Working. Part 15

I think the president of the union is only twenty-nine years old. I imagine he's a real hardheaded type of individual. He's headstrong and he wants his way. If I was working with him, we'd probably be b.u.mpin' heads quite a bit. I've been known to be hardheaded and hard-nosed and real stubborn if I have to be.

"I won a scholars.h.i.+p at Mendel High School, but I couldn't afford the books. At the time, my family was pretty hard up. So I went to Vocational High and it was the biggest mistake I ever made. I was used to a Catholic grammar school. I needed Catholic schooling to keep me in line 'cause I was a pretty hot-tempered type."

I'm the type of guy, sometimes you gotta chew me out to let me know you're still around. If you didn't, I might forget and relax. I don't like to relax. I can't afford it. I like to stay on my toes. I don't want to get stagnant, because if I do, I'm not doing anybody any good.

(He studies his watch. It has all the appurtenances: second, minute, hour, day, month, year . . .) I refer to my watch all the time. I check different items. About every hour I tour my line. About six thirty, I'll tour labor relations to find out who is absent. At seven, I hit the end of the line. I'll check paint, check my scratches and damage. Around ten I'll start talking to all the foremen. I make sure they're all awake, they're in the area of their responsibility. So we can shut down the end of the line at two o'clock and everything's clean. Friday night everybody'll get paid and they'll want to get out of here as quickly as they can. I gotta keep 'em on the line. I can't afford lettin' 'em get out early.

We can't have no holes, no nothing.

If a guy was hurt to the point where it would interfere with production, then it stops. We had a fella some years ago, he was trapped with body. The only way we could get him off was to shut the line off. Reverse the belt, in order to get his fingers out. We're gonna shut the line to see that he don't get hurt any more. A slight laceration or something like that, that's an everyday occurrence. You have to handle 'em.

What's your feeling walking the floor?

Like when I take the superintendent's job, if he's going on vacation for a week. They drive what they call an M-10 unit. Their license plate is always a numeral 2, with a letter afterwards: like 2-A, 2-D-which reflects the manager's car. When he's on vacation and I take his job, all his privileges become mine for a week. You're thirty years old and you're gonna be a manager at forty. I couldn't ask for nothing better. When I take the car home for a week, I'm proud of that license plate. It says "Manufacturer" on it, and they know I work for Ford. It's a good feeling.

Tom Brand has returned. Wheeler Stanley rises from the chair in soldierlike fas.h.i.+on. Brand is jovial. "In traveling around plants, we're fortunate if we have two or three like him, that are real comers. It isn't gonna be too long that these fellas are gonna take our jobs. Always be kind to your sweeper, you never know when you're going to be working for him." (Laughs.) Wheeler Stanley smiles.

GARY BRYNER.

He's twenty-nine, going on thirty. He is president of Local 1112, UAW. Its members are employed at the General Motors a.s.sembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. "It's the most automated, fastest line in the world." A strike had recently been settled "for a time."

He had just come from a long negotiating session. It was one of many for him during the past twenty months of his presidency. We're in a restaurant along the highway. It's part of a complex of motels and shopping centers, somewhere between Youngstown and Warren. The area is highly industrial: steel, auto, rubber. "Lordstown was a crossroads. People have migrated from cities around it . . . I live in Newton Falls, a little town of six thousand. Ten minutes from General Motors."

After graduating from high school in 1959, he "got a job where my father worked, in Republic Steel." He was there four years-"dabbled with the union, was a steward. I was the most versatile guy there. (Laughs.) I started on the track gang, I went into the forging department, a blacksmith's helper. Then, a millwright's helper. Then a millwright until I was laid off in '63." He worked at another factory in Ravenna for three years. "That's where I really got involved in the union." In 1966 he "went to General Motors at Lordstown."

Someone said Lordstown is the Woodstock of the workingman. There are young people who have the mod look, long hair, big Afros, beads, young gals. The average age is around twenty-five-which makes a guy thirty over the hill. I'm a young union president but I'm an old man in my plant.

Sixty-six, when they opened the complex for hiring, there was no Vega in mind. We built a B body, Impalas and Capris and wagons and whatnot-the big family car.

I took on a foreman's job, some six or seven weeks and decided that was not my cup of tea. The one thing they stressed: production first, people second. One thing sticks in my mind. They put us in an arbitration cla.s.s in labor relations while we were training. It was a mock case, an umpire hearing. All the people mocking were company people. We had a guy who was the umpire. We had attorneys for management and union. The guy who was supposed to be discharged was there. We had to write down whether we thought the guy was innocent or guilty. I was the only guy of some thirty-odd foremen-to-be who thought the guy was innocent and should have been paid all his money. The others wanted to be pleasing in the eyes of the people that were watching. I took it seriously and really felt the guy was innocent. So I said, "Thank you, but no thank you." I took off the s.h.i.+rt and tie. All foremen wear s.h.i.+rts and ties. They've become somewhat liberal now at General Motors. Foremen can wear colored s.h.i.+rts and any kind of tie.

I went back as an a.s.sembly inspector-utility. I relieved six or seven guys. I was able to get around and talk to a lot of people. I was very dissatisfied the way things were going. People being pressured, being forced to run. If a guy didn't do it they fired his b.u.t.t. It was a mail-fisted approach by management because everybody was new. The way they treated us-management made more union people in 1966 and 1967 than the union could ever have thought of making.

When the plant first opened, it wasn't young people they drew from. It was people who had been in the community, who gave up jobs to come to GM because it was new. It was an attractive thing back in '66 to be one of the first thousand hired. I was twenty-three. I thought of it as security. I'm the 136th in a plant of seventy-eight hundred. You got the best jobs. You had the most seniority. A lot of the tradesmen hired had ten years of it, maintenance men, pipe fitters, millwrights, plumbers.

After so many hundreds were hired other people didn't want to come in and work the second s.h.i.+ft or take lesser paying jobs, because they had already established themselves somewhere else. So that's when kids got hired right out of high school. This was in early '67. There was a drastic turnover in our plant. A guy would come in and work a week or two on his vacation, quit, and go back to the job he had. Standing in line, repet.i.tively doing a job, not being able to get away, this wasn't for them. The young people were perfect-management thought. They were-boom!-dropped into it. But they wouldn't put up with it either.

That was '67. You go on to '68, '69, and they had sped up the line. They had started out at sixty cars an hour. Then they went on to a model 6, two models. We had a Pontiac, what is it called?-Firebird. And a B body on the same line. That presented difficulties. On top of it, '72 is not '66. There was a lot of employment then. Now there isn't. The turnover is almost nil. People get a job, they keep it, because there's no place else.

I don't give a s.h.i.+t what anybody says, it was boring, monotonous work. I was an inspector and I didn't actually shoot the screws or tighten the bolts or anything like that. A guy could be there eight hours and there was some other body doing the same job over and over, all day long, all week long, all year long. Years. If you thought about it, you'd go stir. People are unique animals. They are able to adjust. Jesus Christ! Can you imagine squeezing the trigger of a gun while it's spotted so many times? You count the spots, the same count, the same job, job after job after job. It's got to drive a guy nuts.

So what happened? A guy faced up to the facts. If he was going into the service, he didn't give a d.a.m.n what was going on. He was gonna leave anyway. If he were young and married, he had to do one thing: protect his pace. He had to have some time. The best way is to slow down the pace. He might want to open up a book, he might want to smoke a cigarette, or he might want to walk two or three steps away to get a drink of water. He might want to talk to the guy next to him. So he started fighting like h.e.l.l to get the work off of him. He thought he wasn't obligated to do more than his normal share. All of a sudden it mattered to him what was fair.

Fathers used to show their manliness by being able to work hard and have big, strong muscles and that kind of bulls.h.i.+tting story. The young guy now, he doesn't get a kick out of saying how hard he can work. I think his kick would be just the opposite: "You said I had to do that much, and I only have to do that much. I'm man enough to stand up and fight for what I say I have to do." It isn't being manly to do more than you should. That's the difference between the son and his dad.

Father felt patriotic about it. They felt obligated to that guy that gave him a job, to do his dirty work. Whereas the young guy believes he has something to say about what he does. He doesn't believe that when the foreman says it's right that it's right. h.e.l.l, he may be ten times more intelligent as this foreman. If he believes he's working too hard, he stands up and says so. He doesn't ask for more money. He says, "I'll work at a normal pace, so I don't go home tired and sore, a physical wreck. I want to keep my job and keep my senses."

My dad was a foreman in a plant. His job was to push people, to produce.

He quit that job and went back into a steel mill. He worked on the incentive. The harder you work, the more he made. So his knowledge of work was work hard, make money. Maybe my father taught me something without even knowing it. My father wasn't a strong union advocate. He didn't talk management, he was just a workingman. He was there to make money.

The almighty dollar is not the only thing in my estimation. There's more to it-how I'm treated. What I have to say about what I do, how I do it. It's more important than the almighty dollar. The reason might be that the dollar's here now. It wasn't in my father's young days. I can concentrate on the social aspects, my rights. And I feel good all around when I'm able to stand up and speak up for another guy's rights. That's how I got involved in this whole stinkin' mess. Fighting every day of my life. And I enjoy it.

Guys in plants nowadays, their incentive is not to work harder. It's to stop the job to the point where they can have lax time. Maybe to think. We got guys now that open a paper, maybe read a paragraph, do his job, come back, and do something else. Keeping himself occupied other than being just that robot that they've scheduled him to be.

When General Motors a.s.sembly Division came to Lordstown, you might not believe it, but they tried to take the newspapers off the line.33 The GMAD controls about seventy-five percent of the a.s.sembly of cars produced for the corporation. There's eighteen a.s.sembly plants. We're the newest. Their idea is to cut costs, be more efficient, take the waste out of working, and all that kind of jazz. To make another dollar. That's why the guys labeled GMAD: Gotta Make Another Dollar. (Laughs.) In '70 came the Vega. They were fighting foreign imports. They were going to make a small compact that gets good milage. In the B body you had a much roomier car to work on. Guys could get in and out of it easily. Some guys could almost stand inside, stoop. With the Vega, a much smaller car, they were going from sixty an hour to a hundred an hour. They picked up an additional two thousand people.

When they started up with Vega, we had what we call Paragraph 78 disputes. Management says, On every job you should do this much. And the guy and the union say, That's too much work for me in that amount of time. Finally, we establish work standards. Prior to October, when GMAD came down, we had established an agreement: the guy who was on the job had something to say. When GMAD came in, they said, He's long overdue for extra work. He's featherbedding.

Instead of having the guy bend over to pick something up, it's right at his waist level. This is something Ford did in the thirties. Try to take every movement out of the guy's day, so he could conserve seconds in time, to make him more efficient, more productive, like a robot. Save a second on every guy's effort, they would, over a year, make a million dollars.

They use time, stopwatches. They say, It takes so many seconds or hundreds of seconds to walk from here to there. We know it takes so many seconds to shoot a screw. We know the gun turns so fast, the screw's so long, the hole's so deep. Our argument has always been: That's mechanical; that's not human.

The workers said, We perspire, we sweat, we have hangovers, we have upset stomachs, we have feelings and emotions, and we're not about to be placed in a category of a machine. When you talk about that watch, you talk about it for a minute. We talk about a lifetime. We're gonna do what's normal and we're gonna tell you what's normal. We'll negotiate from there. We're not gonna start on a watch-time basis that has no feelings.

When they took the unimates on, we were building sixty an hour. When we came back to work, with the unimates, we were building a hundred cars an hour. A unimate is a welding robot. It looks just like a praying mantis. It goes from spot to spot to spot. It releases that thing and it jumps back into position, ready for the next car. They go by them about 110 an hour. They never tire, they never sweat, they never complain, they never miss work. Of course, they don't buy cars. I guess General Motors doesn't understand that argument.

There's twenty-two, eleven on each side of the line. They do the work of about two hundred men-so there was a reduction of men. Those people were absorbed into other departments. There's some places they can't use 'em. There's some thinking about a.s.sembling cars. There still has to be human beings.

If the guys didn't stand up and fight, they'd become robots too. They're interested in being able to smoke a cigarette, bulls.h.i.+t a little bit with the guy next to 'em, open a book, look at something, just daydream if nothing else. You can't do that if you become a machine.

Thirty-five, thirty-six seconds to do your job-that includes the walking, the picking up of the parts, the a.s.sembly. Go to the next job, with never a letup, never a second to stand and think. The guys at our plant fought like h.e.l.l to keep that right.

There was a strike. It came after about four or five months of agitation by management. When GMAD took over the plant, we had about a hundred grievances. They moved in, and where we had settled a grievance, they violated 'em. They took and laid off people. They said they didn't need 'em. We had over fourteen hundred grievances under procedure prior to the strike. It's a two-s.h.i.+ft operation, same job, so you're talking about twenty-eight hundred people with fourteen hundred grievances. What happened was, the guys-as the cars came by 'em-did what's normal, what they had agreed to prior to GMAD. I don't think GM visualized this kind of a rebellion.

The strike issue? We demanded the reinst.i.tution of our work pace as it was prior to the onslaught by General Motors a.s.sembly Division. The only way they could do it was to replace the people laid off.

In that little book of quotes I have: "The workingman has but one thing to sell, his labor. Once he loses control of that, he loses everything." I think a lot of these young kids understand this. There's some manliness in being able to stand up to the giant. Their fathers' was in working hard. There's a substantial number of people that are Vietnam war vets. They don't come back home wanting to take bulls.h.i.+t from foremen who haven't seen as much of the world as he has, who hasn't seen the hards.h.i.+ps.

a.s.sembly workers are the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to job fulfillment. They don't think they have any skill. Some corporate guy said, "A monkey could do the job." They have no enthusiasm about pride in workmans.h.i.+p. They could care less if the screw goes in the wrong place. Sometimes it helps break the monotony if the screw strips. The corporation could set up ways to check it so when the product goes to the consumer it should be whole, clean, and right. But they've laid off inspectors. 'Cause they could give a s.h.i.+t less. Inspectors are like parasites-they don't produce, they don't add something. They only find error. That error costs money to fix, so . . . they laid off, I don't know how many inspectors per s.h.i.+ft. They want quant.i.ty.

When they got in the fight with us, there was an enormous amount of repairs to be done because the people refused to do the extra work. That was one thing that shocked the h.e.l.l out of General Motors a.s.sembly Division. Management was s.h.i.+pping defective parts, safety as well as trim and show items, paint, chrome, and that kind of stuff. Our guys were taking down serial numbers on every job they could get their hands on. Where they knew the product was defective, we made records of it. We constantly badgered the international union to blast the h.e.l.l out of them. We did, vocally, across the bargaining table. They finally had to let up on the thing.

The biggest polluter is the thing we produce, the automobile. The livelihood that puts bread on your table. I don't know if the people in the plant question it. I wouldn't want to see all the automobiles banned because they pollute the air. Yet I realize what the h.e.l.l good is my livelihood if the air's gonna kill me anyway. There are so many priorities that have to be straightened out. I think all this smog control is tokenism, simply that. I heard a plant manager today, he says, "Until the guy learns how to adjust himself in driving the car, there will always be emission. But once he learns how to put his foot on the gas, we'll pa.s.s the standards." It's just another gosh d.a.m.n gimmick. They're not really fighting air pollution, they're not concerned.

I've never gotten into a rap session with that kind of thing because they keep us busy fighting. Every year we've had a potential strike on our hands. In six years I've put out six strike letters. There are so many things to do. You major on the minors and minor on the majors. That major being pollution, the minor being our money.

In some parts of the plant, cars pa.s.s a guy at 120 an hour. The main line goes at 101.6. They got the most modern dip system in paint. They got all the technological improvements. They got unimates. But one thing went wrong. (Chuckles.) They didn't have the human factor. We've been telling them since we've been here: We have a say in how hard we're going to work. They didn't believe us. Young people didn't vocalize themselves before. We're putting human before property value and profits.

We're still making 101 cars an hour, but now we have the people back GMAD laid off. They tried to create a speed-up by using less people. We stopped 'em.

"Ten to twelve percent of our people are black or Spanish-American. Most of the seniority people are whites. The best jobs go to the white people. To me, General Motors is a bunch of bigots. The young black and white workers dig each other. There's an understanding. The guy with the Afro, the guy with the beads, the guy with the goatee, he doesn't care if he's black, white, green, or yellow. The older guys still call each other n.i.g.g.e.rs and honkies. But that doesn't happen with the younger set here. You see them eating their lunch. You see them riding in the same car. You see them date the same kind of girls, going to the same kind of places.

"I think they're sympathetic to students. They tend to be friends with the guy that's in college. They're not isolated. We have some going to school part-time and working.

"Our women have been here only a year. Right now they're more interested in learning how the union functions and how to get more restrooms. They work on the line just like the men. It's been a good thing for our union. It has finally dawned on the guys that if a woman comes here to work, she's able to go on that job. In '66 and '67 the jobs were so physically demanding that a woman couldn't have done them. They had to be made more normal. I think women really helped our union.

"Drugs are used here. Not so much hard stuff-they use gra.s.s, some pills. Young people are on drugs, especially marijuana, like their parents are on alcohol. There's something else to drugs. It has to do with monotony, it has to do with society. Until you show the kids a better way of life, they're gonna stick on the gra.s.s."

The guys are not happy here. They don't come home thinking, Boy, I did a great job today and I can't wait to get back tomorrow. That's not the feeling at all. I don't think he thinks a blasted thing about the plant until he comes back. He's not concerned at all if the product's good, bad, or indifferent.

Their idea is not to run the plant. I don't think they'd know what to do with it. They don't want to tell the company what to do, but simply have something to say about what they're going to do. They just want to be treated with dignity. That's not asking a h.e.l.l of a lot.

I weave in on both sides of the a.s.sembly line. From the right side, the pa.s.senger's side, to the driver's side. Talking to guys. You get into a little conversation. You watch the guy, 'cause you don't want to get in his way,'cause he'll ruin a job. Occasionally he'll say, "Aw, f.u.c.k it. It's only a car." It's more important to just stand there and rap. I don't mean for car after car. He'd be in a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble with his foreman. But occasionally, he'll let a car go by. If something's loose or didn't get installed, somebody'll catch it, somebody'll repair it, hopefully. At that point, he made a decision: It was just a little more important to say what he had on his mind. The unimate doesn't stand there and talk, doesn't argue, doesn't think. With us, it becomes a human thing. It's the most enjoyable part of my job, that moment. I love it!

The Driving BOOKER PAGE.

He drives his own cab in Manhattan. He is sixty-one. It is early evening-the end of his day. A heavy man, he has plopped into a chair, visibly exhausted. As he tugs off his shoes, wiggles his toes, he sighs, "Oh, my feet!"

He has been a cabdriver for about a year. For thirty years he had been at sea, 19421972. Once during that time, "I was ash.o.r.e for a year. My brother and me bought a diner. I was very glad to get rid of it. I went to sea again." Years ago he had worked in an auto body shop. He quit because "I've always enjoyed seeing s.h.i.+ps, always hoped I'd be able to go to sea."

I'm using muscles I haven't used before. Sometimes I have to stop the cab and get out and walk a while, just to stretch out. Sitting for ten, eleven hours a day got me so that I'm all cramped up. I have to take soap, hot water, my wife rubs my feet, my ankles, 'cause my muscles are actually sore. I don't get no exercise at all like I usually do.

I was a cook and baker on a s.h.i.+p, a freighter. My last s.h.i.+p, I was making runs to India and South Africa. It wouldn't take me too much to do my work. I walked around on deck all day. I enjoyed it. I was getting my exercise. I put on twenty pounds since I been on the cab.

I promised my wife I'd quit the sea. One time when my s.h.i.+p came back from India she came down by bus and drove eighteen hours, but just stayed overnight around Savannah. She asked me to give it up because she was just tired of being alone. I said, "Give me one more year," because we'd been saving and had plans of what we wanted to do. This Indian run lasted two years. I gave my youth to the sea and I come home and gave her my old age.

It used to be that every seaman ran away to sea. 'Cause he's a drunk, a wastrel, running away from his family. You found the sc.u.m that went to sea. Today you find some college graduates. We have on board two or three young fellas that are studying to be doctors. They made the trip to get some extra money. Seamen are mostly young now. It's better than when I first went to sea. Where once a fella was glad to eat his three meals a day and get paid and get drunk, the young man feels they're not paying him enough. Sometimes he has a chip on his shoulder.

The big topic at sea is still exploits with women. Because there's always loneliness. A traveling salesman, he has a means of picking up a phone. But a seaman is one month, two, three months before he'll get a letter from his wife. I used to phone my wife three, four times every trip. In Calcutta I waited five hours to get a phone call through. If I didn't get it through one night, I'd call again and wait three, four hours the next morning. The feeling you get, just hearing her voice . . . I'd stand on the phone and just actually choke up. My wife would be crying on the other end and I'd say, "Woman, listen, I'm spending too much money on this phone call. Stop crying." (Laughs.) But it was just so happy.

"My wife and I always loved each other. Matter of fact, we liked each other. Everything we do, we do together. Even when I get up at night to go pee, she gets up and dances with me to the bathroom, The family that pees together stays together. (Laughs.) I take water pills for my weight and it runs me to the bathroom four times a night. She'll walk ahead of me and I'll put my arms around her waist and we'd fox trot up the hallway. It could be two, three ' in the morning, it doesn't matter."

It's impossible to pay for the loss of family life. The time away is like being in jail. I used to tell my wife that when the whistle blew, even if we're still tied up in dock, I was automatically three and four thousand miles away. The lines are goin', the gangway's goin'-even though I'm only a few feet from the dock, I'm separated. I would put myself in suspended animation, knowing nothing's going to bother me until I come back. No matter where I went, how many times I called her on the phone, I was never home. Even though I would reach two, three American ports, it was no more than to touch my wife. We're losing so much, giving up so much of family life. You should be compensated for it. But no one forces you to go to sea. It gets in your blood . . .

Some of the major ports like Calcutta, Karachi, we stay eight days, twelve days picking up cargo. I'd stay aboard s.h.i.+p. I'd go to movies almost every night 'cause I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't gamble. I was just a poor a.s.s seaman. (Laughs.) I'd do other things, naturally. (Laughs.) There's always women. (Laughs.) "Women-chasing was my weakness. You can love your wife, but a man is like a dog. He'll chase anything with a skirt on it. Drop the skirt, he'll still chase. I've never cared for women singly. There's always two or three at a time. I found in traveling the most beautiful women are less s.e.xy than others. In India, they're beautiful, delicate. Chinese women, delicate-like a piece of porcelain. In bed? Nothing. In these countries, you find a great deal of prost.i.tutes, because they need it for survival. The seaman doesn't meet the better cla.s.s, the families. His time is limited."

I love nature. I'm so fed up with man's so-called superiority. I've seen things happen at sea. I've seen a beautiful day change in minutes to a storm so hazardous you can't describe it unless you see today's pictures on TV. More strength and terrible power's been exerted in five minutes than man has concocted in all his atom bombs. Storms that would lift the s.h.i.+p up and toss it like a match. Think of the power, think of the weight and strength of nature. Man with all his egotism . . .

I can't think of the sea now, I'm so busy with a cab. It keeps you so occupied with traffic that you can't think of anything else. The only time I think of the sea is when I'm going up the East Side and I see a s.h.i.+p in the harbor or hear a s.h.i.+p blow. It's only a fleeting moment . . .

It's like changing a life. It's like being born again into something else. I'm talking to people every day, meeting different people. They'll get in a cab and discuss all their problems. I've had people talk over certain things that should be kept in the family. I had a man get in one time, said, "Get me away quick before I kill the sonofab.i.t.c.h." Him and his partner fell out in business and he was overwrought, he had to get him a drink. He got off in two blocks and gave me a dollar.

You must be alert every moment to everything that happens. You can't relax yourself while you're driving. I've got this brand-new cab and I got three dents in it already, as careful as I am.

Oh, I'm so tired. My bottom gets so . . . Oh, every muscle aches in my body. It's my legs and feet, ankles and so forth. I figure in another few months I'll be able to sit up, stand up, do anything else. I'll be used to it then. But right now, I'm so . . . My pedaling the gas and brake, gas and brake, all the time . . . At sea I never had no aches and pains. Then it was just blahs. You'd get tired of the same monotony, day in and day out. The only time I think about the sea is at home or going to my cab in the morning.

Right now my outlook is making as much money as I possibly can. To make back what I put into the investment of buying a cab. It'll take about four years. I don't stay out after dark, but I put in eleven hours a day. I make good money, but I just have to keep going right now.

No matter how much you love your wife, the sea is drawing you . . . I have so much love for the sea, my whole dream is I want to buy a schooner and live aboard and then charter-in the West Indies. That's what my wife and I are both planning for. A cab is just a steppingstone to a car wash and then a car wash will be a means of buying my boat. Even at my age, I haven't given it up. Nothing's going to stop me. That's how much I love the sea. If I get a schooner, that'll be tops, that'll be it. I'll have both my loves: my wife and my sea. I would like to die at sea and be buried at sea, and then spread out at sea . . .

LUCKY MILLER.

I hate to admit that driving a cab is no longer the novelty to me that it once was. It has its moments, but it's not the most ideal job in the world as far as determining one's att.i.tude is concerned.

He is twenty-six. He has been a cabdriver for four years. "My original intention was to drive for a couple of years. It's the sort of job where I could have fiexible hours while I was going to school." Ne had begun as a part-time driver, but he now puts in a forty-four-hour week. "During the past four years I've been going to school off and on. More off than on.

"Drivers are more transient now than they used to be. I'd say there's well over a fifty percent turnover every year. Companies are always hiring and don't care what you do. I suspect the younger part-time drivers outnumber the older ones."

Cabdrivers can no longer be stereotyped. One time the popular conception was of the balding, pot-bellied, cigar-chomping, middle-aged man, who'd drive like a bat out of h.e.l.l and yell at all the other drivers that they had their heads up their a.s.ses. There are as many different types of cabdrivers, with as many different dispositions, as there are among the entire human race.

I've always known the city quite well. I figured it was a way of meeting a lot of interesting, live, colorful people. Oh, sometimes you get an occasional fella or woman who's a little high and they're more talkative . . . When I first started, I used to work till eleven at night. I drive strictly days now, from about seven thirty in the morning to maybe five in the evening. A driver doesn't get live wires during the day. They're mostly drab businessmen with nothing much to say, who don't have much to discuss other than the weather. But it's a lot safer.

I'm sorry to say I've gotten to the point where I don't initiate conversations any more. Ninety percent of them would come to dead ends. These businessmen are preoccupied with whatever policy they're trying to sell or whatever advertising they're trying to put together in their heads.

Business isn't nearly as good as it was four years ago. We used to get a lot of expense account fares. We don't get nearly as much now. They'd ask for receipts. They'd tip about the average. I think a lot of them would tip better, yet they fear if they're too generous the company might react. I'd say a fare than runs eighty cents, a twenty-cent tip is sufficient. For longer trips, we don't expect as great a percentage.

Whether it's a long day or a short day depends on my meter and tips. A good day is about forty-five on the meter and ten in overs, as we call tips. I get about forty-eight percent of the meter. It averages to about thirty or thirty-three a day, or about four dollars an hour. I usually clear about $125 after taxes. No driver declares the tips he actually makes.

I don't react violently to getting stiffed-which means not receiving a tip. A lot of drivers do. I realize there are some people who are barely just able to afford cabs, who really can't afford to tip. People who live in fairly rough neighborhoods, who are afraid to walk the streets and feel much safer taking a cab. There are others, who may have recently immigrated, who aren't familiar with the custom. Puerto Ricans generally tip. Mexicans don't, as a rule. Apparently Mexican cabdrivers don't expect to get tipped. A matter of custom. I don't feel I'm the one to familiarize them. Some other driver will, one way or another. I can say for sure that the best tippers are not the people who live on Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, or the businessmen. They're generally the blue-collar people I pick up in the neighborhoods.

A lot of drivers, they'll agree to almost anything the pa.s.senger will say, no matter how absurd. They're angling for that tip. I'm not just going to nod my head in agreement with someone I don't agree with, just for the sake of getting a tip. After five years I can handle myself pretty well in downtown traffic. A lot of drivers wind up with ulcers. They're the most likely candidates for a heart attack. Driving a cab tends to shorten your life span-if one does it for a career-especially if the driver spends most of his time downtown.

And the fumes and the traffic. That driver is breathing in the exhausts all day. This applies specifically to drivers of Checker cabs.34 The ventilating system in this type of car is not constructed for the convenience of the driver. The vents are right in back of the engine. So we're breathing in fumes from our own engines, as well as those of the other cars and trucks,35 The company doesn't give a d.a.m.n about the conditions of their cabs. Some of them are pretty wretched, low brakes, bald tires, bad valves, most anything. These cabs are given to part-timers. I see new drivers driving these junks day after day and breaking down with them. A cab has to break down five or six times before something is done about it. They're dangerous. Neither the company nor the union gives a d.a.m.n about us. As far as they're concerned, we're machines-as wretched as the cabs.

A person who's driving a cab a number of years tends to become hardened. I hate having to turn somebody down. On the other hand, I think of the reality. I may have sixty, seventy dollars on me at the end of a good day. The money itself is expendable, but my life isn't. I read of incidents in which drivers have been shot even after surrendering their money. This may sometimes happen in the case of junkies. I think most guys who hold up cabdrivers are junkies. They can't control themselves. It's not that they're malicious people, it's just that they've got this habit and they're desperate. It's fear. It's fear that results in a lot of cabdrivers pa.s.sing up black people. This includes black drivers.

On the right sun visor of every cab is a sign that says, "Not for Hire." All we have to do is pull that visor down. When I'm ready to check in, even when I'm downtown, I throw the visor down. Then I'll ask where he's going, black or white. If the fare's going in my direction, fine. Generally people understand. They know the real reason-I'm scared. Most people are aware that you have to lie.

After you've been driving a cab for a while, you can sort of tell-like a sixth sense-what his att.i.tude is, whether or not he's going to give you trouble. But you can't always tell, that's the point.

There's appearance. The attire, such as the leather jacket and shades and this sort of menacing expression. I think it's probably just a front. A lot of these fellas are just covering up. In their everyday life they feel themselves being really s.h.i.+t upon and they just have to feel that they're somebody. And this is their way of manifesting it. Much as I hate to say it, I sometimes pa.s.s them up. Now if a guy is wearing an attire that is really far out-a brightly colored das.h.i.+ki sort of thing or an unusually large natural-I'll pick him up.

I was robbed once. The fella was dressed in a nondescript sort of fas.h.i.+on: white sport s.h.i.+rt, brown slacks, just medium-thick Afro. It happened last year. I picked him up downtown, in the afternoon, about three'. Brought him out south. On the way, we had a very amiable conversation. So it came as a complete surprise. When we got out there, he pulled a gun on me. First he got out of the cab and came around to my window to pay. It was a hot day so I had my windows open. I'd never suspected he'd draw a bead on me.

He came around the window and said, "Give me your money or I'll kill you." Naturally I gave him everything I had-about sixty-five. I gave him my changer and all the bills in my wallet. Funny thing, he didn't demand my wallet. I just pulled out the bills and gave them to him. He ran into the alley. I wasn't about to chase him. I was frozen, my mind was a blank. I was like paralyzed. Oh, wow! I just sat there for about ten minutes. Then I realized how close I had come to being wiped out.

I must admit that one incident sort of changed my att.i.tude, made me a little more wary of who I was picking up thereafter. Before that incident, I didn't really give anyone that thorough a going-over. A person would hail a cab and I'd pick them up. Now I really find myself deliberating: should I or shouldn't I?

I don't find myself getting into as many conversations. I'm not sure that's due to a change in my own att.i.tude or that of the public generally. It may be a bit of both. It's especially true of women pa.s.sengers, the younger ones. They have this fear-of not talking to strange men. People are just becoming more uptight.

People on the verge of a break up . . .

"One time I picked up a woman who wanted to go out to this landing strip at O'Hare. She said her people were being held captive on the landing strip. 'My countrymen . . . ' She appeared to be an actress right out of one of those foreign intrigue films, very slender, with blonde hair, very expensively dressed. In this very thick Polish accent. I explained I couldn't drive out to the landing strip. The pa.s.senger terminal was the best I could do. 'That's not good enough,' she hopped out. I had a feeling as soon as she got in I wouldn't be taking her anywhere, except maybe Chicago State.36 There's been an occasion when I wish I could tell people I was something else than a cabdriver. I feel there's a lot more I could be doing than just shuttling people from place to place for a price. Older guys with families, they have no choice. I wouldn't want to raise a family as a cabdriver. At this point, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do. I had been intending to teach. But with the glut on the market, I don't think by the time I get my B.A. I'll stand much of a chance. I'm thinking of the field of mental health-if by the time I get my degree I still have my own sanity. (Laughs.) WILL ROBINSON.

He's forty-seven. He has been a Chicago bus driver for twenty-seven years. He works the swing s.h.i.+ft, which allows him a two-and-a-half-hour break in the middle of the day. He prefers it to the straight run because "going eight hours straight out there is kinda rough."

During this Sunday conversation, his wife, on occasion, speaks her mind.

"It was a nice job in the beginning. As the time goes along, it gets harder. I was in the second bunch of blacks that was hired. Nineteen forty-five. The job was predominantly white. We had all kinds of facilities in the barn: we had pool tables, we had a little library, we even had a restaurant there. As more blacks came in, they started taking these things away. Now you don't have anything to do but go in, check in for your run, check out, and go home."

His wife recalls, "When the job was first given to blacks, it was a prestige job."

"This was right after the war. It was a giant step coming from the Depression into a good job. I can remember when a black man, working on CTA,37 instead of wearing a dress suit on Sunday, they'd wear their uniforms because it was a prestige thing. It was a little Eisenhower jacket. I wore it on social occasions. I lost the sense of that, oh, about twenty years ago. It had status once. Not so today."

You have your tension. Sometimes you come close to having an accident, that upsets you. You just escape maybe by a hair or so. Sometimes maybe you get a disgruntled pa.s.senger on there, and starts a big argument. Traffic. You have someone who cuts you off or stops in front of the bus. There's a lot of tension behind that. You got to watch all the time. You're watchin' the drivers, you're watchin' other cars. Most of the time you have to drive for the other drivers, to avoid hitting them. So you take the tension home with you. And most of the runs are long runs. From one end of the line to the other would be about an hour and twenty minutes. Most of the drivers, they'll suffer from hemorrhoids, kidney trouble, and such as that. I had a case of ulcers behind it.

In the beginning you had to punch transfers, we had to make change, we had to watch traffic. We had to do all this at the same time and drive. We had the tension when people who look suspicious would get on the bus. You had the tension as whether this was a stickup.