Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (42 page)

In some parts of the plant, cars pass 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.

 

 

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 hell of a lot.

I weave in on both sides of the assembly line. From the right side, the passenger’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, fuck 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 hell 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!

 

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 ship, a freighter. My last ship, 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 ship 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 scum 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.

 

 

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 ship. 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 ass seaman. (Laughs.) I’d do other things, naturally. (Laughs.) There’s always women. (Laughs.)

 

 

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 ship 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 ship in the harbor or hear a ship 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 sonofabitch.” 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 . . .

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 attitude is concerned.

 

 

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 hell and yell at all the other drivers that they had their heads up their asses. 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.