Working. Part 25

It's extremely frustrating. But, ironically, I've felt more productive in the last few weeks doing what I've wanted to do than I have in the last year doing what I was officially supposed to be doing. Officially I'm loafing. I've been working on organizing women and on union activities. It's been great.

If they would let me loose a little more, I could really do something. We've got plenty of statistics to show incredible s.e.x discrimination. Black women have the lowest average grade. White women have the next lowest. Then black men. Then white men. I'm sure these are the statistics for our whole society. We believe that in organizing women we can make changes in all directions. We've already started to do that.

There's no reason why we can't carry this to the community action agencies. Many of them deal with welfare mothers, with all kinds of households headed by women. If women knew more about their rights, they'd have an easier time. If we could get into the whole issue of law suits, we'd get real changes. My offiice is trying to stop us.

When you do something you're really turned on about, you'll do it off-hours too. I put more of myself into it, acting like I'm a capable person. When you're doing something you're turned off on, you don't use what talents you have. There are a lot of people in our office who are doing very, very little, simply because their jobs are so meaningless.

Some of these jobs will appear meaningful on paper. The idea of the antipoverty program is exciting. But people are stifled by bureaucratic decisions and non-decisions. When you're in the field and get into sticky situations with politicians, you can't count on your office to support you. You'll be punished-like having your job taken away from you. (Laughs.) Since I've been doing what I want to do, my day goes much faster. When I was a.s.sistant to the regional director, an awful lot of my time was taken up with endless meetings. I spent easily twenty or more hours a week in meetings. Very, very nonproductive. Though now I'm doing what I want to do, I know it's not gonna last.

I have to hide the stuff I'm doing. If anybody walks into the office, you have to quick shove the stuff out of the way. It's fairly well known now that I'm not doing any official work, because this huge controversy has been going on between the union and the director. People are either on one side or the other. Most people who come in to see me are on the union side. I'm not hiding the fact that I'm not doing any official work.

I hide the stuff because I feel a little guilty. This is probably my Protestant upbringing. I've been work oriented all my life. I can't go on drawing a paycheck doing what I want to do-that's my conditioning. My dad worked in a factory. I was taught work is something you have to do. You do that to get money. It's not your life, but you must do it. Now I believe -I'm getting around to it (laughs)-you should get paid for doing what you want to do. I know its happening to me. But I still have this conditioning: it's too good to be true.

I've had discussions with friends of mine to the right and to the left of me. The people to the left say you shouldn't take any part in a corrupt system. To give them your time and take money from them is a no-no. People to the right say you have no right to take the taxpayers' money for doing nothing. You're not doing official work, therefore you shouldn't be paid for it.

I feel much less guilty about this than I would have a year ago. I have less and less confidence that management people should be telling me what to do. They know less than I do. I trust my own judgment more. I believe that what I'm doing is important.

What would be my recommendation? I read Bellamy's Looking Backward , which is about a utopian society. Getting paid for breathing is what it amounts to. I believe we'd be a lot better off if people got paid for what they want to do. You would certainly get a bigger contribution from the individual. I think it would make for exciting change. It'd be great.

The reasons people get paid now are wrong. I think the reward system should be different. I think we should have a basic security-a decent place to live, decent food, decent clothing, and all that. So people in a work situation wouldn't be so frightened. People are intimidated and the system works to emphasize that. They get what they want out of people by threatening them economically. It makes people apple polishers and a.s.s kissers. I used to hear people say, "Work needs to be redefined." I thought they were crazy. Now I know they're not.

DIANE WILSON.

She works for the OEO. "This is a section called PM&S. I can't for the life of me ever remember what it means52 Sometimes they change it. They reorganize and you get another initial. (Laughs.) "I'm a processing clerk. There are three of us in this one department. We send grants to grantees after field reps have been out to see these poverty-stricken people. The grantees are organizations of the poor. Maybe the Mobilization Center in Gary, where I live-Grand Rapids Poverty Center, something for senior citizens, a day care center. They give 'em all names.

"We mail 'em out forms to sign so they can get the money from Was.h.i.+ngton. When they return the forms to us there's another process we go through. We have a governor's letter and a package in an orange folder that we send out to him. He has to give his consent. We have a little telegram we type up. He approves it or he doesn't. We send it on. That makes it officials. There's a thirty-day waiting period. After that time we send out the package to Was.h.i.+ngton . . .

You wish there was a better system. A lot of money is held up and the grantees who want to know why they can't get it. Sometimes they call and get the run-around on the phone. I never do that. I tell the truth. If they don't have any money left, they don't have it. No, I'm not disturbed any more. If I was just starting on this job, I probably would. But the older I get, I realize it's a farce. You just get used to it. It's a job. I get my paycheck-that's it. It's all political anyway.

A lot of times the grantee comes down to our audit department for aid. They're not treated as human beings. Sometimes they have to wait, wait, wait-for no reason. The grantee doesn't know it's for no reason. He thinks he's getting somewhere and he really isn't.

They send him from floor to floor and from person to person, it's just around and around he goes. Sometimes he leaves, he hasn't accomplished anything. I don't know why this is so. You can see 'em waiting-so long. Sometimes it has to do with color. Whoever is the boss. If you're in the minority group, you can tell by their actions. A lot of times they don't realize that you know it, but this has happened to you.

So this person was standing out there. He had come to offer something. He was from out of state. The secretary told this boss he had someone waiting. He also had someone in the office. He could've waited on the grantee and got him on his way quick. But he closed the door in the young man's face and the young man stood there. That went on for about forty-five minutes. The secretary got tired of seein' the man standin' there, so she said, could she help him? Was it somethin' he just wanted to give the man? He told her yes. She took it, so he wouldn't stand there. That was all he was gonna do, give it to him. I thought this was awfully rude. This boss does this quite often. I don't know if he does it on purpose. I know if it's an Indian or a black or a Latin he does this.

Life is a funny thing. We had this boss come in from Internal Revenue. He wanted to be very, very strict. He used to have meetings every Friday-about people comin' in late, people leavin' early, people abusin' lunch time. Everyone was used to this relaxed att.i.tude. You kind of went overtime. No one bothered you. The old boss went along. You did your work.

Every Friday, everyone would sit there and listen to this man. And we'd all go out and do the same thing again. Next Friday he'd have another meeting and he would tell us the same thing. (Laughs.) We'd all go out and do the same thing again. (Laughs.) He would try to talk to one and see what they'd say about the other. But we'd been working all together for quite a while. You know how the game is played. Tomorrow you might need a favor. So n.o.body would say anything. If he'd want to find out what time someone came in, who's gonna tell 'em? He'd want to find out where someone was, we'd always say, "They're at the Xerox." Just anywhere. He couldn't get through. Now, lo and behold! We can't find him anywhere. He's got into this nice, relaxed atmosphere. . . (Laughs.) He leaves early, he takes long lunch hours. We've converted him. (Laughs.) After my grievances and my fighting, I'm a processing clerk. Never a typist no more or anything like that. (Laughs.) I started working here in 1969. There was an emergency and they all wanted to work overtime. So I made arrangements at home, 'cause I have to catch a later train. Our supervisor's black. All of us are black. We'll help her get it out so there won't be any back drag on this. Okay, so we all worked overtime and made a good showing.

Then they just didn't want to give us the promotion which was due us anyhow. They just don't want to give you anything. The personnel man, all of them, they show you why you don't deserve a promotion. The boss, the one we converted-he came on board, as they call it, after we sweated to meet the deadline. So he didn't know what we did. But he told us we didn't deserve it. That stayed with me forever. I won't be bothered with him ever again.

But our grievance man was very good. He stayed right on the case. We filed a civil rights complaint. Otherwise we woulda never got the promotion. They don't want anybody coming in investigating for race. They said, "Oh, it's not that." But you sit around and see white women do nothin' and get promotions. Here we're working and they say you don't deserve it. The black men are just as hard on us as the white man. Harder. They get angry with you because you started a lot of trouble. The way I feel about it, I'm gonna give 'em all the trouble I can.

Our boss is black, the one that told us we didn't deserve it. (Laughs.) And our union man fighting for us, sittin' there, punchin' away, is white. (Laughs.) We finally got up to the deputy director and he was the one-the white man-that finally went ahead and gave us the promotion. (Laughs.) So we went from grade 4 clerk-typist to grade 5 processing clerk.

We had another boss, he would walk around and he wouldn't want to see you idle at all. Sometimes you're gonna have a lag in your work, you're all caught up. This had gotten on his nerves. We got our promotion and we weren't continually busy. Any time they see black women idle, that irks 'em. I'm talkin' about black men as well as whites. They want you to work continuously.

One day I'd gotten a call to go to his office and do some typing, He's given me all this handwritten script. I don't know to this day what all that stuff was. I asked him, "Why was I picked for this job?" He said his secretary was out and he needs this done by noon. I said, "I'm no longer a clerk-typist and you yourself said for me to get it out of my mind. Are you trying to get me confused? Anyway, I can't read this stuff." He tells me he'll read it. I said, "Okay, I'll write it out as you read it." There's his hand going all over the script, busy. He doesn't know what he's readin', I could tell. I know why he's doing it. He just wants to see me busy.

So we finished the first long sheet. He wants to continue. I said, "No, I can only do one sheet at a time. I'll go over and type this up." So what I did, I would type a paragraph and wait five or ten minutes. I made sure I made all the mistakes I could. It's amazing, when you want to make mistakes, you really can't. So I just put Ko-rect-type paper over this yellow sheet. I fixed it up real pretty. I wouldn't stay on the margins. He told me himself I was no longer a clerk-typist.

I took him back this first sheet and, of course, I had left out a line or two. I told him it made me nervous to have this typed by a certain time, and I didn't have time to proofread it, "but I'm ready for you to read the other sheet to me." He started to proofread. I deliberately misspelled some words. Oh, I did it up beautifully. (Laughs.) He got the dictionary out and he looked up the words for me. I took it back and crossed out the words and squeezed the new ones in there. He started on the next sheet. I did the same thing all over again. There were four sheets. He proofread them all. Oh, he looked so serious! All this time he's spendin' just to keep me busy, see? Well, I didn't finish it by noon.

I'm just gonna see what he does if I don't finish it on time. Oh, it was imperative! I knew the world's not gonna change that quickly. It was nice outside. If it gets to be a problem, I'll go home. It's a beautiful day, the heck with it. So twelve-thirty comes and the work just looks awful. (Laughs.) I typed on all the lines, I continued it anywhere. One of the girls comes over, she says, "You're goin' off the line." I said, "Oh, be quiet. 'I know what I'm doin'. (Laughs.) Just go away." (Laughs.) I put the four sheets together. I never saw anything as horrible in my life. (Laughs.) I decided I'd write him a note. "Dear Mr. Roberts: You've been so much help. You proofread, you look up words for your secretary. It must be marvelous working for you. I hope this has met with your approval. Please call on me again." I never heard from him. (a long laugh.) These other people, they work, work, work, work and nothing comes of it. They're the ones that catch h.e.l.l. The ones that come in every day on time, do the job, and try to keep up with everybody else. A timekeeper, a skinny little black woman. She's fanatic about time. She would argue with you if you were late or something. She's been working for the government twenty-five years and she hadn't gotten a promotion, 'cause she's not a fighter.

She has never reported sick. Some days I won't come. If it's bad outside, heavy snow, a storm, I won't go. You go the next day. The work's gonna be there. She thinks my att.i.tude is just terrible. She's always runnin', acts like she's scared of everybody. She was off one day. She had a dental appointment. Oh, did the boss raise h.e.l.l! Oh, my goodness! He never argues with me.

The boss whose typing I messed up lost his secretary. She got promoted. They told this old timekeeper she's to be his secretary-a.s.sistant. Oh, she's in her glory. No more money or anything and she's doing two jobs all day long. She's rus.h.i.+n' and runnin' all the time, all day. She's a nervous wreck. And when she asked him to write her up for an award, he refused. That's her reward for being so faithful, obedient.

Oh, we love it when the bosses go to those long meetings, those important conferences. (Laughs.) We just leave in a group and go for a show. We don't care. When we get back, they roll their eyes. They know they better not say anything, 'cause they've done nothing when we've been gone anyhow. We do the work that we have to do. The old timekeeper, she sits and knits all that time, always busy.

I've been readin'. Everything I could on China, ever since he made that visit. Tryin' to see how people live and the ideas. It changed me a lot. I don't see any need for work you don't enjoy. I like the way the Indians lived. They moved from season to season. They didn't pay taxes. Everybody had enough. I don't think a few should control everything. I don't think it's right that women lay down and bear sons and then you have a few rich people that tell your sons they have to go and die for their country. They're not dying for their country. They're dying for the few to stay on top. I don't think that's necessary. I'm just tired of this type of thing. I just think we ought to be just human.

ORGANIZER.

BILL TALCOTT.

My work is trying to change this country. This is the job I've chosen. When people ask me, "Why are you doing this?" it's like asking what kind of sickness you got. I don't feel sick. I think this country is sick. The daily injustices just gnaw on me a little harder than they do on other people.

I try to bring people together who are being put down by the system, left out. You try to build an organization that will give them power to make the changes. Everybody's at the bottom of the barrel at this point. Ten years ago one could say the poor people suffered and the middle cla.s.s got by. That's not true any more.

My father was a truckdriver with a sixth-grade education. My uncle was an Annapolis graduate. My father was inarticulate and worked all his life with his hands. My uncle worked all his life with his mouth and used his hands only to cut coupons. My father's problem was that he was powerless. My uncle's problem was that he was powerless, although he thought he was strong. Clipping coupons, he was always on the fringe of power, but never really had it. If he tried to take part in the management of the companies whose coupons he was clipping, he got clipped. Both these guys died very unhappy, dissatisfied with their lives.

Power has been captured by a few people. A very small top and a very big bottom. You don't see much in-between. Who do people on the bottom think are the powerful people? College professors and management types, the local managers of big corporations like General Motors. What kind of power do these guys really have? They have the kind of power Eichmann claimed for himself. They have the power to do bad and not question what they're told to do.

I am more bothered by the ghetto child who is bitten by rats than I am by a middle-cla.s.s kid who can't find anything to do but put down women and take dope and play his life away. But each one is wasted.

"I came into consciousness during the fifties, when Joe McCarthy was running around. Like many people my age-I'm now thirty-seven-I was aware something was terribly wrong. I floundered around for two years in college, was disappointed, and enlisted in the army. I was NCO for my company. During a discussion, I said if I was a black guy, I would refuse to serve. I ended up being sent to division headquarters and locked up in a room for two years, so I wouldn't be able to talk to anybody.

"At San Francisco State, I got involved with the farm workers movement. I would give speeches on a box in front of the Commons. Then I'd go out and fight jocks behind the gym for an hour and a half. (Laughs.) In '64, I resigned as student body president and went to Mississippi to work for SNCC. I spent three years working in the black community in San Francisco.

"At that point, I figured it was time for me to work with whites. My father was from South Carolina. We had a terrible time when I visited-violent arguments. But I was family. I learned from that experience you had to build a base with white people on the fringe of the South. Hopefully you'd build an alliance Between blacks and whites . . ."

I came to East Kentucky with OEO. I got canned in a year. Their idea was the same as Daley's. You use the OEO to build an organization to support the right candidates. I didn't see that as my work. My job was to build an organization of put-down people, who can control the candidates once they're elected.

I put together a fairly solid organization of Appalachian people in Pike County. It's a single industry area, coal. You either work for the coal company or you don't work. Sixty percent of its people live on incomes lower than the government's guidelines for rural areas.

I was brought in to teach other organizers how to do it. I spent my first three months at it. I decided these middle-cla.s.s kids from Harvard and Columbia were too busy telling everybody else what they should be doing. The only thing to do was to organize the local people.

When I got fired, there were enough people to support me on one hundred dollars a month and room and board. They dug down in their pockets and they'd bring food and they'd take care of me like I was a cousin. They felt responsible for me, but they didn't see me as one of them. I'm not an Appalachian, I'm a San Franciscan. I'm not a coal miner, I'm an organizer. If they're gonna save themselves, they're gonna have to do it themselves. I have some skills that can help them. I did this work for three years.

The word organizer has been romanticized. You get the vision of a mystical being doing magical things. An organizer is a guy who brings in new members. I don't feel I've had a good day unless I've talked with at least one new person. We have a meeting, make s.p.a.ce for new people to come in. The organizer sits next to the new guy, so everybody has to take the new guy as an equal. You do that a couple of times and the guy's got strength enough to become part of the group.

You must listen to them and tell them again and again they are important, that they have the stuff to do the job. They don't have to shuck themselves about not being good enough, not worthy. Most people were raised to think they are not worthy. School is a process of taking beautiful kids who are filled with life and beating them into happy slavery. That's as true of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year executive as it is for the poorest.

You don't find allies on the basis of the brotherhood of man. People are tied into their immediate problems. They have a difficult time worrying about other people's. Our society is so structured that everybody is supposed to be selfish as h.e.l.l and screw the other guy. Christian brotherhood is enlightened self-interest. Most sins committed on poor people are by people who've come to help them.

I came as a stranger but I came with credentials. There are people who know and trust me, who say so to the others. So what I'm saying is verifiable. It's possible to win, to take an outfit like Bethlehem Steel and lick 'em. Most people in their guts don't really believe it. Gee, it's great when all of a sudden they realize it's possible. They become alive.

n.o.body believed PCCA53 could stop Bethlehem from strip mining. Ten miles away was a hillside being stripped. Ten miles away is like ten million light years away. What they wanted was a park, a place for their kids. Bethlehem said, "Go to h.e.l.l. You're just a bunch of crummy Appalachians. We're not gonna give you a d.a.m.n thing." If I could get that park for them, they would believe it's possible to do other things.

They really needed a victory. The had lost over and over again, day after day. So I got together twenty, thirty people I saw as leaders. I said, "Let's get that park." They said, "We can't." I said, "We can. If we let all the big wheels around the country know-the National Council of Churches and everybody start calling up, writing, and hounding Bethlehem, they'll have to give us the park." That's exactly what happened. Bethlehem thought; This is getting to be a pain in the a.s.s. We'll give 'em the park and they'll shut up about strip mining. We haven't shut up on strip mining, but we got the park. Four thousand people from Pike County drove up and watched those bulldozers grading down that park. It was an incredible victory.

Twenty or thirty people realized we could win. Four thousand people understood there was a victory. They didn't know how it happened, but a few of 'em got curious. The twenty or thirty are now in their own communities trying to turn people on.

We're trying to link up people in other parts of the state-Lexington, Louisville, Covington, Bowling Green-and their local issues and, hopefully, binding them together in some kind of larger thing.

When you start talking to middle-cla.s.s people in Lexington, the words are different, but it's the same script. It's like talking to a poor person in Pike County or Missisippi. The schools are bad. Okay, they're bad for different reasons-but the schools are bad.

The middle cla.s.s is fighting powerlessness too. Middle-cla.s.s women, who are in the Lexington fight, are more alienated than lower-cla.s.s women. The poor woman knows she's essential for the family. The middle-cla.s.s woman thinks, If I die tomorrow, the old man can hire himself a maid to do everything I do. The white-collar guy is scared he may be replaced by the computer. The schoolteacher is asked not to teach but to baby-sit. G.o.d help you if you teach. The minister is trapped by the congregation that's out of touch with him. He spends his life violating the credo that led him into the ministry. The policeman has no relations.h.i.+p to the people he's supposed to protect. So he oppresses. The fireman who wants to fight fires ends up fighting a war.

People become afraid of each other. They're convinced there's not a d.a.m.n thing they can do. I think we have it inside us to change things. We need the courage. It's a scary thing. Because we've been told from the time we were born that what we have inside us is bad and useless. What's true is what we have inside us is good and useful.

"In Mississippi, our group got the first black guy elected in a hundred years. In San Francisco, our organization licked the development agency there. We tied up two hundred million dollars of its money for two years, until the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds finally came to an agreement with the community people. The guy I started with was an alcoholic pimp in rhe black ghetto. He is now a Presbyterian minister and very highly respected."

I work all the way from two in the morning until two the next morning seven days a week. (Laughs.) I'm not a martyr. I'm one of the few people I know who was lucky in life to find out what he really wanted to do. I'm just havin' a ball, the time of my life. I feel sorry for all these people I run across all the time who aren't doing what they want to do. Their lives are h.e.l.l. I think everybody ought to quit their job and do what they want to do. You've got one life. You've got, say, sixty-five years. How on earth can you blow forty-five years of that doing something you hate?

I have a wife and three children. I've managed to support them for six years doing this kind of work. We don't live fat. I have enough money to buy books and records. The kids have as good an education as anybody in this country. Their range of friends runs from millionaires in San Francisco to black prost.i.tutes in Lexington. They're comfortable with all these people. My kids know the name of the game: living your life up to the end.

All human recorded history is about five thousand years old. How many people in all that time have made an overwhelming difference? Twenty? Thirty? Most of us spend our lives trying to achieve some things. But we're not going to make an overwhelming difference. We do the best we can. That's enough.

The problem with history is that it's written by college professors about great men. That's net what history is. History's a h.e.l.l of a lot of little people getting together and deciding they want a better life for themselves and their kids.

I have a goal. I want to end my life in a home for the aged that's run by the state-organizing people to fight 'em because they're not running it right. (Laughs.) BOOK SEVEN.

THE SPORTING LIFE.

EDDIE ARROYO.

There was an accident at the track today and I don't know really how the boy came out. At Hawthorne today. His horse fell and he just sailed. I don't know if he was conscious or not. The ambulance picked him up.

He is a jockey, unmistakably, and has been at it for about six years. He's had a good share of win, place, and show at race tracks out East, in the South, as well as in his home territory, Chicago. For "better than six months" of the year, he's a familiar man on a horse at Hawthorne, Arlington, and Sportsman's Park. "The first couple of years I rode, I didn't miss one day. I'd finish in Florida and took a plane and rode here the next day or whenever a track was open. I worked ninety-nine percent of the year."

He is twenty-eight. Though born in Puerto Rico, he's considered a Chicago home town boy, having attended high school and junior college here. "They said I was too small to be a baseball player, so why don't you try to be a jockey? I read how much jockeys made, so I figured I'll give it a try. Now that I've become a jockey, you're always worried about playin' ball and gettin' hurt. You have to be at such a peak that you're afraid to do anything else. So I quit anything else but riding.

"To the people it's a glamorous job, but to me it's the hardest work I ever held in my life. I was brought up tough and I was brought up lucky. Keeps me goin', I love it. I like the glamour, too. Everybody likes to read about themselves in the papers and likes to see your name on television and people recognize you down the street. They recognize me by my name, my face, my size. You stick out like a basketball player. I think we're all selfcentered. Most of us have tailor-made clothes and you can see it-the way you carry yourself."

I been having a little problem of weight the last three weeks. I've been retaining the water, which I usually don't do. I'm not losing it by sweating. My usual weight's about 110, with saddle and all. Stripped naked, I'm about 106. Right now I weigh 108. If I try to get to 106, I begin to feel the drain, the loss of energy. But you waste so much energy riding that I eat like a horse. Then I really have to watch it.

I've learned to reduce from other riders who've been doing it for twenty-some years. They could lose seven pounds in three hours, by sweating, by just being in the hot box. All the jockeys' rooms have 'em. Or you can take pills. It weakens extremely. It takes the salt out of your body and you're just not completely there.

Riding is very hazardous. We spend an average of two months out of work from injuries we sustain during the year. We suffer more death than probably any other sport. I was very late becoming a jockey, at twenty-two. They start at sixteen usually. At the age of sixteen, you haven't enough experience in life to really see danger. At twenty-two, you've been through harder times and you see if you make a wrong decision you might get yourself or somebody else hurt. When you're sixteen you don't really care.

I been lucky until last year, almost accident-free. My first accident last year came in February, when I broke the cartilage in my knee in a spill, warming up for a race. The horse did somethin' wrong and I fell off of him and he run over me-my knee-and tore the ligaments in my ankle, broke my finger, bruises all over. About three months later I fell again. I had a concussion, I had lacerations in the temple, six st.i.tches, and I had a fracture in the vertebrae in my back. (Indicates a scar.) I just did this Sat.u.r.day. A horse threw me out of the gate right here on my nose. I had all my teeth knocked out. (Laughs.) His mother, who is serving coffee, hovers gently nearby. As she listens, her hand tentatively goes toward her cheek. The universal gesture. Toward the end of the evening she confides softly concerning her daily fears. She hopes he will soon do other things.

The most common accident is what we call clippin' of another horse's heels. Your horse trips with the other horse's heels, and he'll automatically go down. What helps us is the horse is moving at such a momentum, he falls so quick, that we just sail out into the air and don't land near the horse. We usually land about fifteen feet away. That's what really helps.

You put it off as casual. If I were to think how dangerous it is, I wouldn't dare step on a horse. There's just so many things that can happen. I'll come home with a bruise on my arm, I can't move it. I have no idea when it happened. It happened leaving the gate or during the race. I'll pull a muscle and not know it happened. I'll feel the pain after the race. Your mind is one hundred percent on what you're doing. You feel no pain at that moment.

I'd say the casualty rate is three, four times higher than any other sport. Last year we had nine race track deaths, quite a few broken backs, quite a few paralyzed . . .

A real close friend of mine, he's paralyzed. Three days after I fell, he fell. Just a normal accident. We all expected him to get up and walk away. He's paralyzed from the waist down. It's been a year and some months. We had a benefit dinner for him. Gettin' money out of those people-track owners-is like tryin' to squeeze a lemon dry.

He gets compensation if he's a member of the Jockeys' Guild or the Jockeys' a.s.sociation. Of the two thousand or more jockeys, about fifteen hundred belong to the guild. I'm the representative here in Chicago. The guild comes up with fifty dollars a week and the race track gives us fifty.

Only fifty bucks compensation! We don't have a pension plan. We're working on one, but the legislature stops us. They say we're self-employed. They put us in the same category as a doctor. There are old doctors, but there are no old jockeys.

Some tracks still object to the guild. A lotta time the tracks get so hazardous that we refuse to ride on 'em. They usually wait till two or three riders fall, then they determine the track's hazardous. Sometimes nothin' happens to riders, other times they break bones. The rains, the cold weather, sometimes it freezes and there are holes. It's plain to see it's just not fit for an animal or a human being to work on these conditions.

Bones break a little casual. You get used to it, a finger . . . What most breaks is your collarbone. I fractured it. I could name you rider after rider, that's the first thing that goes, the collarbone.

I prep horses for a race. Three days before, I'll go a half mile with the horse I'm gonna ride, or three-eighths of a mile. The owner wants me to get the feel of the horse. I do this day in and day out through the year. So I'm a good judge of pace. He knows I'm not gonna let a horse go three seconds too fast. He might loose all his energies out, and when the race comes up he's empty. I'll average two or three in the morning. Most of the time I'll just talk to the man and he'll tell me, "How did my horse run the other day?" or "I'm gonna ride you on this horse and he likes to run this way." I don't work for one man. I ride for anyone that wants me.

If I ride within the first four races, I have to be back at twelve-thirty. The first race is two-ten. They want you at least an hour and a half before. You have about a good thirty, forty-five minutes to get dressed, get your weight down, get prepared, read up on the charts of the horses that are gonna ride that day, plus your own. You look for speed.

You know their records, because more or less you rode against them before or rode them themselves. Does he like to go to the front? Does he like to come from behind? Does he like to stay in the middle? Does he like to go around? Does he like to go through? Then the trainer will tell you how he likes his horse rode. If he's a good trainer, he'll tell you the habits of the horse, even if they're bad habits. A bad habit are horses that lug in, that like to ride around instead of inside, that don't break too good. It makes it more dangerous-and a little more difficult to win races. There's more ways of getting beat.

You have only a minute and ten seconds sometimes to do everything you have to do. The average race is three-quarters of a mile, and they usually are a minute and ten or a minute, eleven. You make the wrong decision, that's the race. You really don't know where you're gonna lay or how the horse is gonna react from one race to the other. Your first thing is to get him out of the gate. You have to look for position. Where can I be? There's ten, twelve other horses that would like to have the same position. There's maybe six horses that want to go into the lead. The other six might come from behind. You can't be all in the same place at the same time. You have to wiggle your way around here and there.

You ride around, you find the race is half-over. If you're layin' near the leaders, you're gonna wait a little later to move. If you're way back there, you have to move a little earlier, because you have a lot of catching up to do. Here's what makes riders. You must realize there are other jockeys as capable as you are in the race. So you must use good judgment. You have to handicap which horses are gonna do what in front of you. Which ones are gonna keep runnin' and vacate that s.p.a.ce that you can flow through. Or which are stoppin' and you have to avoid.

You must know the other jockeys, too. They all have habits. I know jockeys I can get through and jockeys that don't let you. I have a habit. I've been known as a front running rider, that I can save a horse better. I got a good judge of pace when I'm in front. But I feel I'd rather ride a horse from behind. A horse is compet.i.tive. It's his nature to beat other horses. That's all they've been taught all their lives. Usually at three years old they start going in pairs. When they start gettin' ready in the morning workouts, we're matchin' 'em up against each other. You can see the little babies, two year olds, they are trying to beat each other, just their instinct. One tries to get in front of the other, just like a little bitty game. One will get so much in front and he'll wait. The other will get in front. And they'll go like that. They're conditioned to it.

Sure the animal makes a difference, but if you have two horses alike you have to beat the other rider. You have to wait for his mistakes or his habit. I've learned patience. I know other people's habits a lot better than mine. I'm sure they know mine a lot better than they know theirs.

If a jockey's in trouble and he hollers for help, that other rider has to do everything in his power to help-whether it's gonna cost him the race or not. One possibility: there's horses all around him, he's in the middle, he can't control his horse. So he's gonna run into another horse, he' gonna clip the other horse's heels. If he does this, he's gonna fall, and the people behind him are gonna fall over him. That's what happened today.

You see him or he hollers "I can't hold my horse!" You just move out, let him out, so he can take his horse wide. Most jockeys'll do this even if it'll cost 'em the race. Not all. Some that are just interested in winning . . . They're frowned on. They have very little friends among other riders. You don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I know a lot of riders that had me in trouble and I've asked for help, and I felt they coulda done a lot more than they did. No conscience. At the same time, they been in trouble and I did everything possible to help. I had to stop ridin' a horse to protect another rider. What's worse is seein' another rider make a mistake and you have to protect him. You have to do it.

People of the racing world are a close fraternity. "We work together, we travel together. The whole shebang moves over from one state to another. We automatically seek each other out. We're good friends."

The wages consist of ten percent of the horse's purse. If it's $4,500, you get about $450. About ten percent of the win. The smallest purse here is $2,500, so you win $250. You get a straight wage for place or show. For second place, it would be fifty or fifty-five. Third money is forty, forty-five. For the out money, fourth or under, it's thirty, thirty-five dollars.

We have agents. My agent works only for me. I pay him twenty-five percent of my gross earnings. It's quite a bit, but he's worth it. An agent is very important in a jockey's success. He gets your mounts. He has the right to commit you to ride a horse and you have to abide by it. He tries to get you on the best horse he can. He has to be a good handicapper. He has to be a good talker. And he has to be trustworthy, that the owners can trust him. There's an awful lot of information related from the trainer to the agent to the jockey, which you wouldn't want someone else to find out. Some agents are ex-jockeys, but not too many. They're connected with racing, father to son and so on. Racing has a habit of keeping their own.

You go to the barn and start as a hot walker. He's the one that walks the horse a half-hour, after he's been on the track for his training, while he drinks the water. About every five minutes, you gotta do about two or three swallows. Then you keep with him until he's completely cooled down, until he's not sweating any more. You do this every day. You might walk six, seven horses, which starts building your legs up. We all started this way. There's no short cuts.

From walkin', I became a groom-one that takes care of horses. That's a step up. He usually takes care of three or four horses all day. He cleans them, he ma.s.sages their legs and their body, takes care of the stalls.

I went from groom to exercise boy, another step higher. Now you're riding a horse. You first start walking, getting used to the reins, getting used to the little bitty saddle. You might walk for a week around shed row. They usually pick an old horse, that's well-mannered. From then, you graduate to goin' on the track.

The first day you go to the track it's really hilarious. Because there's somethin' about a galloping horse there's no way to prepare for it. No matter how much exercise you do, you're not fit. I went clear around this mile and an eighth track. When I got up to the back side where they pulled me up, my legs were numb. I couldn't feel any more. I jumped off the horse, there was nothin' there to hold me up. I went down right to the ground. I sat there a half-hour, right where I landed. They made a lot of fun out of it. It happens to everybody.

Some days I'll ride seven, eight. Some days two or three. You feel it at the end of the day. Sometimes I come home, I just collapse. I could sleep right through the next day. You're lucky when you have horses that want to run. Other times you have to do all the work. It's easier to have a free-running horse. You don't have to do very much but kinda guide him along and help him when the time comes. But if you get a horse that doesn't want to run, you're pretty tired after three-quarters of a mile.

To be a jockey you must love the horse. There's a lot of times when I lose my patience with him. There's just certain horses that annoy you. There's no two alike. They have personalities just like you and I do.

Distant-U, the filly, she's beautiful. She's a little lady. She looks like a lady, pet.i.te. Except she's a little mean, unpredictable. I've gotten to like her and I know how she likes to be rode. I don't know if she knows me, but I know her, exactly what she likes me to do. The horse can tell it right away. When I sit there with confidence she'll be a perfect lady. If you don't have confidence, the horse takes advantage of it.