that have been going on for years and years and years. n.o.body"s come up yet with a problem that isn"t familiar. I"ve been there.
Example. The chief executive isn"t happy with the marketing structure. He raises many questions which I may not know specifically. I"ll find out, and come back with a proposal. He might be thinking of promoting one of his executives. It"s narrowed down to two or three. Let"s say two young guys who"ve been moved to a new city. It"s a tossup. I notice one has bought a new house, invested heavily in it. The other rented. I"d recommend the second. He"s more realistic.
If he comes before his board of directors, there"s always the vise. The poor sonofab.i.t.c.h is caught in the squeeze from the people below and the people above. When he comes to the board, he"s got to come with a firm hand. I can help him because I"m completely objective. I"m out of the jungle. I don"t have the trauma that I used to have when I had to fire somebody. What is it gonna do to this guy? I can give it to him cold and hard and logical. I"m not involved.
I left that world because suddenly the power and the status were empty. I"d been there, and when I got there it was nothing. Suddenly you have a feeling of little boys playing at business. Suddenly you have a feeling-so what? It started to happen to me, this feeling, oh, in "67, "68. So when the corporation was sold, my share of the sale was such . . . I didn"t have to go back into the jungle. I don"t have to fight to the top. I"ve been to the mountain top. (Laughs.) It isn"t worth it.
It was very difficult, the transition of retiring from the status position, where there"s people on the phone all day trying to talk to you. Suddenly n.o.body calls you. This is a psychological . . . (Halts, a long pause.) I don"t want to get into that. Why didn"t I retire completely? I really don"t know. In the last four, five years, people have come to me with tempting offers. Suddenly I realized what I"m doing is much more fun than going into that jungle again. So I turned them down.
I"ve always wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give back the knowledge I gained in corporate life. People have always told me I"d always been a great sales manager. In every sales group you always have two or three young men with stars in their eyes. They always sat at the edge of the chair. I knew they were comers. I always felt I could take "em, develop "em, and build "em. A lot of old fogies like me-I can point out this guy, that guy who worked for me, and now he"s the head of this, the head of that.
Yeah, I always wanted to teach. But I had no formal education and no university would touch me. I was willing to teach for nothing. But there also, they have their jungle. They don"t want a businessman. They only want people in the academic world, who have a formalized and, I think, empty training. This is what I"d really like to do. I"d like to get involved with the young people and give my knowledge to them before it"s buried with me. Not that what I have is so great, but there"s a certain understanding, a certain feeling . . .
MA AND PA COURAGE.
During the Thirty Years" War, Anna Fierling, known as "Mother Courage," survives as a small entrepeneur, following the army. She sells beer, shoes, and sundries to the soldiers. She speaks: "If there is too much virtue somewhere, it is a sure sign that there is something wrong. Why, if a general or a king is stupid and lands his people in a mess, they need desperate courage, a virtue. And if he is slovenly and pays no attention, they must be as clever as snakes, or else they are done for."
-Bertolt Brecht,
Mother Courage and Her Children
GEORGE AND IRENE BREWER.
It is a grocery and gift store. "We got a sign out front: 10,000 items. We got all your cigarettes, ice creams, novelties. All your paints, crayons, school supplies. Drugs-not prescription, just your headache-remedies, alcohols, peroxide, and your bandages. Then we go into jewelry, which is now just costume. Before, we used to have diamonds. But the clientele didn"t care for "em. We have sundry, your hair goods, your sewing things, needles, threads, and b.u.t.tons. Greeting cards . . . Ma, pa stores are foldin" fast because they don"t have enough variety. Like chain stores, where they can get everything and anything they want.
"We started out toys and hobbies. Then I put milk in. I said, "Honey, that"s gonna be the ruin of us. We"re gonna become a slave to it." Then they started hollerin" for bread. Then they wanted lunch meat. Then they wanted canned goods. So it became the old country general store."
They have owned the business for fourteen years. "Before that," says George, "my folks had it since 1943." He has since expanded it. We"re in the living quarters behind the store: five rooms, including one for "meditation." There are all manner of appliances and artifacts including a player piano. To the rear is a two-car garage.
Their fourteen-year-old daughter is minding the store. Their eldest daughter, twenty-one, lives elsewhere. Their son, nineteen, has been in the army three years. A dog, "mixed terrier," wanders in and out.
It is one of the oldest blue-collar communities in Chicago: Back Of The Yards. Though the stockyards have gone-to such unlikely places as Greeley, Colorado, and Clovis, New Mexico-the people who live here are still working-cla.s.s. But there have been changes. "This used to be an old-time Polish, Lithuanian neighborhood. Now it"s more young, mixed, Puerto Ricans, hillbillies. Blacks are movin" closer, nothing here yet, but closer. It"s not as clannish as it used to be. In the old days if you offended one, you"d have the whole block mad at you. Now it don"t matter. The next will come in and take the place of him."
IRENE: We used to know ninety-five percent of our customers by name. Now it"s hardly anyone we know by name any more. You could walk down the street at six in the morning and you"d see these Polish women out with their brooms and they"d be washin" the concrete down, fixin" the alleys. You don"t see too much of this any more.
GEORGE: The personal touch. "How"s the kids?" "How"s this one?" "How"s that one?" "Work goin" okay?" "Sorry to hear you lost your job." All this sort of thing-gone.
It"s more of a transient deal, even though they live in the neighborhood. They"re so flighty you don"t know who"s livin" where. You can"t even trust somebody who"s come in for six months, because they just up and turn that fast. We would cash checks and give "em credit and carry "em along. As the area changed, you"d get stuck with bad debts. So we"ve eliminated cashin" checks due to the fact that we have thirteen hundred dollars worth of bad checks. We allow a little bit of credit to old stand-bys for about a week.
IRENE: If we take a chance and cash a check that does bounce, we find "em walkin" on the other side of the street. They don"t want to acknowledge they"re in the neighborhood-for a measly five dollars. The people, they"ve changed in such a way it"s unbelievable. We had magazines and books, but we took "em out two years ago because the theft was so bad.
GEORGE: We had thirteen hundred dollars of books stolen in the last three months of the last year we handled books. A lot of cases with food. Women would open their purse and drop lunch meat in it. I caught a guy one evening puttin" two dozen eggs in his Eisenhower jacket.
IRENE: I was standin" at the bread rack there. I see this guy tryin" to stuff the second dozen eggs down his jacket, with a zipper and to the waistline. (Laughs.) He was havin" a tough time gettin" that second dozen in. I said, "Hey, hon, some guy"s stealin" two dozen eggs back here." George"s runnin" around and all the other customers are lookin" at one another. No one knows who"s got the eggs.
GEORGE: I"m runnin" around one way and he"s comin" around the other. I said, "Where is he?" He said, "Here I am." (Laughs.) He gave "em back. The customers would come in and tease and say to Irene, "Hey, you want to search? I got eggs." (Laughs.) IRENE: Nylons were stolen. Now we"ll lock the door after eleven and only let the ones we know in. Forget it, there isn"t many that you know any more. We were always open to midnight, all through the years. We used to work in the store to two, three in the morning and leave the door open. Now we can"t wait to bolt the door at night, it"s so bad. I take a chance when I open it. It"s hard to tell any more by looks who"s all right and who isn"t. Some of "em are the worst lookin" people but they"re really all right when you get talkin" to "em.
GEORGE: The worst lookin" hippie things that come in the door are so polite and some of "em, the ones that are very well dressed, are so ignorant. When the folks had this store, it was all family. This is not too much a ma and pa area any more. The ones that are left close at six. They"re scared to death.
IRENE: We"ve had several holdups. It was around eleven-fifteen at night, three young people came with ski masks over their face. Two guys and a girl.
GEORGE: I"m checkin" out and they put the gun to the side of my head. I said, "Aw, go to h.e.l.l." I thought it was the kids in the neighborhood horsin" around. I look up-they backed us around the jewelry counter. The front part was more expensive stuff, high-cla.s.s, diamonds, gold rings. They scooped off the cheap costume jewelry off the back shelf. I said, "d.a.m.n it, leave me somethin" for the next time you come in." They said, "Okay, okay," and they backed off. (Laughs.) We"ve had several holdups since then. I don"t worry too much about it.
IRENE: When Martin Luther King was killed, you can imagine the tension. I was alone here. People were panicky. They were announcing on the radio and television that people should be off the street at eight o"clock at night. The stores were forced to close. Our youngest was nine and was instigator of our selling a lot of food that night. She would say, "We may not be here tomorrow because there"ll be a riot tonight and they might come in the neighborhood. You better get all you can get. Stock up now." She was half-hysterical and she put the fear in everyone else. They cleaned out the refrigerators, all the food. I couldn"t ring it up fast enough. The police came by three times tellin" me to close the store. We really made a haul that night.
When she was three years old she"d come out in the store. We had girlie books on the rack. The guy would stand there lookin" at Playboy. She"d come up behind him on a ladder and hold a crucifix in front of him. That was too much for him. He had to fold the book. (Laughs.) GEORGE: We used to open at six in the morning. One day, one mother come in hollerin" I shouldn"t sell Johnny penny candy on the way to school. Next day, another mother come: Susie shouldn"t have bubble gum because she"s got fillin" in her teeth. Another come. So I says, "Listen, I"m not gettin" fringe benefits of bein" married to you. If you can"t handle your children-I" m doin" this for your convenience so you can get things for your breakfast. I won"t open till they"re in school." So now I don"t open till around ten-thirty.
There usually isn"t that much sleep. We used to average two, three hours. That went on for ten years that way. Now we get on an average of four hours. Sometimes you have time to eat breakfast. In the morning I mop the floors, haul fifteen twenty cases of soda from the bas.e.m.e.nt, throw it in the cooler. For the first three hours you have your variety of salesmen, your bread men and your milkmen. You might open with a $200 bank in the morning. By two in the afternoon, you"ve paid out $197 and taken in $6. Then your evening trade starts. We switch hours between meals. I wouldn"t say we"re tired at the end of the day, we just drop. (Laughs.) Seven days a week. Sundays we"re open from 7:00 to 10:00 A.M., close to go to church, have dinner, and reopen at four to midnight. We started goin" out for dinner because they would come to the window (mimics high-pitched voice): "I gotta have a greeting card." "I need a quart of milk." We couldn"t eat our dinner in peace.
IRENE: Some people think ownin" a store is real easy. All you have to do is stand there and sell it. They say, "What"s your old man doin", sleepin"?" He hardly ever sleeps. Movin" all the stock, the refrigerator"s blocked up, cleanin" all those drains, he hauls all the groceries home, cuts up boxes, moving all the time.
GEORGE: I usually say to her, "Hi, good-by." That"s the extent of our conversation.
IRENE: After twelve " we unwind for an hour, but we"re so exhausted we fall asleep. It"s always been a rough life, but we"ve made a decent living out of it and raised three children and have never gone without.
"Our boy was almost the ruination of us. He supplied the whole neighborhood with everything and anything they wanted. He could never say no. The kids pressured him: "You get me that or we"ll beat you up." He was haulin" the soda out as fast as we could bring it in. We almost went bankrupt with the boy. When he was in his first year high school he had nothin" on his mind but army. So when he reached the age we signed papers for him."
GEORGE: Chain stores don"t bother me. People gotta have a place where they can run for a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, or somethin" for a snack, a pint of ice cream or a bottle of soda. Instead of goin" in the chain store and standing in line. The cold indifference. They still get the personal touch here, the chatter back and forth, the gossip and the laughter.
IRENE: George and I like to kid with the customers. He horses around with the women and flatters them, no matter what they look like. I"ll kid the guys.
GEORGE: A new customer come in, she got shocked. I said, "Still love me like you never did?" She said, "I beg your pardon. I love only my husband." (Laughs.) We have a standard joke. People come in and buy a box of Kotex, we"d say, "Use it here or take it with you?" They"d get all shook up. (Laughs.) IRENE: Prophylactics, there"s another joke. A man would come in at night and say, "Is your husband here?" I"d just know, and they"d turn so red, like a woman askin" a man for Kotex.
What I notice is a big change in the people"s att.i.tudes. They come in and they may look grouchy. I"d say, "Hi, how are you?" They used to answer, "Hi." Now they look at you like I"m nuts. They think you"re crazy because you say h.e.l.lo to them. It"s more like a big city now than a small neighborhood. Peopie are kind of cold.
Years ago, every Halloween we"d give about five hundred dollars worth of toys away. We"d have several hundred kids out front. We would drop balloons from the upstairs windows with tickets in "em. They would turn the tickets in and get prizes. When the neighborhood changed, the parents would start grabbin" the balloons and steppin" on the kids. So we just cut it out.
GEORGE: Actually, this is a gold mine. We"re on the main drag. People on this side of the street don"t want to send the children on the other side. Your main trade here is all the little darlings who want "one of dem, one of dese, one of dose." Penny candy. They come in, three cents, and it takes them twenty minutes to make up their minds.
IRENE: They say, "How do you have the patience to stand and wait on those kids?" It"s really difficult, but if you allow yourself to get uptight, you look bad in front of your customers. So we just shrug our shoulders.
We"ve seen people now that are married and divorced who were in grammar school when we came in, have got two and three children. They were miserable little kids and George taught most of "em manners. They"d come in: "Gimme change for a dollar." He"d teach "em to say, "Could I please have change for a dollar?" Some of "em, you wonder where the teachings are at home.
GEORGE: One of the things in a ma, pa store you have to put up with-mothers use it as a baby sitter. It"s much easier for a mother to give the child a penny and go to the store. It takes a kid ten minutes to walk to the store, ten minutes in the store, and ten minutes back. Mom says, "You"re a good boy, here"s another penny." So for two cents an hour they got a baby sitter. In the course of the day you"ll have the same monster in eight, ten times a day. A penny at a time.
IRENE: It"s unbelievable what we go through. All through the years we"ve had all sorts of telephone calls during the night. Not so much any more, because we don"t have our name in the book like we used to. We had so many goofy calls. They call and ask if we have Prince Albert and I say yes and they"d say, "Let the poor guy out of the can." Those kind of jokes. Oh, a lot of people will stand around waitin" for papers and they talk about bingo and they complain about the blacks who take all their parking areas. We have to hear all that.
GEORGE: They used to hang around more. But now I don"t allow anybody to drink soda or eat food in the store. I put the opener outside. Keep it movin". Otherwise, it"d be just a regular hangout. It"d get pretty crowded.
IRENE: They come in in droves, six, seven teen-agers at a time. One or two might buy and the rest circulate through the store and they"ll rob you blind. You have to sort "em out right away. "How many want to buy? The rest of you leave, please." You have to be a little rude.
GEORGE: When I first came in here, some of the punks, we call "em, some of the neighborhood rowdies, I"d pick out a leader of the group. I"d take"im down to the health club where I was workin" out. I"m in condition, liftin" weights. You take these young guys who think they"re real tough, you put"em through calisthenics and their bodies would ache for a week. (Laughs.) The next time they"d have a little more respect for you. Now I got into karate and I worked up to a black belt. They found out about that and they got a healthy respect for me. (Laughs.) IRENE: A lot of people come in and make comments: "How come you"re drivin" such an old car? What"s the matter? You got so much money you"re h.o.a.rding it. You can"t buy a new car?" Then we would buy a new car: "Oh boy, you"re really makin" it off us poor people." There"s no pleasin" "em nohow.
When prices go up, people come in the store and they throw the items on the counter and they blame us. Eggs go up ten cents a dozen and they act like it"s us that raised them. Actually, we make two cents on a gallon of milk. You can"t tell them that. They can"t understand that anyone could make so little. They say, "Now you"re a buck richer." They"re so used to having items raised that the resentment is much more. They slam the door and they cuss at you. They gotta blame somebody so they blame us.
GEORGE: When we first opened the store, our insurance was $398 a year. Now it"s jumped to $1,398. They say you"re in too high a risk area. Your lights have went up, your gas, all your utilities. Your mark-up on your profit has decreased. Like Hostess cakes-they raise an item a penny, it costs you a penny more. You"re getting a less percentage on the return. At one time, you were makin" a twenty-two percent mark-up with a five percent overhead-which would leave you a seventeen percent profit. Now they squeeze you down to a twelve percent mark-up if you"re lucky. With costs up, your overhead is ten percent, now you"re workin" on two percent profit. Instead of coming out of the hole, you"re going into the hole. It"s impossible to survive unless you"re doing something else on the side.
"We"ve been turned in for everything. We had a raid here. It was a set-up deal. A couple of crooked cops had some guy bring in cans of lunch meat. The guy said he"s goin" out of business and he had a couple cases. I got a good price off of him. I set it in the aisle. About a half an hour later in walks these two guys. "That"s stolen merchandise. What else you got that"s stolen?" They went through the house. "We"re gonna have to take your television. We"re gonna have to take this. This is stolen. That"s stolen. We know how things are. Give us a thousand dollars and we"ll leave you alone."
"We were new at this thing and got scared. So I went out and borrowed the money and gave it to these guys. I took the license number of their car and reported it. They put us through a lie detector test. They didn"t want to believe us. We had to go to the police show-up and things like that. During this time cop after cop was comin" in raiding us with search warrants, just hara.s.sment, one thing after another. All the time, we were waitin" to identify these guys at the show-up.
"The phone"d ring all night long, with heavy breathing and all. They worked on the family and stuff like that. We had health inspectors, building inspectors, fire inspectors, all the hara.s.sments of the city that you could get. Just because we turned in a couple of cops. They were hushing it up all down the line."
Irene interjects: "One day, nine or eleven plainclothesmen come in and started goin" through the store, tearing stuff out and everything. He has a search warrant that we had a printing press and we"re supposed to be printing false credit cards and false ID cards. They tore the place upside down, up in the attic, in the bas.e.m.e.nt. What really took the cake, they came in looking for these p.o.r.nography books. They said some woman in the neighborhood reported us that we were selling to children. They put me in a state of shock. What we were selling were those coin saver books. We had "em behind the counter and let the kids go through "em. It was a thing seven or eight years ago. It was part of hara.s.sment. We had it all."
"By the time we went down to IID,61 we just dropped it. We said we couldn"t identify "em. Then everything quieted down."
GEORGE: Of course you"re always lookin" for a buck on the side. Years ago fireworks were illegal. It was a beautiful setup. The police were shakin" down the peddler on the street and bringin" it in here and sellin" it to me. (Laughs.) I would turn around and sell "em on the counter-on the open counter. Sky rockets, Roman candles, the whole works. They would get calls that we were sellin" illegal fireworks. They"d call us and say, "We gotta make a raid on you. Put everything away." So they"d come in and say, "I don"t see nothin", do you, Joe?" "No, I don"t see nothin"." (Laughs.) It"s such a rat race. We were becoming stagnant in the area. We were getting to be puppets. We were ruining our sense of being. We were ruining our vocabulary. What do you hear in here? "You got dat?" "You got dis?" "You got dose?" You find yourself talking like the trade that comes in, especially with the area degenerating as it is. You begin to feel like you"re not progressing in life.
"We decided we had to do something to enlighten ourselves. To be mentally active besides physically active. So we got into the psychic field. I did palmistry before. We went to hypnosis cla.s.ses. Irene went into more development in hand reading and I was teaching hynotic principles. She"s a staff member at the psychic center. "
Irene interjects: "We"re both ordained as reverends by the IGAS-International General a.s.sembly of Spiritualists. It"s a nondenominational church. George takes people in that have hang-ups and problems. In the meditation room here."
GEORGE: The work is confining. In our spare time, between midnight and six in the morning, I built the whole upstairs. Made the attic into the girls" dorm. We own the building, us and the finance company. (Laughs.) IRENE: The tension is so great-you got to watch "em all the time. Turn your back, they"re fillin" their pockets. We"ve had people fake injuries here and try to collect. By the end of the day you"re talkin" to yourself.
GEORGE: This is where the psychic center has helped us a lot. We can come in here and just lay down for fifteen minutes and bein" able to relax. It"s equal to an hour"s sleep of somebody else"s time.
I hope we won"t be doing this forever. If we can unload it, we have hopes to get into the psychic field, in a resort area, a rest home, retreat type of thing, where people can develop a finer awareness of theirself.
The only kind of family that can survive in a ma, pa store is where everybody pitches in and helps at all times. And have their little kingdom of their own.
POSTSCRIPT: There is a sign on the wall of the apartment: "Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I"ve walked a mile in his moccasins."
REFLECTIONS ON IDLENESS AND RETIREMENT.
BARBARA TERWILLIGER.
She is in her thirties. She has an independent income and is comfortably well-off. During her less affluent days she had worked as an actress, as a saleswoman, engaged in market research, and had a.s.sorted other occupations.
It can be splendid not to work for a while, because it changes the rhythm. You can reflect on what you"ve done. There"s no feeling of being indolent. I like being by myself for long periods of time and do not need an occupation. After two months, though, it doesn"t work for me. I begin to feel the need for a raison d"etre. Unless I"m in love. If I should be in love, after months I would begin to feel parasitic and indolent.
What"s love got to do with it?
Oh well, love is a woman"s occupation. (Laughs.) It"s a full-time occupation if you"re married. Since I"m not married, I"m talking about a love affair. If you have any sort of ego, you can"t make a love affair a justification for life.
About work and idleness . . .
You raise the subject of guilt.
(Slightly bewildered) I did?
I have come to some conclusions after having been free economically from the necessity of work. To be occupied is essential. One should find joy in one"s occupation. A great poet can make love and idleness fructify into poetry, a beautiful occupation. He wouldn"t think of calling it work. Work has a pejorative sound. It shouldn"t. I can"t tell you how strongly I feel about work. But so much of what we call work is dehumanizing and brutalizing.
I"ve done typing as a young girl. I"ve worked in places where the office was like a factory. A bell rang and that was time for a ten-minute coffee break. It was horrifying. Still, most people are better off-their sanity is maintained in anything that gives their life some structure. I disliked the working conditions and I disliked the regimentation, but I enjoyed the process of typing. I was a good typist. I typed very fast and very accurately. There was a rhythm and I enjoyed that. Just the process of work. Its movement. There"s something enlivening . . . A blank piece of paper, your hands on the keys. You are making something exist that didn"t exist before.
I tried to pay very much attention to the words I was typing down. I care about language. Some of the words were repugnant to me. If I were having to type some p.o.r.no stuff or having to say, "Dry cereal is the best thing to feed one"s kids night and day, they"re going to flourish eating Crunchy Puffs," I wouldn"t have been able to do it. But the process gave me satisfaction. There weren"t very many erasures. It was neat.
I really feel work is gorgeous. It"s the only thing you can depend upon in life. You can"t depend on love. Oh, love is quite ephemeral. Work has a dignity you can count upon. Work has to be a game in order for it to be well done. You have to be able to play in it, to compete with yourself. You push yourself to your limits in order to enjoy it. There"s quite a wonderful rhythm you can find yourself involved in in the process of any kind of work. It can be waxing a floor or washing dishes . . .
I worked for an employment agency, doing placements. They divided the girls into placeables and unplaceables. I was usually drawn to the unplaceables. These were girls who seemed to me to have some sort of-maybe, inchoate-creative gifts. They wanted jobs where they could feel as individuals. The girls whose hair was not in place, who looked untidy, who weren"t going to be that easily accepted. There were some eccentricities involved. I would spend most of my time with them. I would make phone calls to-G.o.d forgive-advertising agencies, radio stations.
If you concentrated on the placeables, you made money. These were the girls who came off the production line of high schools, particularly the Catholic schools. They seemed to be tractable young girls. They went into banks as filing clerks in those days. You called the banks and you had your card file and you sent the girl over to the job. You could be a ma.s.s production worker yourself, working these girls into the system. There were no tough corners, nothing abrasive. One of my colleagues made two hundred dollars a week shoveling people into these slots. I wasn"t doing what the other girls at the desks were doing. I found myself haunted at night by the unplaceable girls. The unplaceable girls were me. If I failed them, I was failing myself. I couldn"t make any money. I quit in three weeks. They probably would have fired me anyway.
They were pretty intense weeks. I suffered a lot. I needed the money. I was living on practically nothing. My girls were losers. I found it unbearable to reject them. You say, "We have nothing for you," and send them away. Your time is money, you work on commission. There was a code on the application blank, so you could give the girl the brushoff and she"d never know why.
There were a couple of times I found jobs for the unkempt girls, whose stockings were baggy. And there was even some pleasure in placing those sweet, naive girls, who wanted nothing better than to work in banks, and they were grateful. Even there, the process-being part of something, making something happen-was important. That"s the difference between being alive and being dead. Now I"m not making anything happen.
Everyone needs to feel they have a place in the world. It would be unbearable not to. I don"t like to feel superfluous. One needs to be needed. I"m saying being idle and leisured, doing nothing, is tragic and disgraceful. Everyone must have an occupation.
Love doesn"t suffice. It doesn"t fill up enough hours. I don"t mean work must be activity for activity"s sake. I don"t mean obsessive, empty moving around. I mean creating something new. But idleness is an evil. I don"t think man can maintain his balance or sanity in idleness. Human beings must work to create some coherence. You do it only through work and through love. And you can only count on work.
BILL NORWORTH.
It is a suburb to which many old railroaders have retired. We"re in a modern brick bungalow. Outside is a flower garden, lovingly tended. Inside are flowers in vases, statuettes of religious figures, plastic covers on the furniture; on one wall, a cross, on another, the legend: G.o.d Bless Our Home, and on the kitchen wall, a framed verse: My house is small
No mansion for a millionaire
But there is room for love