Working. Part 33

He is twenty-six. He is the president of four corporations: American Motorcycle Mechanics School, Evel Knievel's Electrocycle Service Centers, Triple-A Motorcycle Leasing, and AMS Productions.

The first: The largest motorcycle mechanics' school in the country. "I started out before they had any. It's a 350-hour course, twelve weeks, six hours a day. It's three hours on the night s.h.i.+ft, twenty-four weeks. Now we're having home study courses. We're doing new courses on the w.a.n.kel rotary engine. They're gonna go big in the next five years. Most of your cars are gonna have 'em. They don't pollute."

The second: A franchise-"service centers and accessory sales. The machine I designed for Sun Electric tests motorcycles and electronically spots the problem. I'm partners with Evel Knievel.67 We're going nationwide. We expect to have them in every city. I've got fifteen salesmen around the country selling franchises. You walk in, get your motorcycle tuned up, and buy accessories. We sell 'em the initial package, we set 'em up, we have our own design for the buildings and everything. It's going to be like McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken."

The third: Another franchise-"You can lease a motorcycle just like you can an automobile for a season, a month, a day. We're going nationwide here also."

The fourth: It's for shows where Knievel performs. "We have three salesmen selling program ads and booth s.p.a.ce. This year we're doing ten shows. At show time you need about fifty people."

"In the next few years there's gonna be a lot of big things going on. It's just going to skyrocket. In the last year I had plenty of ups and downs. When you're down you've gotta keep climbin' six times as hard."

I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I'll make a good chunk of money in one thing, stick it back in the other thing, and just watch it grow. I'd get more out of it than h.o.a.rding it away somewhere. I'd say I'm better off than most twenty-six-year-old guys. (Laughs.) Any one of these companies would probably be twice as big if I put all my time into it. But it wouldn't be a challenge any more. There are some new ideas I'm working on that are really something. I don't even know whether I should say anything . . .

I started working pretty young. When I was six I had my first paper route. At nine I worked in a bicycle repair shop. At the same time I was delivering chop suey for a Chinese restaurant. I worked as a stock boy in a grocery store for a year. This had no interest to me whatsoever. This was all after school and weekends. I always liked the feeling of being independent. I never asked my parents for financial help. Anything I wanted to buy, I always had the money. I didn't have them watching over me. They wouldn't have cared had they known.

I was lucky in school. Subjects everybody had trouble with-mathematics, algebra-they just came natural to me. I never did any studying. I was more interested in my work than in school. I liked drafting and machine shop. History and English bored me.

"I won a scholars.h.i.+p to Francis Parker.68 My mother wanted me to go there. They said, "n.o.body will ever know you're on scholars.h.i.+p." I don't think anybody there didn't know I was there that way. I never got invited to any of the parties. They just put up with you because you were there. Got in a lot of fights. Ended up paying for a window. After two years I quit and went to Lane Techt69 where I really wanted to go."

I had my first full-time job as a tractor mechanic for International Harvester. They had an opening for an industrial designer. I studied that at IIT. I was to start at eighty-five hundred dollars a year, plus they were gonna pay for my education. I was supposed to start Monday at eight. They called me about six thirty in the morning and said they've got a guy with a college degree and ten years' experience. I said, "You need tractor mechanics, I'll take that job." I bulls.h.i.+tted my way into it. They gave me a test which was ridiculous. Instead of making eighty-five hundred as an Industrial designer, I was making ten five to start as a tractor mechanic. (Laughs.) I worked there for about a year. I was getting maybe a couple of hours' sleep. I was putting in about a twenty-hour day. I was just rundown completely. I was in the hospital for three months. Had a relapse, was back in for another month. This is when I did a lot of thinking. I decided to go into business for myself. I rented a place for forty-five dollars a month and I opened up a repair shop for motorcycles, lawn mowers, and bicycles. That was nine years ago. I was about seventeen.

This drive I had-maybe it went back to Francis Parker. Seeing those kids drive up in chauffer-driven cars-what I thought were the finer things. I wanted to make something of myself. I felt if I worked hard while I was young, I could take it easier later on. If I'd come from a wealthy family, I probably never would have had this drive. The other kids were laying around at the beach and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. Here I was already in business. I felt I really accomplished something.

My interest in motorcycles was for the money originally. I saw this was going to be a big field. Later, business becomes a game. Money is the kind of way you keep score. How else you gonna see yourself go up? If you're successful in business, it means you're making money. It gets to the point where you've done all the things you want to do. There's nothing else you want to buy any more. You get your thrill out of seeing the business grow. Just building it bigger and bigger . . .

When I started making money I just went crazy. I bought a limousine and had a chauffeur. I bought two Cadillacs and a Corvette. Bought a condominium in Skokie. I just bought a home out in Evanston. I'm building a ranch out in Arizona. Once you get somethin, it's not as important as it was. You need something else to keep going. I could never retire. It gets inside you. If you don't progress every day, you feel you've wasted it. That's a day you'll never get back.

You get enemies in the business, especially if you're successful. Ones that have grown up and started with you. You want to be liked and you want to help people. I've found out you can't. It's not appreciated. They never thank you. If you're successful in business, you're around phonies all the time. There's always some guy slappin' you on the back, tryin' to get you to buy something from him or lend him money.

You remember old friends and good times. This relations.h.i.+p is gone. The fun you used to have. They're envious of what you have. They wonder, why they didn't do it. When I opened the repair shop in Old Town I was paying my partner $250 a week. I gave him a car and helped him with his tuition in college. Someone offered him double what I paid. I said, "If you go, there's no comin' back." So he left. We grew up together, went to grammar school. I lived with him. There's no loyalty when it comes to money.

I'm younger than most of the guys who work for me, but I feel older. It's like a big family. I have the feeling they're not here for the money. They want to help me out. They respect me. They feel that what I'm doing is, in the end, gonna work out for them. I don't like an employee that comes in and it's a cut and dried deal: "I want so much a week," and walks out at five '.

I usually get out of here at one ' in the morning. I go home and eat dinner at two. I do my best thinking at night. I can't fall asleep until seven in the morning. I turn the TV on. I don't even pay attention to it. They got the all-night movies. You actually feel like an idiot. I just sit there in the living room, making notes, trying to put down things for the next day to remember. I plan ahead for a month. Maybe I'll lay down in bed about four in the morning. If something comes in my head, I'll get up and start writing it. If I get three, four hour's sleep, I'm okay.

That's when I come up with my ideas. That's when I put this Electrocycle idea together. I sold Sun Electric on the idea of building them for me. Then I sold Evel Knievel on the idea of putting his name on it. He's on nationwide TV.

Knievel is a good example of doing something for fame and money. He takes all the beatings and breaks himself like he does because he feels it's that important to be famous and make money. When you really enjoy something, it doesn't seem like work. Everybody in the world could do something if they wanted to. I guess there's some people that don't want to do anything. If they could, they wouldn't be fighting with each other.

The world is full of people who don't have the guts or the b.a.l.l.s to go out on their own. People want to be in business for themselves, but they don't want to take the chance. That's what separates me from the majority of people. If I've got an idea, I'll go ahead and put everything on the line.

A lot of young people are getting into business now. The shops and bars and places where young people go. Who knows better than a young person what's gonna attract young people? Companies are beginning to realize this.

The hardest problem I had was getting mechanics. If I hired an older guy, a good mechanic, I couldn't tell him what to do. He might have been doing it for twenty years, and he didn't want to hear from a kid like me. But if I took a young kid who knew nothing but had ambition, I could make a better man for me out of him. This is what the bigger companies are finding out.

What motivates a lot of young people who work here is they see somebody like me who made it. They think, Christ! What the h.e.l.l's wrong with me? When the article came out about me in the paper,70 Jesus! I had so many calls from young people, "This is great! I'm gonna get my a.s.s going." I had a call from a sixteen-year-old kid. He felt he really wanted to do things. I was amazed at the number of young people who read it.

A guy I went to grammar school with-hadn't seen him since sixth grade -was out in the hall here. His brother has cancer. He was telling me how happy they both were to read something like this. It gave 'em a boost. They had known somebody that had made a success.

This hippie deal and flower child, I don't believe in giving anybody any-thing. I think everybody should work. The world problem that bothers me more than anything is the att.i.tude of younger people. The opportunities they have, and no desire. I hate to see anybody that feels the world owes them a living. All this welfare. The largest percentage of them don't want to do anything.

I'm down at the office Sat.u.r.days too. Sundays, about half the time. The other half of the time maybe my wife and I will go horseback riding or visit a friend's house. Even when you're visiting with them, you can't get away from your work. They ask about it. It's a kind of a good feeling. There's not too many Sundays like that. I've been traveling more than ever with these franchises.

When I first started to get successful, people in the business tried to hurt me. One of my biggest kicks is getting beyond them. There's nothing they can do. I'm in a position where there's no compet.i.tion. If somebody tries to do something to me, b.u.m rap me, why h.e.l.l, I can just open my franchise right next door to 'em.

When I was younger-I was applying for a Yamaha franchise or a Honda-these dealer reps would come in and ask for Ken Brown. I'd say, "I'm Ken Brown." They'd say, "I want to talk to your father." I fought to get in Old Town. The chamber of commerce didn't want me there. They still had this black leather jacket image. They felt all these h.e.l.l's Angels would be coming down and wrecking. We opened up and had three hundred thousand people there on a weekend. You didn't even have to advertise. I had the place full. They saw money being made there. A young punk comes in and rents an alley for $125 a month and I made about $125,000 over the summer out of that alley-leasing bikes. That really killed 'em.

When you're young and in business, it's not an a.s.set. The first time I walked into a bank they didn't want to deal with me. I used to be nervous. I'd look at the guy across the desk with a tie and suit and everything. You could see what he was thinking. You oughta see that guy now when I come in. (Laughs.) When I go into banks now, I feel I'm better than them. And they know it.

You've been noticing my Mickey Mouse watch? (Laughs.) I like something like this because n.o.body would expect me to be wearing this. No matter what I've done, it's always been they never expected it. When I rented the Amphitheatre for the first show, they turned me down. I rented the Colosseum and had a success. The next year they were happy to deal with me.

It bothers them that somebody new should come in and be so successful. It wasn't easy. When other people were going out and just having fun and riding motorcycles and getting drunk and partying, I was working. I gave up a lot. I gave up my whole youth, really. That's something you never get back.

People say to me, "Gee! You work so d.a.m.n hard, how can you ever enjoy it?" I'm enjoying it every day. I don't have to get away for a weekend to enjoy it. Eventually I'll move out to Arizona and make that my headquarters. I'm young enough. I'll only be thirty-one in five years. I can still do these things-horseback riding, looking after animals. I like animals. But I'll never retire. I'll take it a little bit easier. I'll have to. I had an ulcer since I was eighteen.

(Indicates bottle of tablets on the table. It reads: "Mylanta. A palliative combination of aluminum, magnesium, hydroxide to relieve gastric hyperacidity and heartburn.") I chew up a lot of Mylantas. It's for your stomach, to coat it. Like Maalox. I probably go through twenty tablets a day.

I guess people get different thrills out of business in different ways. There's a lot of satisfaction in showing up people who thought you'd never amount to anything. If I died tomorrow, I'd really feel I enjoyed myself. How would I like to be remembered? I don't know if I really care about being remembered. I just want to be known while I'm here. That's enough. I didn't like history, anyway.

KAY STEPKIN.

We're in The Bread Shop. "We've taught all sorts of people how to make bread. The Clay People are across the street. They teach people ceramics. The Weaving Workshop is a block down. They give lessons in weaving and teach people how to make their own looms. Nearby is The Printing Workshop. They teach . . . It's an incredible neighborhood. Within four blocks, there's every possible type person, every nationality."

There are posters in the window and stickers on the door: "Peace and Good Will Toward People"; "Children of the New Testament"; "Needed: Breadmakers, Hard Work, Low Pay"; "We have bread crumbs and sc.r.a.ps for your birds."

There are barrels of whole wheat flour. There are huge cartons and tins of nuts, vanilla, honey, peanut b.u.t.ter. Varieties of herb tea are visible. On the counter are loaves-whole wheat, cinnamon raisin, oatmeal, rye, soy sunflower, corn meal. "People come up with suggestions we love to hear. People will say, 'Why don't you make this? Why don't you make that?' We try it out. We average 200 to 250 loaves a day. We use any ingredient that's in its natural state. We don't use white flour."

Among her customers, as well as health food stores, are conventional groceries, including a huge supermarket. "The stores pick it up. We don't have a car. It's about half-wholesale and half-retail. The retail part is the most enjoyable, because we meet people and talk to 'em and they ask questions." A matronly woman who has just bought a loaf pauses. "I tried this soy sunflower bread about three weeks ago and it's really great. Gave it to two people as Christmas gifts."

There is an easy wandering in and out of customers and pa.s.sersby, among whom are small boys, inhaling deeply, longingly, in comic style. It is late afternoon and a few of her colleagues are relaxing. She is twenty-nine years old.

I'm the director. It has no owner. Originally I owned it. We're a nonprofit corporation 'cause we give our leftover bread away, give it to anyone who would be hungry. Poor people buy, too, 'cause we accept food stamps. We sell bread at half-price to people over sixty-five. We never turn anybody away. A man came in a few minutes ago and we gave him a loaf of bread. We give bread lessons and talks. Sometimes school children come in here. We show 'em around and explain what we're doing . . .

Everything we do is completely open. We do the baking right out here. People in the neighborhood, waiting for the bus in the morning, come in and watch us make bread. We don't like to waste anything. That's real important. We use such good ingredients, we hate to see it go into a garbage can. And it may be burned and go into the air some way.

We have men and women, we all do the same kind of work. Everyone does everything. It's not as chaotic as it sounds. Right now there's eight of us. Different people take responsibility for different jobs. We just started selling tea last week. Tom's interested in herbs. He bought the tea.

We hire only neighborhood people. We will hire anyone who can do the work. There's been all ages. Once we had a twelve-year-old boy working here. A woman of forty used to work here. There isn't any machinery here. We do everything by hand. We get to know who each other is, rapping with each other. It's more valuable to hear your neighbor, what he has to say, than the noise of the machine. A lot of people are out of work. Machines are taking over. So we're having people work instead of machines.

The bread's exactly like you would make it at home. You can make it sloppy or very good. If you're into bread making, you know just when to start and when to stop kneading and how much flour to add. The machine just can't do as fine a job. I started doing things for myself when I realized our food supply is getting more and more poisoned. I didn't have anybody to show me. I just made the dumbest mistakes.

"It was about nine years ago. I would read books on it. But there was no one to talk to. I was doing different jobs. I was teaching. I was a waitress. I never did anything satisfying. About two years ago, I started realizing how bad things really are out here-on the planet. (Laughs.) "I see us living in a completely schizophrenic society. We live in one place, work in another place, and play in a third. You have to talk differently depending on who you're talking to. You work in one place, get to know the people, you go home at night and you're lonely because you don't know anyone in your neighborhood. I see this as a means of bringing all that together. I like the idea of people living together and working together."

We start about five thirty in the morning and close about seven at night. We're open six days a week. Sundays we sell what's left over from Sat.u.r.day and give bread lessons. We charge a dollar a lesson to anyone who wants to come. It about covers the cost of the ingredients. Each person makes three loaves of bread. We tell why this shop uses certain ingredients and not others. Just about everything is organic. We have a sign up saying what isn't.

We try people out. We take them as a subst.i.tute first. You can't tell by words how someone's gonna do. We ask people to come as a sub when someone is absent. Out of those we choose who we'll take. We watch 'em real close. We teach 'em: "This is the way your hands should move." "This is how you tell when your bread's done, if it feels this way." "Why don't you feel my bread?"

We try to discourage people from the start, 'cause it's hard having a high turnover. If someone applies for a job, I tell 'em all the bad points. Some of 'em think it's something new or groovy. I let 'em know quickly it's not that way at all. It's work. Each person's here for a different reason. Tom's interested in ecological things, Jo enjoys being here and she likes working a half-day . . .

I get here at six thirty. I stand at the table and make bread. I'll do that for maybe two hours. There might be a new person and I'll show him . . . At eight thirty or so I'll make breakfast and read the paper for half. an hour. Maybe take a few phone calls. Then go back and weigh out loaves and shape 'em.

We each make seven dollars a day. At first we didn't make any salaries at all. After two weeks, we each took out five dollars. It sounds unscientific, but most of us could get by. Everyone was living with someone. We all get help from one another. We also buy the ingredients at the store. We get our food real cheap. We can each take a loaf a day out of the store. The store pays all our taxes.

Our prices are real reasonable. I went into a grocery store and saw what they were selling bread for. Machine-made whole wheat was selling at forty-five cents. So we made it at fifty cents a loaf. It would cost fifty cents to make that bread at home using the same ingredients. We priced it that way on purpose.

We have about eleven different kinds of bread. All the other loaves are sixty cents a pound. If we were doing real good, we'd lower the prices. It's been working out. Wholesale is a dime less. We put a resale price on the bread 'cause some people were selling our bread for ridiculous prices like eighty and ninety cents a loaf. Now they're only allowed to sell it for a nickel more than we sell it here. We check the stores. I always like to see the bread and how they display it.

We started out real strict. We'd sell only what we make. Otherwise, we were middlemen, profiting off somebody else's labor. But now we're selling ingredients too, because there's no other store around that has them available. We sell honey, oil, flour, nuts. We buy honey in sixty-pound tins, and we're able to sell real dark good honey for about twenty cents less than the big supermarkets.

Our customers have to bring their own bottles and bags. We don't have any bags around at all. We figure any penny we save here is pa.s.sed on to the customers one way or the other. I don't see how we'll ever make a profit because of the nature of what we're doing. There's a limit to how many loaves of bread one person could make. As there's a demand for more bread, there have to be more people here. We never have any money left over. We had thirty-five hundred dollars in loans. We put twenty-five dollars a week away toward the loan. We've paid back a thousand dollars already.

But we're growing in other ways. We're looking for ways to get our product to people cheaper without resorting to machinery. One way is to get the ingredients cheaper-without sacrificing quality. Right now, there's only one distributor of organically grown grain in bulk in the entire Midwest. He gets all his grain from Texas. There's an exhorbitant s.h.i.+pping charge pa.s.sed on to us. Furthermore, we don't know that these grains are really organically grown. So we've purchased a mill. It's going to make big changes here.

We'll grind our own grain. We'll be able to buy organically grown grain right here in the Midwest. Buying right from the farm, it's going to be maybe a third or fourth of the price. We'll be able to go to the farm and see for ourselves. If there's not one weed growing between these rows of wheat, you know they use chemicals. Even our customers will go to these farms and see for themselves.

We use about a thousand pounds of wheat a week. We can say to the farmers, "Stop using this chemical and we'll buy your whole field." His neighboring farmers will see that he can sell this for a profit and maybe they'll catch on too. People can do anything. (Laughs.) It's such a good feeling. Somebody'll come in and say, "Your bread is delicious." It's like your making dinner in your own house and giving it to someone. People come in like guests. They have an idea and we might take their advice. One man, who had been to a baking school, worked here three months. He enjoyed it a lot. At first he was horrified by what we were doing. We don't measure flour and he couldn't believe it. Our bread rises at different rates every day, depending on the temperature. We don't have automatic rising things. He taught us a lot. He taught us how to shape loaves better, in a more efficient manner.

We taught him a lot too. He found out you don't have to measure the whole wheat flour. You can tell by the feel of it when the bread is done and you have enough flour. It also gives you more satisfaction than just doing it machinelike. You're putting more of yourself into it somehow.

We try to have a compromise between doing things efficiently and doing things in a human way. Our bread has to taste the same way every day, but you don't have to be machines. On a good day it's beautiful to be here. We have a good time and work hard and we're laughing. It's a good day if we don't make too many mistakes and have a good time. I think a person can work as hard as he's capable, not only for others but for his own satisfaction.

In the beginning our turnover was huge. It's slowing down now. I noticed as I was doing this tax thing at the end of the year, we've had only eleven people here the last three months, which is beautiful. That means only three people have left. In our first three months we had eighteen people. (Laughs.) The work was unbearably hard at the beginning. As we've learned more, our work has gotten easier. So there's a big feeling of accomplishment.

I get the same money as the others. I don't think that's the important issue. The decisions have been mainly mine, but this is getting to be less and less. Originally all the ideas were mine. But I'd taken them from other people. Now we have meetings, whenever anyone thinks we need one. Several times people have disagreed with me, and we did it the way the majority felt.

I believe people will survive if we depend on ourselves and each other. If we're working with our hands instead of with machines, we're dealing with concrete things, personal, rather than abstract things, impersonal. Unless we do something like this, I don't see this world lasting. So I really have no future to save money for. (Laughs.) I don't know what this bread shop is gonna mean in a year or two or so. I'd say times are worse for this planet than they've ever been, so each tries to be the best he can, she can. I am doing exactly what I want to do.

Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your ident.i.ty. It tells you who you are. It's gotten so abstract. People don't work for the sake of working. They're working for a car, a new house, or a vacation. It's not the work itself that's important to them. There's such a joy in doing work well.

When people ask what you do, what do you say?

I make bread. (Laughs.) POSTSCRIPT: A drunk, who had obviously had a hard day's night, enters. There is a soft discussion. She hands him a loaf. He leaves. "He asked me for a quarter. I gave him one this morning. Now he said he's still hungry. So I offered him bread. He said, 'If you don't give the quarter, I'm not gonna take the bread.' So I said, 'Okay, don't.' He took the bread."

CATHLEEN MORAN.

She is nineteen years old.

What is your work?

Makin' beds and bed pans and rotten stuff like that.

What are you called?

Nurse's aide, dumb aide.

Presently she is working at a middle-cla.s.s hospital. It's her third. Her previous jobs were lower-middle-cla.s.s and upper-middle-cla.s.s inst.i.tutions. She has been at it since she was fifteen.

I really don't know if I mind the work as much as you always have to work with people, and that drives me nuts. I don't mind emptying the bed pan, what's in it, blood, none of that bothers me at all. Dealing with people is what I don't like. It just makes everything else blah.

How often do you work?

As least as possible. Two days on a weekend, just to get me through school, like money for books and stuff. We start to work at seven, but I get up as late as possible, get everything on and run out the door. I ride my bike to work. I usually have someone punch me in, 'cause I'm never on time. You're gonna think I'm nuts, but I do my work well. If I come a quarter after seven, they're surprised. They don't mind, because I get my work done before the allotted time. I won't have anybody saying I did something lousy. I don't know why.

We get on the floor and you have to take thermometers and temperatures or you have to weigh people or pa.s.s water, and you go in the rooms, and they yell when you get 'em up so early in the morning. Then they don't want to get out of bed when you weigh 'em. They complain, "How come the water wasn't pa.s.sed earlier?" "We couldn't sleep all night with the noise." Or else you'll walk in the room and you'll say, "h.e.l.lo," and they'll say, "Good morning, how are you?" So I'll say "Fine," and some of 'em will say, "Well, gee, you're the one that's s'posed to be asking me that." They don't even give you a chance.

I really wonder why I do have such a rotten att.i.tude towards people. I could care less about 'em. I'll do my work, like, you know, good, I'll give'em the best care, but I couldn't care less about 'em. As far as meeting their emotional needs, forget it. That's why (a little laugh) I don't think I should go into nursing.

I work on a floor that's geriatric. Old people and psychiatric, so there's never anyone in their right minds. They're out of it or they're confused. After you pa.s.s out trays, and there's rarely a tray that has everything on it, they start hollering, "I didn't get two sugars," and then you spend half the time running to all the rooms gettin' all their stuff. Then you have to feed all of them, and half the patients are out of it and they spit stuff at you and they throw their food. They throw their dishes on the wall and floor. And I hate feeding patients that are always coughing. They cough right at ya. (Laughs.) That I don't mind, cleaning stuff up. It's just that you're s'posed to calm 'em down and talk to 'em, forget it. I won't be bothered.

I used to work in a hospital, it was more of a cancer ward. Young women, men. I got along great with the men, they could care less. But I always hated working with the women. They drive you nuts. I really can't sympathize with 'em unless sometimes, rarely, I think, What if I was in their place? Like the younger girls, they want you to feel sorry for them. I just can't feel that. Some of 'em are okay, but they're always crying. That doesn't depress me. I have no feelings at all. A lot of nurses come in and they sit with the patients and they talk with 'em. Forget it.

A patient will be in pain and they'll be crying. They put the nurse's light on and want to talk and stuff. I really don't care. It's rotten, you know? Lots of times I try to think as to why I have this att.i.tude. I really think it was from my background in boarding school.

"Living in a dorm with kids all the time, you didn't have to be accepted, but you always had to be on top-or else you'd be pushed around and all that. At Maryville I never really was close with anybody. Couldn't afford to be or else you got hurt. So I just turned everybody off. I just kept to myself. I was there from when I was just three until I was sixteen.

"There were kids whose parents had money, but they didn't want 'em for some reason. When we first went out to high school, everybody started calling us orphans. I couldn't understand that, because they had money, they had clothes, they had parents to come to see 'em. But there were a few who didn't have parents.

"My mother, she makes about six thousand dollars a year. She really couldn't afford to take care of me at home. When I was born my dad took off. He was an alcoholic. My mother was also an alcoholic. I was raised in Maryville from loneliness and stuff. My mother always came to see me, no matter what the weather was.

"In the eighth grade you had to get stupid to survive, no kiddin'. I wouldn't let anybody push me around. I have people tell me I have a chip on my shoulder or I'm sensitive if someone barks at me. I could see how girls were pushed around, socked and stuff. But I was good in sports, I came to be the best swimmer, basketball, and I was looked up to. So I could afford to be on my own and left alone. They were allowing us to go out and get jobs. When you get out, you're not worth nothing."

She worked for several months at a hospital "which was really a dump. It was mostly black and low-income whites, though there were a number of patients from middle-income high rises nearby. I really couldn't understand it, after Holy Family. I thought that was a typical hospital-it was spotless. When I saw this one, it was filthy, with bugs on the food cart, I thought, 'Oh G.o.d.' I only stayed there for two months.

"I used to have to be forced to get out of bed in the morning and go there. I'd rarely work a weekend when I was supposed to. (Laughs.) Which isn't me. That's why I said I gotta get outa here, because it was getting to me, and that's goofy. They never had any sheets. They never had anything the patient needs. Like they were paying so much money for a room. I'm not lying, don't think I'm nuts. There wasn't a morning when we had linen before ten, eleven '. The patients, they're awakened at seven. We never had adequate help and the other aides, they didn't really fulfill the patient's needs. I was about the only white aide in the hospital and they were wondering what I was doing there."

I have a hard time dealing with black patients, because they're really sensitive. You're gonna think I'm rotten, but when I go into a room I don't have a great att.i.tude. I'm not blah, but if I don't feel like talking, I don't talk. I'll give 'em a bath, but I'm not making up a bunch of conversation just to make them feel good.

It happened just last week. I was in a room with a black patient and she had her hair set in rollers, and she looked like about twenty something. I couldn't see her hair, whether it was graying. She happened to be forty-one. I asked her what she was in for and she said arthritis. I said, "G.o.d, you look like about twenty-something." She felt great. She said, "Gee, thanks." I said, "I really can't tell a black's age, they always seem so much younger." If you call 'em colored they have a fit. If you call 'em black, they'll have a fit. So you don't call 'em. So she got so upset. "Why are blacks so different? You mean you can't tell a white person's age?" They just don't show it, not as much, in my opinion. Oh, she started yellin'. I was patient with her.

I think blacks demand more attention-like little piddley stuff she could reach for, she wanted me to get her. I mean, they're going to take advantage of being waited on like whites. Because she's black, she'll get white service, too.

I'm not prejudiced really, but they all put their money under their pillows, while the whites put it in a drawer. I was making her bed, so I turned her on the side and I put her purse on the window. I walked out of her room and I heard her saying, "That white b.i.t.c.h stole my purse!" She was really yelling. I looked on the window and it was right in front of her. And then she said, "Well, stay here, you probably stole something out of it anyway." I was going to walk out of the room and she said, "Hey, white girl, can you come back and fix the blankets up a little neater?" They were really perfect. By that time, you felt like kickin' her right in the mouth. Rarely do I put up with it. I just say, "Do you want your bed made? Get somebody else."

Like I was going to give a black person a bath and I was too lazy to walk and get some soap way down in the utility room, so I got the soap that was in the bathroom. So she said to me, "What do you think I am, a dog? That I'm going to use that soap that white hands have washed their hands on." So I told her it was a fairly new bar and I said, "What does color got to do with the bar of soap?" She went on and on, so I told her I wasn't going to give her a bath, because sometimes you can't do anything right for 'em.

White patients are just as bad. But the blacks always bring up their color. The whites are just a pain in the neck too. Blacks are more offensive, but whites nag you more about the stuff they don't get.

When I first started at Holy Family, I really couldn't stand it, 'cause I really didn't want the job. I was just doing it to get out of Maryville for a couple of hours. When I got on the floor,I didn't know beans. I was dumb. You may think I'm nuts, but I really feel myself capable in whatever I do. So I learned what was up fast, and went out of my way to do extra stuff, to take care of blood pressures and bandages and stuff, so I'd be left alone so I could do my work. I wouldn't have anybody on my back checking me. If they wanted something done, they could get it done, you know? I was real good friends with the nurses and aides, I liked it.

You always get a nurse, you wonder what she's doing there. They're blah, bad news, crabby, they try to push you around-which is how I'm afraid I'm going to turn out. Most nurses, they sit at the desk. They chart and take care of the medications. As far as patient contact, they don't get any at all. It's the aides, you know? The nurses don't do anything except give a shot. The head nurse is at the desk constantly, with the doctor's orders, so the aides get all the contact. That's why I figure if I'm going into nursing, I won't have any contact with the patients anyway.

I'd go nuts. I'm just doing it because it's a good job and if times ever become like the Depression, they always need nurses. I'd still like to get a master's, go into law school or something. Everybody thinks I'm nuts: "What are you going to nursing school for if you hate it?" Because I can do my work well and I can put up with it, even if it drives me nuts.

You either get patients who don't want a bath at all and then report you for not giving them a bath, or patients who fake near bath time that they have chest pains so you'll give them a bath, and the next minute you see them walking around the hall and they're visiting.

With orthopedics, with the geriatric, it's really discouraging. The nursing homes have given them terrible care and they have sores you wouldn't believe-bones, tendons, everything showing. I change the dressings and soak them and try to position them where they're not on a sore. But anywhere you put them they're on a sore. You feel like they're aching.

Lots of times they get bladder infections. You'll just make a bed and they'll urinate right on the clean side. You'll have to, okay, man, start again. You turn them over on the clean side and then they'll have a BM. Sometimes this goes on four or five times. You have to make a patient's bed at least three or four times a day to do good work. It takes about four hours to get all the patients really clean. By the time you're done, you feel so good. But a nurse comes up and says, "So-and-so needs their bed changed, they c.r.a.pped all over." It really gets discouraging. Each time you go in that room you want to kill them.