Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs Part 6

And this is the moment. This is the time to be in this business. America is violent as s.h.i.+t right now and it's not gonna stop. The baby boomers are going to be dropping dead, the largest population in history. I think the next five to ten years are going to be our record years.

I'm thirty-one now. My goal is wealth, bottom line. I want to be f.u.c.king wealthy. I want to be bodyguard rich-so rich that I need a bodyguard wherever I go. I would like to be able to do whatever I want, at any time. If I use a helicopter to go somewhere, I want to be able to buy that f.u.c.king helicopter. That's the kind of wealth I'm talking about. And I'm going to achieve it or die trying.

Of course, I'd also like the more typical things. Like kids, you know? In a few years, I'd like some kids of my own-a couple of kids. I believe there's nothing you can't have; it's just a matter of how much do you want to sacrifice, to lose, to get it. Now I have no life, I have no marriage. I didn't devote time to it, to nourish it. But believe me, if I have kids I'm not going to just disappear on them. I will be there for my kids. They will be my priority. And just having kids-that'll make me want to come home at night. It'll give me a reason.

I may even quit this job one day. I doubt it, because I like it too much, but I might quit. More likely, eventually I'll sell, and I'll make a mint. And then I'll start another company. I've been thinking about that. I'd maybe like to do something with the hanta virus-cleaning up roads and excrement. Have you heard of the hanta virus? It's a communicable disease. I'd really like to develop a communicable disease mitigation company. The challenge of that business would be the danger. It's just much more dangerous than this. Here I'm risking maybe contracting hepat.i.tis. That's a fear. But there's a vaccine for that. What I want to-this communicable disease stuff-let's say there's a neighborhood full of hot tuberculosis, I want to be the company to come in and deal with it. Have you seen the movie The Hot Zone, or read the book? That's what I'd like to be doing. It's definitely more dangerous. It could kill you right now. That excites me. And the money involved in that-that's the real deal.

I'm making little tiny highways for electrons.

COMPUTER CHIP LAYOUT DESIGNER.

Susie Johnson.

I design the layout of computer chips for Cirrus Logic in Austin, Texas. We're what they call a "chip solutions company," at least that's what it says in our leaflets. [Laughs] Right now, we're laying out audio chips that go into computers and improve the sound of the speakers. I saw a demo of them recently. They had a regular PC with those regular little speakers and it sounded very weak. Then they put our chip in there, and the speakers sounded like this huge stereo. It was pretty wild.

My job is I'm given a schematic of the chip by the engineers, and it's basically just a bunch of symbols-triangles and rectangles with lines going in and out of them. Each symbol represents a device on the chip that hooks up to something else, and each of these little devices is designed to perform some function electronically. When they're all hooked up together, they perform a lot of different functions. What I do is I translate this technical information into the way the chip will actually look-how all this information will be contained in this tiny s.p.a.ce. I draw it out using a computer program. It's mostly an automated process. In the past, I'd draw the devices by hand, but the chips I'm working on now are too complicated for that.

My ex-husband was doing this when we got married. He was a technician and knew all kinds of things about electronics. That's not my background at all. I did lots of different jobs before-I was a waitress and I worked in a bunch of stores. I'm a real people-person, but I'm forty-three and, as you get older, it can get exhausting always being with the public. So I was wanting to change, to do something different, but I didn't know what. I certainly didn't think that I could do this, but one night I came into work with my ex-husband and he let me do some simple layout, and I thought, this is really cool, I want to try it. So I took a couple of cla.s.ses at Austin Community College- an electrical design cla.s.s and an integrated circuit layout cla.s.s-so I'd understand a little more of the theory angle. Then my ex-husband taught me a bit on the side to help me out, and then I got my job here. I've been doing this for three years. I have no plans to stop. I love it.

I don't really know all that much about computers. I know how to do my job, but I don't specifically know how a chip works. I mean I know that, basically, they're pieces of silicon with stuff etched onto them, and that stuff does something. [Laughs] And I don't need to know more than that. See, the engineers design this stuff and I have no idea what they are really doing. They design the chip so that it does the function it is supposed to do. I just run the computer.

There is some art to it. You could take one of these audio chips and give it to five different layout people and it would probably come back five different ways, you know? It's not all automated. Different people will put different things next to each other.

The way I think of it is I'm making little tiny highways for electrons. Some people say it's like New York City on a postage stamp. And it is! I mean, there are so many devices that I have to put into a tiny s.p.a.ce. The one I was working on last week had over a hundred thousand. The one I'm doing today only has sixteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. [Laughs] So that's why it's automated- why this is done by computer-it would just take way too long to do it all by hand. I tell the computer how many devices there are and how to arrange them, and then it does it-it streams everything out through a program. Then it checks to make sure that the connections I've drawn are all right.

When there are errors, the computer'll usually just go and fix 'em itself. I've had five thousand errors before and it fixed 'em in like fifteen minutes. It's so cool.

Sometimes there's problems that the computer catches and can't fix. I'm not sure why that happens, but it's the toughest part of the job. The computer will tell you what area of the chip the problem's in, but you have to go within that area yourself and find the problem and correct it. Like if something is too close to something else, then it needs to be moved over. I know that doesn't sound so hard, but the messages the computer gives you are really cryptic-they are not in real English-it just tells you some weird thing like, "No PR boundaries," and all this weird stuff. It never tells you exactly what the problem is. And it's an unusual computer language, totally different from any of the other computer languages. A lot of people don't even want to learn it. But I think it's kind of fun. You have to figure it out, you have to be a detective.

All told, there are about forty people in the layout department here. With the audio chip right now, I'm actually just working on one part of the whole chip. Other people are doing the same thing as me with other parts. So we're each going through this process for each part until it's all complete, then all our work gets combined and the chip goes to fab-the fabrication plant-and then it comes back and gets packaged into whatever computer or camera or whatever it's going into. Then it gets tested and then it goes out to the client and onto the market.

Our projects last anywhere from a week to six months. There are some customers, like Sony or IBM, that are in really compet.i.tive markets and they always need a teeny-tiny little chip smaller than anyone else, 'cause they'll make more money the smaller it is. So then the challenge becomes fitting all of that same information onto smaller and smaller s.p.a.ces. It's basically cramming ten pounds of s.h.i.+t into a five-pound bag. [Laughs] You just have to try to squeeze it all, get it as close together as you can. And you're also trying to get it out as fast as you can, so there's some pressure to perform well and quickly. I've worked thirty-six hours straight one time. But it was an "almost done, almost done" kind of a thing where I didn't even feel tired. Everyone kept telling me to go home, but I wanted to be there when it was finished because I worked very hard on that project and I'm really into getting stuff out. And I remember when it was over, I was jumping up and down I was so happy. [Laughs]

I really like what I'm doing. Sometimes there are parts that are a little boring, but basically I like it. I like that you can be a little artistic, and I also like that it's technical and you get to solve problems. It's repet.i.tive sometimes, but so is a lot of work. If I could live my life over, I'd still be doing this. I just wish I would've started a whole lot sooner. Really. Because I didn't start until I was in my late thirties. And now I'm like-I got remarried a few years ago and my husband, Mike, keeps saying, "I want you to not have to work after you're fifty," and I'm just like-why? What would I do? You know? I'm having fun here.

This is a great company-good benefits, salary, vacations, good boss, everything. And I like all my co-workers. I'm a real liberal Democrat and stuff. And a couple of my best buddies are these two guys who are Republicans and they call me a tree hugger. It's cool. Everyone's very laid-back.

It's a nice environment to work in. I mean, we're all in cubicles in a very nondescript building, but we try and make it nice. I've got the sunflower seed cubicle. I always have a big huge bag of sunflower seeds and everybody comes and eats them. There's other people who have candy and toys. There's a lot of toys here. There's a guy in the cubicle next to me that has a Tigger, you push him on his head and he bounces and says, "Bouncing is what Tiggers do best!" And he does it every once in a while out of the blue. And there are people with those little soft b.a.l.l.s, Kooshes, and they just throw them around. We also have a little golf course, one of those cup things with b.a.l.l.s and stuff.

We try to make everything fun. Like the customers call the chips by their product numbers-C94380, or whatever-but we always have our own names for them. There was Bonzo, Tingler, Hendrix- after Jimi-Bonita, and then on to Barbie. Sometimes we have contests to name the chips and you'll get like fifty bucks. I suggested the name Bonita, and they used it. We had Bonnie and Clyde. They were two audio chips that worked together. We had Inky after that PacMan character, and now there's Shrinky-because it's a smaller version of the same chip. I mean we could call it C383947, but isn't Shrinky better?

It's cheap, and ounce for ounce, it's

got more protein than beef. That in

itself makes it very attractive.

TOFU MANUFACTURER.

David Eng.

My grandfather started the Fong On Tofu Factory in 1933. In those days, there wasn't much of anything in Chinatown in the way of factories or anything else, but there was a demand for tofu and there was maybe one or two companies that made it. It wasn't a big deal. Things grew very slowly. My grandfather retired in 1954 and went back to Hong Kong and my father took over the business. He retired in the late seventies. In 1986, me and my two brothers bought out our father's old partners and took over the factory.

Me and my brothers were the first generation of our family born in America. And from when I was a kid, I knew we were expected to take over our father's business, because my father had this mentality which was justified in those days-not necessarily now-that we didn't have a "Chinaman's chance" in this country. In other words, you were Chinese, you couldn't do anything. Supposedly, the American government put shackles on you and you could only do certain work, like be a laundryman or work in Chinese restaurants, and we weren't allowed to do anything else. So we were expected to take over the business. My father used to tell us all the time that he was in the army during World War II, you know, and everybody's trying to put you down because you're Chinese, blah, blah, blah. I understand that in those days it might have been true, to a certain extent. But in the 1990s, big companies are run by Chinese. I'll give you a good example: Bugle Boy is a Chinese company. Nautilus-you ever hear of Nautilus clothes? A Chinese company. We are in big business now.

But I didn't have any choice in the matter. After college, I just went into the family business. And you know, that didn't bother me. That was just the way it was. Certain rules were accepted.

Anyway, after we took over, my brothers and I expanded the old business and we now sell a lot of other things besides tofu-like rice noodle, rice cakes, soy milk-all different kinds of products. We branched out because the immigrant population has increased so much, it's unbelievable. We have a retail business and a wholesale business. The retail business is a store here in Chinatown. The wholesale side is that I sell basically to restaurant suppliers for Chinese restaurants. I would say ninety-five percent of my business is wholesale. So most of my tofu ends up in Chinese restaurants. I sell my retail tofu mostly to the local Chinese community during the wintertime. They use it for soups as a meat subst.i.tute because there's less vegetables during the winter. The Chinese are very vegetable-oriented. They love vegetables, but they can't get them in the winter, so they eat tofu. It's an ancient thing-in fact, I did a paper on it when I was in college- and it's been around for six thousand years, a long time.

Tofu has a very, very bland taste. When I was a kid, I hated it. I never ate it. And even to this day, I don't eat a whole lot of it. It's not my favorite food. But it's cheap, and ounce for ounce, it's got more protein than beef. That in itself makes it very attractive.

Every night, we soak around two thousand pounds dry weight of soy beans, which translates to maybe eight thousand pounds wet. We leave them overnight, let them swell, then we wet-grind them, and then we steam-cook them. After the cooking, we extract the soy milk, add calcium sulfate to coagulate it, and from there we put it in molds, cut it up, and put it under a hydraulic press for like ten minutes. Then we cut it into little pieces and it's tofu. That's it. Very simple process, but also very time-consuming and labor intensive. The thing about Chinese businesses is that they all depend on labor-intensive production. You go to a dim sum restaurant, everything is done by hand. It's all manual-intensive labor. I don't particularly like that. I mean I've done it before, but I think I'm beyond it. To me it's too tedious. I can make more money using my brains than my hands.

When we were kids, though, it was much worse. My father cooked the tofu over an open flame. It took forever. In those days, we did two thousand pieces in eleven hours. Now, with the steam cooking method we use today, we do eight thousand pieces in about five hours. So we quadrupled the production in half the time. And I remember, when we were kids, we had a hand grinder, instead of a motorized one. We'd grind it by hand. That and the open flame-forget about it! I mean, we were there for hours. And then, instead of using hydraulic presses, like we use now, we used to use a sack of rice-we put it on top and let it sit there for like twenty minutes. With the hydraulic press you have no lifting, it takes only five or ten minutes to do. A sack of rice is just not a very efficient tool.

I wouldn't say there's any difference in the quality with the way we do it now as opposed to the old way. And I don't have any sentimental feelings about the old way of doing things. None at all.

But, you know, even with the new equipment, a lot of this business hasn't changed. Like my water-I run a tremendous water bill every month-maybe fourteen hundred dollars in just water alone. The thing with tofu is that it's got to be in the water to stay fresh. If you don't keep it in water, it dries out and it doesn't look good and it doesn't taste good. So there's water everywhere here and everyone wears these latex rubber boots, rubber ap.r.o.ns, and rubber gloves. We use a lot of latex, but still, we get wet. With so much water, you're going to get wet. [Laughs] Just like when we were kids.

I have mostly Spanish workers. In the beginning, we hired Chinese workers. The Chinese workers are very enterprising. Once they learn the business, they will have no qualms about quitting and opening up a store right next to you to compete with you. In fact, my main compet.i.tor used to work for us. So I've learned over the years that I will hire other ethnic people, especially Spanish. The reason why is because they can't take this knowledge with them anyplace else. No one else would hire them to make tofu except for me. But I don't take advantage of them. They work only six, seven hours a day. And I think I pay them fairly well considering a lot of them don't speak English.

As it turns out, right now my workers are all Dominicans. I know with Latino men, you have to treat them like a man. That's the nature of their culture. You have to go straight to the point with them. And you have to let them be able to come at you. So I always say to them, if you have a problem, we can always talk about it. I took three years of Spanish in high school, so I have a little background in it and as long as they speak slow enough, I can understand what my workers are saying. Once in a while, one of them is even surprised by my Spanish. They don't expect it. Sometimes they'll be talking and I'll jump in and they look at me like, wow, he knew what we were talking about. But most of my Spanish with them is about filling out tofu orders, resolving any little disputes we might have-which usually involve money and scheduling and days off-and then we maybe talk about the weather a little bit-"mucho caliente, mucho frio," you know, stuff like that.

I would like to think that my workers like me. I know for a fact they like me better than my brother. My brother's very strict. He yells a lot, he barks orders a lot. When I talk to people, I say, "por favor." I'm polite. As long as you're polite, people don't mind doing things for you. It makes the atmosphere that much more pleasant.

As far as I'm concerned, we're all one family here. If business is bad, I can't give you a raise. If you don't take care of my business, you can't get paid. They realize that one hand washes the other. If they do well, I do well-if I do well, they do well. And I take care of them. In fact, during Christmastime, I'm under no obligation to give them anything, but my top workers, I give them a bonus.

Every day, I personally show up at five-thirty. The workers show up at six. We all eat breakfast together. After that, there isn't a whole lot of downtime. The cook, before he even changes his clothes, he turns on the boilers, so by the time everyone changes their clothes, puts on their ap.r.o.ns and stuff like that, the steam boiler is ready to go. Then it's just a matter of getting the equipment ready and the pots ready and start cooking.

We used to have a rule that the workers had to work eight hours, but business has been slow a little bit, so I give everyone a deal. As long as you finish your work and everything is clean, then you can go home. Even if it's half an hour or an hour early, it's not a problem. So the workers all get a coffee break and they're offered other breaks but they don't take them because all they want to do is finish work and go home, because whether you work five hours or six hours, seven hours, eight hours, you still get the same pay.

Once a year, we have a company dinner. All the employees and their families can come and we have a Chinese banquet-ten course meal-stuff like that. We have it at a restaurant owned by one of our clients, to give them some business back. So I'm kind of playing politics not only with the workers but with the clients also. Everything is like that. A lot of people don't realize it, but politics plays a big role in everyone's lives.

But anyway, once a year we all sit down to dinner. We have a problem with the Spanish guys, because they never show up on time. We tell them six, but they show up at seven. But we'll hold up the dinner until they come. My mother says, "No, no, no! No one eats until everyone is here!" And that includes the Spanish people. We treat them as equals-all of the time-a lot of people might not think so, but that's their opinion. [Laughs] One of the Dominicans once told me, "David, to you, Chinese, Spanish all the same." I said, "Yeah, all the same to me-all pain in the a.s.ses." That's what I told him. [Laughs]

An owner-operated business is a lot of work. A lot of stress. When my brothers and I first took over the factory back in 1986, tofu was on my mind constantly, because I didn't really have a whole lot of practical experience at it. I dreamed about tofu and the business all the time and I was very nervous about everything. But I haven't had those dreams in about almost ten years. I've gotten used to it, I guess. [Laughs] Once in a while, I wish that I had a Monday through Friday job. You know-leave the work at home, spend the weekend with the family, stuff like that. But on the flip side, I wouldn't be in the position I am if I wasn't the boss. And I like what I do because I'm in charge. I like being in a position of authority.

But I don't have any illusions about it. I'm hoping my children will grow up to be well educated and be doctors and lawyers. I don't want them to do this. I mean, why should they do this? Our kids, they have a h.e.l.l of a lot more opportunity than we had-let them explore what they can do. I have a brother who was a cop. He retired and came back to the business and he asked me, "After our generation, who else is going to work this business?" And my answer to him was that if n.o.body's there to work it, it ain't worth anything. Maybe the property is worth more than the business. I don't know.

To tell you the truth, the only reason we're able to survive is sheer volume. We sell the stuff dirt cheap. I'm wholesaling tofu for sixteen cents a piece. Now I know you go to a supermarket and you buy four pieces for four dollars and fifty cents, but I'm only getting sixteen cents for it. Someone's making the money there somewhere, but not me. I am just working hard. My family instilled a work ethic in me. I was taught that if you put in enough time and worked hard enough you would succeed at everything. I don't know that that necessarily holds true anymore-at least in this business. So hopefully, my children will take my work ethic and go do something else.

People come by at all hours with jobs for me, stuff they just killed.

TAXIDERMIST.

Jim Cook.

I'm fifty-one. I mounted my first bird when I was thirteen. It was a starling. I shot it out back with my BB gun, and I got this little mail-order taxidermy course and it turned out looking like c.r.a.p, but I kept on stuffing the things I killed. I ruined enough specimens until finally I knew what I was doing.

That was all in St. Joseph, Missouri, where I grew up. I came down here to Columbia to get a degree in Wildlife Management, which I did get, but then I couldn't find a job because there was so much compet.i.tion. I stayed here and married and I kicked around a lot, settled into plumbing. It put food on the table for my wife and family, but I hated it. I mean, I hated plumbing. I didn't know what else I could do, but I was determined to get out of it. I'd kept at the taxidermy as a hobby, and I always liked that, so I just decided I'd try and make it my business. I went to sporting good stores and whatnot and left stuff I'd done on display and I built myself up. I've been doing it professionally twenty-six years now.

Taxidermy and hunting go hand in hand. I'm a hunter and a fisherman and so are almost all my customers. I like to hunt a good bit. The meat tastes much better and it's good for the animals-that's a fact. If we stopped hunting, first thing, right off the bat, the animals would all suffer from calamitous diseases. After a while, you'd have ma.s.s die-outs. We're seeing that right now with the snow geese population around here. If the animals aren't controlled by hunting and fis.h.i.+ng and trapping then Mother Nature will control things her way. And it's not pretty.

I work out of the bas.e.m.e.nt of my home. People come by at all hours with jobs for me, stuff they just killed. They'll come at dinnertime, which I don't like. But I like the money. And I'm doing pretty well. Maybe too well. [Laughs] My workload increases every year and I get further behind every year. Right now I'm about six months behind-my freezers are full of stuff from last winter.

I put in around nine to ten hours a day. Lately that's been seven days a week. That's partly because I'm so far behind and I feel obligated to hurry up. I'm not going to say that if it's a beautiful morning and it's duck season that I'm not sitting in a duck blind, but I try to be back here by nine or nine-fifteen. And I work late. I work a lot.

Most days are pretty similar. Things are pretty much done in the order they're brought in. It can get very routine, so I'll take a break every now and then, go upstairs and get a cup of coffee. That's nice. And I listen to music while I work, mostly country and western. Sometimes oldies. I have it on for the noise. It gets quiet down here. Sometimes I let my dog in and I talk to him.

Yesterday was a fish day. Today, I'm mounting a duck, a mallard. First thing I did was I made an incision up the belly and completely skinned it. I took out the main carca.s.s and the meat and the bones and the fat. Then I ran it through four washes to get all the blood and grease off. After that, I let it dry, then I put a preservative on it, a borate solution. You can see it looks just like it's brand-new fresh.

I've already made an artifical body, using the carca.s.s as a template, so when I put the skin back on it'll fit. No two birds are the same size, so I have to make each body original. With deer or fish, I can use a styrofoam body, but birds are different. I use shredded wood and I wrap it with twine, just build it up and make bulges where they need to be or dips where they need to be. And then I put an artificial neck in it which is made out of foam rubber. And that's the body.

Right now I'm working on the head, trying to put the gla.s.s eyes on and then I'll glue the beak on. Then I'll stick it on a board and fan its wings and make it look like it's flying away, just try and make them look like Mother Nature intended.

I do birds, fish, and deer, mostly. I've done a couple of life-size grizzly bears. Got one here now, actually. I've had people bring in snapping turtles. [Laughs] I had a lady bring in a mole. [Laughs] Obviously it was for a joke but she paid me for it. I had a guy bring me a two-headed calf. He thought he could sell it to a carnival or something like that. Never did find out if he sold it. I mounted it, though, and he paid me for it. It was a little Hereford calf, had two faces.

I'll do anything that's in good condition except pets. And by good condition, I mean pretty good shape. I've had people bring in ducks where the head was falling off or the legs were chewed up by the dog or whatever. To me, that's silly. I won't work on it. That animal doesn't have any business anywhere but in the trash. I can't believe people think that I'll be able to repair some of the things they bring in. Now, sometimes I'll get a deer or something that's not great, shot up a bit or something, but the head and antlers might still be okay. If that's the case then I might find a skin from another animal that closely matches the color and texture and use that. But more often than not, I tell my customers that the animal has to be in good shape.

Pets are another matter. I don't know why people would want to do a pet under any circ.u.mstances. People have feelings for those animals, you know? Their pet has, or had, a personality. I can't put that back in the mount. It's too d.a.m.n difficult. I can stuff your dog, but you're never going to be happy because it doesn't look like Fido when it was Fido. I can't give it the subtle nuances that made Fido who he was. The way he held his head or c.o.c.ked his ears or whatever. I mean, this duck here is a beautiful duck-and I think everyone would agree on that. But that's partly because someone didn't live with this duck for years. You know?

Plus, it's been my experience that you bring in Fido and six months later when I'm finished with him, you've got Fido Junior and you don't want the first one anymore and you aren't too interested in paying me. I've had that experience twice. I'll never do another pet.

I really, really liked this when I was starting out. After twenty-six years, I still enjoy it, but I get kind of tired of putting in all the hours and all the days. During the firearms deer season I may have sixty or seventy deer heads brought in at a time. And nothing else. So I have to do all those heads right in a row. Everybody I know's out shooting deer and I'm in here skinning them. [Laughs] That's not fun.

Originally I thought that I would just continue working until I was dead and cold in the ground. But now I'm thinking I'd like to wind this business up a bit. [Laughs] It's getting a little old and you know it's not the safest thing. I'm using knives and scalpels all the time so I'm cutting myself all the time. I sliced my stomach open a couple of years ago when my knife slipped. I didn't quite get to the intestines, but it didn't feel good. I also use lacquer paints, plus there's chemicals and acids in the preservatives, so I have to wear a mask. Some of the stuff is safe, but I do worry about what's not.

I'll keep going at least till my boy gets out of college, but after that, I'll try and cut back and gradually do less. I don't see myself ever stopping completely, though. I like it too much. It's very satisfying. I mean, this is an art form, for one thing. It's a tremendous art. There's things that were mounted back in the days of the caveman. He was trying to preserve the headgear he wore and his hides. It's been around forever. Because-it's giving people something to be proud of. People need positive reinforcment in this world. This works because a guy can say, "Yep, I shot that. Isn't it beautiful?"

I did a duck for a guy the other day. It was a real nice duck and it looked real pretty and when he came and picked it up he almost started crying because it looked so nice. He was just so happy. Just so pleased to see it, you could tell that he was almost moved to tears. And that makes me feel good, that he thought I'd done a great job. Self-satisfaction is a big deal in any job. It's a big deal in life. How many other jobs are there going to be where you get to see people that happy 'cause of your work? You won't see it being a plumber, I can tell you that right now.

I hear a lot of confessions.

BAR OWNER.

Lucy Vasolsky.

I am bartender and owner of Lucy's. It is just called Lucy's by people because I am working all the time here. So people call it Lucy's. That all started in 1992 or '93 when I was on vacation because my son was sick and I go to him in Poland and people come to the bar and ask where is Lucy? Thinking maybe I move or something. So then employee gets outside sign, "LUCY'S," and I come back from Poland and outside it was my name looking okay and I no take down. So now the bar is called Lucy's even though it really still Blanche's. I mean, it is Blanche's in legal papers.

Blanche was my boss. Her name is still on window in corner same like was before. In Poland, I was like a private business company manager for store that sell many things. When I came here, I did not know how to tend bar. Not so much, anyway. But I was looking for job. I stop in and I ask Blanche. And she say all right and I start work. I was bartender for Blanche from 1980 to 1992. Since then, I am owner and bartender.

When Blanche gave me bar I say I no want to take this place because I was ready to move to Florida. I was so tired and I thought I go there and relax and warm up and then she give proposition for me. She say, "You take it. You know everything. I give you-long time you'll be happy." [Laughs] And we talking, talking and I think all right, I try. It was very hard at first. Almost every equipment was old and was lot of repairs. It was so hard for money and I also pay loan. But now things is okay.

I do good business. I don't give credit. I give one or two free drinks sometimes, that's it. And I make money. I survive. A little bit better maybe now than last year. Better than five years ago. Bar is strange business. Sometime go down and up again like that. For a long time, I not have tables because tables take a lot of s.p.a.ce. And people was coming and standing and drinking. Now people coming and looking for table for comfort. So I have tables and more people coming in.

The most popular drink now is vodka. I have almost every kind. Absolut, Stoli, Polish vodka. I get new stock all the time. Vodka and a little bit Jack Daniel's is most popular. Then maybe beer. When I buy the place, it was just bottle beer and then I see customer asking about draft beer, draft beer, draft beer, and I not know much about draft beer, and I trying, looking, and I get it from distributor. Is very good. Is good people drinking. I like beer but I can't drink it because my stomach no good. For me, I drink just brandy, cognac, because I can't take on my stomach.

Every day I do a lot. I work from five o'clock at night to five o'clock in the morning. I also must do many things in the daytime. Before I work seven days all the time. Now sometime, I sick and stay home. For help, I have just coming Marco. He help me with difficult things like pipes and also help behind the bar. Sometimes somebody else just coming just a few hours, not much. Sometimes my daughter come be bartender. But I don't have much help. So hard for me.

A typical day here-I clean up, I check it out how bottles, and check refrigerator working. Doing ice and then put hot water in sink. Sometimes must take delivery. Nothing special. I turn lights, I look for everything. Icebox is working and water running. Sometimes pipe is broken in bas.e.m.e.nt but Marco will fix. Is like just control everything, okay? Clean up something on pool tables. Many things. Sometime I don't like to do nothing. Just want to go home and sleep. Sometime I am happy here.

This neighborhood is the East Village, New York City. Since I come here in 1980, neighborhood has changed much. Bar has not changed so much. When I started working here, it was quiet on the street. Then later coming more people to bar, many people, people with skin heads, tattoo, and everything. Later go fighting with police. People in Tompkins Park and in the street. Much fighting with police. Was a lot of trouble. Was so hard. Much watching all the time at the door somebody crazy be coming. It was a riot. Much people was afraid. I was afraid for myself. If somebody want to destroy you, they destroy you even if you nothing do bad.

For a long time, whole street was fighting and sometimes we close early. One time I finished my s.h.i.+ft like two o'clock nighttime, and I walk few blocks home and I see from park coming big bottles and was many people on the street. I afraid because bottles fly, and then I came back to bar very fast and we close the bar. We give people safety. Not just customers, but regular people from outside, people from street who come inside. We give them safety all night from fighting.

And also one time, was almost full bar and I was watching on register and I just hear somebody yelling and I look and guy is close to me, and I say, "Get out of here!" And he say, "No! I no go, because somebody want kill me!" I say, "Go out from bar!" And he coming behind bar, and he say, "I no go because they kill me!" And I looking in window and I see skinny heads and then these guys coming to me close to bar, and start fighting with bottle. And they say, "Get him out and we go." Then people in bar all say, "Lucy get him out! Get him out!" And you know, I thinking like people at first. But then I look at this guy and I don't know. I think maybe it was bad idea, and I think if I get him out, they really can kill him, you know, he can much be hurt. So I say, "No, we no get him out." And he stand behind my back and these guys come back again and broke many bottles from bar. And customers call to police and emergency come and take him. I was really afraid.

This was seven, eight years ago, I think. Is much better now.

I never have a bouncer here. I not scared like that. Sometimes from street somebody crazy comes in, but my customers have been nice to me. They help me. I love it these people help me. With bouncer, it is never peaceful. It start more fighting with men going to argue, man for man, and going to start fighting. And if I am saying something, small woman saying something, n.o.body fight with me and people polite. Was a bar one block from here and there was all the time three bouncers there, strong guys, and go many bad things and place long time ago is closed down. You must control and be responsible about everything yourself.

If I see somebody coming drunk, I say go to sleep, no drinking more. I cut them off. I say get out or else I get police. I must do that because some people can make hurt for nice people. Some bad people. So I am nervous. Must watching all the time, must keep eye all the time on situation. Even pool table must observe all the time also, because it is a game but people like fighting. Pool table can be a lot of fighting. Must observe all the time, keep eye all the time.