Roughneck - An Autobiography Part 2

Turning away from my desk, he went into the manager's office. Almost verbatim he gave that gentleman my opinion of the letter. Then, as the manager gaped at him, apoplectic with fury, Durkin suggested that I be commissioned to write a "really good" letter.

Well, the manager finally found his voice, and all h.e.l.l began to pop. He cursed Durkin out at the top of his lungs. Then he called me in and he cursed us both out together. He'd show us, by G.o.d. He'd teach us to make fun of our betters. He would have ten thousand of the letters printed up-ten thousand instead of the five thousand he had originally contemplated. And we-Durkin and I-would have the job of addressing, sealing and stamping them. We'd do it on our own time, with no a.s.sistance and no extra pay.

He dismissed us with another string of profanity. Putting through a rush order to the print shop, he got a delivery on the letters that very evening. And for the rest of the week, and part of the next, Durkin and I worked night and day. I was sore as a boil, naturally. Durkin, strangely enough, seemed completely at peace with himself. He remained stolidly polite to the manager. In fact, the more the latter gibed and nagged at him, the more polite he became.

It was the manager's idea to "sweep the town off its feet," to hit it such a blow that it would be "rocked to its heels." So the letters were allowed to acc.u.mulate instead of being sent out a thousand or so at a time. He kept close watch on our progress. Seeing that we were near the finish, he remained with us that last night, although he did not, of course, help us with the work. He looked on, grinning maliciously, as we packed the letters into boxes and loaded them into Durkin's car.

"I guess that'll teach you," he jeered when, at last, the job was finished. "Snap into it, now, and maybe you'll get that stuff mailed before midnight."

He drove away laughing. Durkin told me to go on home, that he would take the letters to the post office himself. I protested my willingness to help, and for the first time in our acquaintance he was curt with me. He didn't want my help, he said. He preferred taking care of the letters himself.

I went home. He got into his car and drove off. Late the following afternoon, I learned the reason for his unprecedented conduct.

I was working the cas.h.i.+er's window at the time. A quiet, nondescript little man came up to the wicket and asked to be taken to the manager. I suggested, according to store practice, that I might be able to help him.

"I'm not sure the manager is available at the moment, sir. If it's something about your account, some misunderstanding or-"

"Post office department," he said, displaying his credentials. "Are you in charge of the mail?"

"I handle some of it, yes," I said. "I'm not in charge, but-"

"I'm in charge." Durkin came up and stood beside me. "This young man has nothing to do with the mail."

"I see," the little man nodded. "Well, we received a call from the sanitation department a little while ago." He broke off cautiously. "I think I'd better see the manager."

"You can't. There's no need to see him," said Durkin.

The little man looked at him. Reaching through the window he tapped Durkin on the arm. "Mister," he said, and his voice cracked like a whip, "you get the manager for me and be d.a.m.ned quick about it!"

Durkin shook his head stubbornly. The manager, having heard himself referred to, came out of his office. Surlily, he inquired what the h.e.l.l was up.

The inspector introduced himself. He explained. And what happened then is impossible to describe adequately. The manager gasped. He choked. His face purpled, puffing up like a balloon, and his eyes stood out from his head like doork.n.o.bs. He began to bellow, to scream.

Durkin was fired within the hour, as soon as approval could be obtained from the home office. I, a mere clerk, was discharged immediately-the suspected instigator of, if not an actual accessory to, the credit manager's crime.

"I'm certainly sorry, Jim," he apologized. "I tried to keep you out of it, you know. That's why I sent you on home instead of-"

"But why did you do it at all?" I said. "My G.o.d, Durk, you might have gone to the pen for a deal like that. We both might have, if the company wanted to get tough with us. Why the h.e.l.l did you do it, anyway?"

"Why, Jim," he said, reasonably, "you know why I did it."

"Dammit, I don't know," I said.

"Sure, you do. You said the letters were junk; they'd hurt the store. So, naturally I..."

...so he had taken all ten thousand of them-all carefully addressed, sealed and stamped-and thrown them into the city dump!

8.

With the school term finished, I got a full-time job in another department store-a tumbledown old emporium on the outskirts of the business district which catered largely to the farm trade. It was a strange place, operated by a baffling network of absentee owners and concessionaires. Although an approximate fourscore people worked in it, the auditor and I, his a.s.sistant-and a few custodial employees-were the only employees of the store proper. The others were all in the pay of the various concession owners.

A man named Carl Frammich was the auditor. Our duty was to keep tabs on the concessions-the grocery and clothing departments, the cosmetics counter, the cream-buying station, the barber shop, the restaurant, and a dozen-odd other stores within our store. We collected their receipts, and supervised their help.

Complaint department? That was us. Credit and Collections? Us again. Personnel, Purchasing, Payroll? You guessed it. Everything that no one else did-and the clerks did nothing but sell-was handled by the auditor and his a.s.sistant. Frankly, I was soon overwhelmed by the job, and, for much of the time, didn't know what I was doing or why.

Carl Frammich...Of all the weird, off-trail characters I have known, he was the weirdest, the most off-trail. Stacked up beside Carl, my old friend Allie Ivers was a dull-normal person. Carl looked like the devil-literally, not in the slang sense. He was Satan come to life, and he had the devil's own cynicism; and he could rarely say three words without two of them being blasphemies or obscenities. Yet his voice was angelic. It was the sweetly piping falsetto of a five-year-old. Musical and high-pitched, and with such a p.r.o.nounced lisp that it was often impossible to understand him.

"Tompn," he would say, "bwing at doddam fuddin cash ledger in here an ess oo an me twike a skewin balance on uh sonabitsin bastud." Or, "Tompn," he would say, "do down and tell at doddam a.s.sho in weddy-to-weah to top skewin up his salestickets or I'll tum down air an kick uh fuddin kwap outta im..."

Despite my own errors in that direction, I have always said that no man can work while he is drunk. But I say this with one mental reservation-lisping, Satanic-looking Carl Frammich. Carl was dead drunk throughout the three months of our a.s.sociation. He came to work drunk, and he drank throughout the day. Straight alcohol when he could get it, anything from horse liniment to "female tonic" when the alcohol was un.o.btainable.

He would stagger up the stairs in the morning, bottles protruding from every pocket, and lurch wildly toward his desk. Sometimes he would make it on the first try, but more often than not he would wind up in a corner or sprawled on the floor. And once he almost went out the alley window. But whatever his difficulty before he gained his desk, he would never allow me to a.s.sist him.

"Need the fuddin etertise," he would explain solemnly. "Dot to teep in tundishun. Always watch oor doddam skewin helf Tompn and oo be awright."

Once seated, Carl seldom arose until the day was over...and the day we worked was never shorter than twelve hours. He didn't eat anything. He didn't go to the toilet. When he had to urinate, he simply scooted his chair around, hoisted himself up on the arms and let go out the alley window. Since the window opened on the store's parking lot, there were frequent and bitter complaints about this practice. Customers were constantly grumbling that Carl's urethral discharges had seriously damaged the paint on their cars, and one guy declared that several holes had been eaten in the hood of his vehicle. All the complainants got short shrift from Carl.

Could they prove that he was guilty? Did they have witnesses who would swear to the fact in court? No? "Well, skew oo, mithter!" And if they did have proof, they still received no satisfaction.

"Looky, mithter," he would explain. "Iss isn't any store-iss a doddam bookteepin tumpny. Oo uh h.e.l.l oo donna sue, anyway? Oo dit anyfing out uh iss doddam outfit I'll split wif oo."

Except for me, to whom he was always kind, Carl had not a pleasant word for anyone. But he was at his most insulting when dealing with the home office or its representatives. "Now, ess dit one fing straight," he would say, addressing some traveling auditor or supervisor. "I'm wunnin iss doddam place, an I don't need any fuddin a.s.sho like oo to tell me how. I do as I doddam pwease, see? Oo don't like at oo can skwew orself and I'll quit."

The home office chose to like it. Very wisely. Carl worked for a pitifully low salary, and despite his drinking he was by far the best auditor in the chain. He could and did do the work of three men, and with an expertness, an unfailing accuracy, which surpa.s.sed genius.

Day after day, I saw him so drunk that his eyes were glazed and his head jerked and rolled on his neck in alcoholic spasms; I saw him weave in his chair, tilt perilously backward and forward and from side to side. And with all that I never saw him hesitate in his work or make one single, solitary error! Sometimes I would have to put a pen in his hand, and place his other hand on the comptometer. But once that was done, he needed no further a.s.sistance. His left hand would flick over the keys of the machine, veritably playing a tune on it; his right hand would roam over the ledger, inscribing it with long columns of always accurate, excruciatingly neat figures. As often as I watched the miracle, I remained amazed by it.

"Nuffin to it, Tompn," Carl would lisp, grinning at me devilishly. "Jus a matter of teepin in tundishun. Just dotta live wight, ats all."

This "teepin in tundishun" and "livin wight" was (or so Carl advised me) only part of his formula for doing highly complex work while stumbling-blind drunk. The truly important thing, he said, was to "fine 'em, fud 'em and fordet 'em," or, perhaps, to "skwew 'em all an the easy ones twice."

"Pith on 'em, Tompn," he declared a dozen times a day. "Hang it out uh window and skwew uh whole doddam world."

He was such a wonderfully good accountant and had followed the profession for so many years that, I suppose, he could have done his job in his sleep. He didn't need to think about it, in the ordinary sense of the word. Too drunk to see straight, or even to see at all, he was carried through one intricate task after another by his subconscious mind.

I wondered what he was doing in such a job as this one, why he drank as he did. Late one afternoon, some six weeks after the beginning of our a.s.sociation, I found out. I had been smiling about something, some joke one of the clerks had told me. Apparently I had been doing it for some time, and since our desks faced each other Carl got the notion that I was smiling at him.

"Sumpn funny, Tompn?" he demanded, his normally flushed face turning white. "Whynt oo laugh out loud? Did it out uh oore doddam skwewin system!"

"W-why, Carl," I stammered. "I was just-"

"Do ahead!" he lisped angrily. "Evey one else does, doddam wotten son-a-bitsin bastuhds! Tant do anywhere, tant say anything, without some fuddin skwewball laughin his doddam head off...Look like uh Devil, don't I? Look like uh Devil and talk like a skewin doddam baby! Tant dit a doddam decent job. Tant even thay h.e.l.lo to a doddam woman..."

He raved on, cursing and spilling out obscenities, inviting me to "do ahead an have a dood laugh." Thus, at last, I saw why things were as they were with him-that his arrogance was only a cloak for a shamed and hypersensitive man. Fortunately, the right response came to me. I did not make the mistake of apologizing or sympathizing with him.

As soon as I could get a word in edgewise, I told him he was a d.a.m.ned fool. A man might look like the Devil and talk like a baby, but he did not need to 'act' like either. "I'll tell you something," I said-and what I told him was quite true. "One of the best adjusted, happiest men I ever knew was a dwarf with club feet. He was one of the country's top corporation attorneys. He had a beautiful wife and four fine children. No one cared what he looked like. He was such a swell guy-and such a smart one-that no one noticed what he looked like. Oh, a few b.o.o.bs might snicker at him, but what the h.e.l.l did he care about them?"

Carl brushed at his eyes-in his self-pity and fury he had actually started to weep. He suggested that his case was different. "It wouldn be tho bad if I could juth thpeak plainly. Thath the worth-"

"It's always different," I said. "We've all got our own brand of trouble; I've had mine. If I'd acted like you do, I'd have died of tuberculosis or the d.t.'s long ago."

"Yeth, but-"

"You're beating yourself over the head," I said. "You'd rather feel sorry for yourself than do something. If you're ashamed of the way you talk, why are you talking all the time? You never miss a chance that I can see. You're shooting off your mouth, getting into arguments, from the time you get here in the morning until you leave. You make a spectacle out of yourself with your drinking. If you don't want to be laughed at, why do you give people so many opportunities?"

I was pretty sore. My many failings do not include laughing at the infirmity of another, and the accusation that I had done so did not set well.

Carl heard me out, looking rather sheepish toward the last. Finally, he grinned and said, "Well, fud oo, Tompn. Fordet it, will oo?" and we both went back to work.

Well, it may have been wishful thinking, but it seemed to me that he did not get quite so drunk from then on. Also that he talked less to those outside the office, avoiding arguments where they could be avoided. Instead of mere working companions, we became quite good friends. Where before he had merely recited trite obscenities, he now conversed with me...Did I really think he might be able to land a good job and not be laughed out of it? Did I really think that one such as he could lead a normal life, with all that the word implied?...I said of course he could-'if' he would stop thinking about himself and straighten up. For a man as brilliant and talented as he was, people would overlook any handicap.

"Oo weally mean at, don't oo, Tompn?"-studying me narrowly. "Oore not dus tiddin, are oo?"

"You know I do," I said. "You know what I say is true. If you go on like you've been doing, you've got no one to blame but yourself."

He thought about that, and a few days later it paid off.

It was now nearing the fall of 1930, and the economic depression was tightening over Nebraska. But the nation's political and business leaders still proclaimed it a temporary recession. It was merely a readjustment period, and prosperity was just around the corner, et cetera. To reachieve prosperity it was only necessary to "tighten our belts," "overcome sales resistance" and so on.

Well, the store tightened its belt-rather, by arranging salary cuts for the various concession employees, it tightened 'their' belts. And by way of overcoming the aforesaid sales resistance it began a series of vigorous campaigns. The clerks were given sales quotas-to be met or else. They were organized into competing "armies," with the winner receiving a blue ribbon or a plaque or some such prize. One "bargain" sale followed another. Every week the home office s.h.i.+pped us a huge batch of advertising matter-flamboyant placards and pennants and counter cards. It was my job, one of my many jobs, to "decorate" the store with these.

In the midst of all this activity, Carl absented himself from work for two days on a plea of sickness. By the time he returned, I was virtually exhausted and he, incredibly, was 'sober!'

He had brought two pint bottles with him-two bottles of good whiskey. He took a drink from one, pa.s.sed it to me and waved me to a chair at his desk.

"Oo dotta help me dwink at, Tompn. We finis at, at's all eres donna be. I'm tuttin out uh doddam tuff."

"You've got another job," I guessed.

"Doddam wight," he said proudly. "Tart in nex Monday. Chief auditor for big gwocwey chain in Tansas t.i.ty. An I dot oo a job ath my athithtant."

I congratulated him, and thanked him. I pointed out, however, that I would be returning to school the following week and could not take a job in another city.

"I'll just go on working here part-time," I explained. "It's a sweat shop and they don't pay peanuts, but-"

"Ats what ey tol you, huh?" Carl shook his head grimly. "Well, they tol me juth two dayth ago to fire you-inthithted on it. Thaid ey could dit a man full time for what eyd have to pay oo."

"But they promised!" I protested. "They said if I'd accept eighteen dollars a week and work real hard this summer they'd keep me on at the same money when school started."

"Oo dot it in writing?" Carl shook his head again. "Iss asho outfit! Work a manth ath off an en pith on him!"

He declared that he was not going to do another "doddam lick of work" as long as he remained on the job and that I was not to do any either. That was an order, he said-"pothitively not a doddam sonofabitsin bit of work." We would just sit around until the end of the week and enjoy ourselves.

I didn't dispute the order. After a time, by way of conserving his whiskey for him, I went out for a gallon of home brew. I returned to find Carl examining the week's batch of advertising matter.

"Thith skwewin cwap," he said. "Let the batht.u.r.dth sthick it up ere ath." Contemptuously, he started to toss a placard aside. Then, a truly devilish grin spread over his face, and he picked it up again. "How about it, Tompn? Long ath oore dittin uh date, oo dus ath thoon dit it tomorrow?"

"I suppose so," I said. "A couple of days won't make much difference."

"Thath uh way I feel. Tho we'll both leave tomorrow. But we'll div iss doddam outfit thumpn to wemember uth by."

"Yeah?" I said. "I don't see-"

"How ith thingth in uh dwug department? Ey dot plenty of Totexth on hand?"

"Totexth? Oh, Kotex," I said. "Why, yeah, I guess so. The inventory shows around five hundred boxes. What-?"

"Wunnerful," said Carl. "Thwell! Loth of Totexth an iss fuddin meth of thigns. Who could ath for anyfing more?"

That was the way, then, that it came about. Thus, the beginning of a joke which was to throw our employers into embarra.s.sed fury and to keep the Lincoln area snickering for months to come.

As soon as the store closed for the day, Carl and I gathered up the advertising matter and went downstairs. We requisitioned the drug department's entire supply of sanitary napkins. With these, and our placards and pennants and counter cards, we proceeded to "decorate" the store. It was after dawn before we finished. We unlocked the restaurant, helped ourselves to breakfast, and retired to the office to await results.

We were hardly seated before the department heads began to arrive. And as soon as they arrived and got one startled look at the store, they came bounding up the stairs to confront Carl...What the h.e.l.l was the idea, anyway? Was he trying to get the establishment laughed out of business? The display would have to come down immediately.

Carl told them what they could do. If our decoration job was in any way disturbed he would personally see to it that their concession was yanked. "I'm uh doddam boss here," he pointed out. "Oo wun oor skewin concession my way or oo don't wun it!"

One of two of the department heads accepted this dictum. The majority, however, headed for the nearest telephone and laid the matter before their concession owners. The latter called our home office. The home office called us. It was what Carl had wanted.

He listened, grinning, to the outraged tirade which poured over the wire. Then, when there was a temporary pause for breath, he had his blasphemous and bloodcurdling say. He was "fuddin well twitting and Tompn was twitting." We had already paid ourselves to date, and now we were walking out. And since there would be no one around to carry out the management's orders, the decorations-or a large part of them-would stay right where they were. At least they would stay there until someone arrived from the home office.

"At'll teath oo to skwew people!" he yelled. "Doddam dirty pithanth! Do on an skweam oor fudding lungth out-ith muthik to my earth!"

He ended his remarks with a raucous raspberry-and if you have never heard a lisping raspberry, you have missed something. Then, he and I donned our hats, and left the office for the last time.

It was raining that day. As usual, when the weather made agricultural pursuits impractical, the farmers had come into town to shop. It was not yet ten in the morning, but already the store was filling up with customers-or, I should say, people. For few of them were buying anything. They stood around in little groups, the men haw-hawing and pointing, the women giggling and blus.h.i.+ng. Wherever they looked they saw the same thing, and each look brought a fresh outburst of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well, Tompn," said Carl happily. "Ith at sumpn or ith at sumpn?"

I said that it was, indeed, something. And it was.

Throughout every department, throughout the store, boxes of the things were arranged in neat pyramids and piles, each forming a pedestal for some bit of advertising matter-a pennant, placard, or counter card.

The pedestals were all of a kind, all made of boxes of sanitary napkins. The advertising matter all voiced the same slogan, the magic words-of-the-week intended to overpower sales resistance. That was all you saw, wherever you looked-stacks of s.n.'s, each crowned or draped with the same gaudily-lettered slogan: HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN.

9.

My literal-minded friend Durkin, the ex-credit manager, had an outside sales and collection job with an installment store. On his recommendation, I got a job with the same firm. My hours were the same as they had been during our previous a.s.sociation, and permitted me to attend school in the morning. The pay was twenty dollars a week, plus car allowance, plus commission.

On the surface, it seemed to be a very fine job and the manager a very cordial fellow. Durkin, who was a.s.signed to breaking me in on my duties, advised me not to be too optimistic.