Working. Part 38

Just the intolerable strain of living here is fantastic, especially when you've been away for a year.87 I haven't been as nervous in one day driving mountains with radiators blowing out as I was the half-hour it took my father to drive me down here this morning-in his Oldsmobile.

If you decide to cut and run, you've got to do it in one clean break. You'll never do it if you piddle away and if you wait until you're sixty. A fellow I know, he was sixty-three, bought a piece of land in Taos, on a mountain top, forty acres. He and his wife were gonna go in three years and move there. He told me this on a Tuesday. On Sat.u.r.day his wife was dead in the garden. The day he buried her he said to me, "Boy, you're so smart to get out while you're young." Our decision to make this journey evolved over a period of years. Not so strangely, it came about with our achievement of what is called the American Dream.

People say, "You're wasting your college education." My ex-employer said to my father, "You didn't raise your son to be a hash slinger." I've lost status in the eyes of my big city friends. But where I am now I have more status than I would in the city. I'm a big fish in a little pond. I'm a minor celebrity. I can be a hash slinger there and be just as fine as the vice president of the Continental Bank. If I were a hash slinger in the suburbs, they'd ask me to move out of the neighborhood. I said to myself as a kid, What's Mr. So-and-so do? Oh, he only runs a cleaners. He's not a big wheel at all. My personal status with somebody else may have gone down. My personal status with myself has gone up a hundred percent.

I think an education is to make you well-rounded. The first room we built in this house was the library. But I believe we've gotten too far away from physical work. I found this out working around my house in the suburb. I could have one terrible day and come home and hang a wall of wallpaper and get so involved, do the edges, make sure there are no air bubbles under it-that I could forget all my frustrations. I don't think jogging is enough. I believe most suburban guys are happier and easier to get along with when they're out cutting the gra.s.s than when they're in that Cadillac. I work on the house in Arkansas. It's just an old oak frame. There's no finish. I'm remodeling all the way through. You're rehanging doors and moving thresholds. Just by trial and error. When I walked out of my old life I weighed 185 pounds. As you see me today I weigh 160. I feel healthier than I've ever felt in my life.

I don't say I'm gonna end up the rest of my life as a hash slinger, either. I may buy more land and get more involved in cattle. I would like to go a hundred percent in farming, but it would require ten times the land I've got, and it takes time . . . In the cattle business there's enough demand for meat, so you can make a comfortable living between the cattle and the broilers. I might expand the dairy bar into a regular restaurant, make it a little fancy. I've got a lot of different ways to go.

But one thing we've still got-the one thing my wife would not let me get rid of-is we still got the trailer. We can go again if we have to. If we found something better, maybe a higher mountain top to live on, we'd go live there.

PHILIP DA VINCI.

He is a lawyer, twenty-nine years old. Until three years ago he had been working for the house counsel of a large insurance company. Though "doing very well," he and a colleague suddenly quit and took off-wandering out West.

I was defending the company against people who had been hit by cars. I honestly took that job because it was the first rung on the ladder. The next thing would have been to jump sides in the game, become a PI-a personal injury lawyer for the plaintiffs. Pa.s.sing out cards to policemen and start getting referrals and making a lot of money and on and on and on and on. Had I remained with the company for twenty-five years, I would have walked out with $350,000 in profit sharing. (Laughs.) The first three months were novel. Getting up there and playing the advocate. The novelty wore off when I found out what I was really doing. Spending eight, ten hours a day defending an insurance company was a waste of time. If I had this education, I might as well do something useful.

I drove a cab. Somebody told me about Legal Aid. I went there with the intention of staying only six weeks, make a grubstake, and go to New York. I started working in Uptown.88 When it came time to go to New York I said, "No, I'm gonna stay." I finally got into something where I actually felt useful. It's been two years now. I'm still a lawyer, but it's different.

My clients are Appalachians, blacks, senior citizens, people in landlord-tenant cases. We're in Juvenile Court. We represent people abused by police. We represent inmates of the state penitentiary. My clients are people who've been dumped into Uptown as a result of overcrowding in state hospitals.89 They're like camps, some of them-six to a room. They're dying. After you pressure the h.e.l.l out of them and threaten an expose, the Building Department files a suit and they move the people to a better place. All the day labor agencies are down the street, the slave marts.

For the last nine months I've been fighting with the Illinois Department of Financial Inst.i.tutions. They are twenty-six companies that call themselves debt planners. There's one that advertises on a Spanish-speaking TV program. It preys on the people. They get 'em in there and they have 'em sign these contracts in English which they can't read. Making debts that don't exist, charging exhorbitant fees. Finally they said they'll investigate-a slap on the wrist. So we filed our own law suit attacking the companies directly. It's intentional malfeasance on the part of the bureaucracy not to enforce the laws, not to impinge on the mercantilism of the slumlords, shylocks, et cetera. We're constantly attacking the bureaucracy.

He works out of a storefront office. "We have a group of law students from the school where I teach-two cla.s.ses a week. Plus two Mexican women and one black woman, who help us run the office." It is funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity. "Had I stayed downtown practicing law, I'd be making slightly more money, more than slightly . . ." (Laughs.) Every day is different. There's no boredom 'cause there's so much going on. A typical day? We walk out of our office and all of a sudden two guys in topcoats walk up behind us and start taking our picture. As we walk in the restaurant, they're looking at us. As we walk out, our pictures are taken again. Red Squad, Chicago Police Department.90 Because we represented the Young Patriots.91 that was at the time when they established the free medical clinic. The city was trying to close it down. They were keeping a file on the activist lawyers in the city.

I walk back to the office and interview people. Calling finance companies, trying to find defenses on contracts where people have signed, not knowing what the h.e.l.l they signed because they can't read English. Their car gets repossessed, their wages are garnisheed . . . You can work four days straight, sixteen hours a day, and never feel tired. Until your eyes start falling out, and then you know you have to go to bed.

There's a new thing going on-the legal commune. Four or five people out of law school get together. They'll just work out of their apartment. We'd make exhorbitant fees if we were in private practice. But we charge one-tenth of what a lawyer would normally charge. You know, lawyers who behave are well paid in our society. (Laughs.) At the insurance company it was all compet.i.tion. You've got to push the other guy down and crawl on top of him and move up that way. If you don't push him down, you know he's gonna get over you and pa.s.s you up. He's gonna get that job and you're not gonna make as much money and you're not gonna get that t.i.tle. Oh, the day dragged on! I was always sneaking out, going to a show downtown to pa.s.s a few hours. It was so boring. You have a stack of a hundred files on your desk. All you do is make check marks. Go into the court and make the same motion. The same thing, over and over, day after day. And why? To save the company money.

Here you're aware of the suffering of your client. You know the type of landlord he has. You know what his apartment looks like. You know the pressure he's under. It makes you all the more committed. We don't help them only with their legal problems. If they're suffering from a psychological problem we try to hook them up with a psychiatrist. Or try to get them in school. They're so pushed down, so depressed.

You get to know them intimately. We're very close. I've been in their houses. They come to my house. I know them all by their first names. We go out drinking. They're my friends. The people I worked with at the company, I never saw them after five '. I would never think of sharing my thoughts with those people. The people I work with here are my life.

My work and my life, they've become one. No longer am I schizophrenic. At the other place you had to go to work with a suit and tie on. When it hit five you would run out, hop on a bus, and go home. I would immediately strip myself of my suit and put on levis, sandals, and a T-s.h.i.+rt. Of course, I still wear a suit and tie in court. I don't want to hurt my clients. But the falseness has pa.s.sed. People have to accept me for what I am.

(Suddenly he is fatigued.) I don't consider myself a real lawyer. I'm not a lawyer in the sense that the better job I do, the more money I get from my client. I'm just trying to help . . . (Sighs wearily.) You can change a few things. But not much progress is being made. There are about two thousand of us in the country. The legislatures are not controlled by us. For every law we have declared unconst.i.tutional, they rewrite five more. For every step we make, we're pushed back four. Some days I'm optimistic. Other days . . . (Trails off.) Because of the commitment in this type of work, the amount of hours per day, per week, per month you put in, there's a burn-out process. Usually guys last here two years and they just burn out. It's just physically too much-and emotionally, G.o.d! That's what happened to Bud. (Laughs and indicates his colleague seated nearby. ) Bud, too, had previously worked for an establishment law firm. He became a "poor people's lawyer," and now, after two years at it, is taking time out. He chuckles ruefully: "They complained about small things on LaSalle Street. I didn't get my five hundred bucks from this guy.' Doesn't mean anything. Up here it's a wearing process. I go down to the office and I've got 110 cases and their lives are involved. You feel overcommitted and overextended . . ."

In the past ten years I find myself unable to sit through it for another ten hours. You just become emotionally sick because of your powerlessness. You'd like to pick up a gun and get that cop who beat up that thirteen-year-old kid. You prepare that one brief and file that one complaint and go before the jury and get twenty-five bucks for a kid that's had his skull split open by five police officers. You know it's bulls.h.i.+t. Maybe the best way is to give the kid a gun and say, "Okay, square it." But those are the depressing moments.

It's a matter of maintaining a grasp on hope-that more people will become aware. Maybe things will get better in my lifetime. Maybe twenty, thirty, forty years from now. You're overwhelmed by so much, you just gotta turn off and say, "Man, I can't go back for two days." This happens a lot.

You live for two years in the ghetto and you get so absorbed, you don't see what's going on outside. I need more escape from this job than from my old one. At the insurance company you're not being battered from all sides. You have a few ha.s.sles but they're meaningless. Here, things are so heavy . . .

I have no regrets. On my bad days I feel I have wasted three years working here in the ghetto. But not over-all. It has helped me see a lot of things and make me aware of what's going on in our society-what the system does to people. I would have died on the other job. I would have become an alcoholic or a drug addict or something. It would have driven me to that, I'm sure.

SARAH HOUGHTON.

It's a farmhouse in New Jersey. A Sunday brunch with her husband, Dave, who works in Manhattan. He spends long weekends here. She is a librarian at a private school.

She attended library school for four years, 1960 to 1964. Most people who went there had other jobs. She was forty-six. "We were referred to as second chancers, because we were all hoping for more rewarding work. All were looking to this as a release, as a 'now I'll live' kind of thing.

"I'd been out of college for twenty-five years. When I got out, it was during the Depression. If you had a liberal arts education, you couldn't get very much. Everybody went to Macy's." She did secretarial work, taught temporarily at a girls' college. "When I was very little I had a picture in my mind of how life was going to be." She worked as a newspaper reporter, edited trade union journals, and in 1949 "drifted" into the new field of television.

I was the first television producer the agency had hired. They had done a Wildroot commercial and the client didn't like the negligee the girl wore. Somebody said, "The only way to do it right is to hire a woman." So I was hired.

I didn't think I ever worked on anything I thought was terrible, really. Though I didn't think there was that much difference between Wildroot and someone else's shampoo. I know Coty has one kind of smell and another has another kind-a new lipstick, there's not that much difference.

I took pride in what I did. I made myself do it right. But it became increasingly ridiculous to spend all that time and energy making sure a print got to the station on Thursday the twenty-second at six '. I dropped the film off myself on the way home because you couldn't be sure a messenger would get it there on time. What difference did it make if the film was there on Monday or Thursday? I felt, to live miserably under such pressure, to knock yourself out-it should be for something more important. Life was too short for this.

It was obvious, too, that the men were getting much more than I was. They were getting raises more regularly. They were getting twice as much as I was getting for the same work. That kind of stuff-which any woman gets used to, after a while.

Every time they'd lose a big account the pink slips would come out. Is it going to be me? Or somebody else? This is nervous-making. There'd be times when you were terribly busy and times when you'd sit around with nothing to do. You'd try to look busy. You'd sit there and knit or read or do double-crostics. You had to be by the telephone in case somebody'd call. I never took my work home with me. I took the tension home. You couldn't help doing that. If you're going to be tense, it should be for something worthwhile.

I could probably have stayed at the agency for ages. Perhaps being squeezed into one thing or another. The time would come when they'd say, "You will clean the film or get out." It happened to some people. They certainly weren't going to keep a sixty-five-year-old film producer. (Laughs.) So I had to think of something else.

I had known so many women-the only thing they could do after they left their jobs was to be a receptionist. I had seen too many ladies that had to earn their living doing these miserable things-receptionist, companion. Or going back to being a secretary. I didn't want this. Suddenly I had the inspiration. Why didn't I go to library school?

In the winter of 1960, I started thinking about library work. I don't know whether it was my sense of insecurity at the office or whether I just felt I had to get out. I heard there was no age limit, that you could be a librarian until you practically keeled over. I accepted the notion that I would probably work until I dropped. Anyway, I think people and books are a nice combination. It was comfortable to feel that you could probably do this for as long as you wanted to. So I went to Columbia Library from seven till eleven at night for four years.

An offer came from a private school in the small town near the farmhouse she and Dare bought. "My salary would be cut at least half. We talked and talked and talked. He said, 'I didn't sit around in our apartment four nights a week for four years for nothing. Take the job. It's what you want to do, for Christ's sake. Jesus, take it.' Dave convinced me.

"When I was very little, I had a picture in my mind of how life was going to be. You go straight ahead until you curve slightly to the right, until you get to be about twenty-one. Of course, after college you got married, and there was nothing after that. Everything was fine. This is what happened to all the people I knew. Maybe a couple of them worked a little bit. You had children and then everything was dandy.

"At Smith there were two thousand girls. This was during the Depression. There were no jobs. There was no vocational training. You could have taken education and taught, although it wasn't very fas.h.i.+onable. You knew you were going to do something very nice. I was brought up to know there was nothing I couldn't do. If I wanted to be President, I could be President. n.o.body could beat me in anything. But I wasn't particularly good in anything. I wasn't a musician or a writer. No, I don't remember having a talent for anything. There was no set pattern to my life. I sort of went along accidentally from thing to thing. Until Dave forced me into this decision . . ."

I had never been behind a library desk in my life. At library school there is no practice teaching. It was another world. There was no pressure, nothing. There were books. The worst thing you could think of is whether the kids are gonna remember to unlock the library on Sundays so it'll be open. n.o.body behaved as if I'd never been in a library before. The kids were great. There hasn't been a tense day since. A charmed life. Don't miss the city, don't miss the job, don't miss the expense account (laughs), don't miss any part of it.

There was another reason I didn't want to get stuck as a little lady receptionist, smiling and directing someone. I'd go out of my mind. On this job, you can use your mind. Things that are challenging. Find out what some of the new math phrases mean. Selecting books is a complicated matter. If you have thousands and thousands of dollars in your budget, it doesn't make that much difference if you make a few mistakes. But we're limited here. I must be very frugal.

It's one big room. We're bursting now. Last week we had fifty-eight kids there and there are only seats for fifty-seven. It's a tribute that they like to come there. It's an agonizing night, though, when you have to go around shus.h.i.+ng. It's just too much. I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned. I think it has to be a quiet place.

We don't lock our doors here at the house. It never occurs to me. In the city, you would go to the subway and follow everybody and try to get a paper. Here I drive down to school and just make a turn at the corner and see the whole Appalachian spread out for miles and miles. And I'm ready to go to work.

I feel free as a bird. I'm in a unique position because I'm the boss. I buy what I like. I initiate things. I can experiment with all kinds of things I think the kids might be interested in. n.o.body interferes. For me, it's no ch.o.r.e to go to work. I'm fortunate. Most people never get to do this at any time in their lives.

My father was a mechanical engineer, hated every day of it. He couldn't wait forty-six years, or whatever it was, until he retired. When we were little, we knew he loathed his job. One of the things he hated most was having to take customers out for dinners. He almost didn't make it because he had a very bad heart attack a couple of months before retirement age. Fortunately, he lived for almost twenty years afterwards. He retired at sixty-five and started to live. He took guitar lessons, piano lessons, art lessons. He was in little theater productions. Work for him was something he hated. He went through the motions and did it very well. But he dreaded every minute of it.

I a.s.sumed he became an engineer because his father was one. He attended the same university. His brother was an engineer too. It was just a.s.sumed. But it wasn't for him. I have a sister who can't wait until next December, 'cause she's going to retire at a bank. She's just hanging on. How terrible.

I don't think I could ever really retire. There's not enough time.

MARIO ANICHINI.

In the yard outside the shop are statues in marble and stone of saints, angels, and fountains. The spirit of Look Homeward, Angel and W. O. Gant hovers tempestuously. Yet, M. Anichini, artisan, has never been more relaxed. His son and colleague, Bob, interjects a contemporary note: "We also work in foam, fibergla.s.s, polyurethanes . . .

In Italy I was working in marble a little bit. I was a young kid. In Lucca, a young kid do this, do that. Little by little I learned. When I was about twenty I came to this country here. I couldn't do anything like that, because of here we had a Depression. From '27 year to '55 I was a butcher. For twenty-eight years . . .

I started to get a little ulcer in my stomach. I had sciatica. So I hadda quit. So I stay for one year, I don't do nothing. But after, I feel I could do something. The plaster business, the tomb business. As soon as I started it, I started to feel better.

BOB: He was about fifty-five years old when he started this business again. My mother thought he was losing his mind. But he insisted. Everybody from the area where he came from in Tuscany has a relative or somebody in the art business. You have Florence . . .

There's change a lot. We use rubber to make a mold now. We used to use some kind of glue. It was only good for about ten pieces. Now with a rubber mold we can make three hundred, four hundred pieces. In Italy you gotta go to school one year to make a mold. Before, I used to make one piece, stone or marble. Maybe you a millionaire and you want to make it your bust. Okay, how much you pay? Now n.o.body want to spend that much money. Over here I don't see so much good stone to work with.

BOB: We used to sell statuary and fountains: a nymph holding a jug, pouring water. All of a sudden, with the ecology bit, people want to hear water running. In the city they want to be close to the country. So there's a combination of art and nature. When we started, I was quite against if. Who's going to buy a fountain? We put 'em indoors now as humidifiers. People are putting statues in their yards. There is such a demand for it we built a factory.

I remember when I quit the butcher business, I was sick. When I started this business, I became better and better and I feel good and enjoy myself.

BOB: For grave sites people in the old days wanted a certain statue, St. Anthony or St. Anne or something like that. We don't have much call for saints these days, especially now with the Church . . .

People will laugh. Every time they see me, they see me better and better. I used to work in the bas.e.m.e.nt. They say, "You eat too much dust down there, and you getting better and better. Before you work in the butcher shop, very nice, very airy, everything, you used to be sick. How come?"

BOB: My dad had another man that didn't feel too well at what he was doing. He worked with my father in this-what he did as a kid, too-and he got healthy and fat and stuff like that. (Laughs.) My dad was an old man fifteen, twenty years ago. Today he's a young man.

FATHERS AND SONS.

GLENN STRIBLING.

A casual encounter on a plane; a casual remark: he and his wife are returning from a summer cruise. It was their first vacation in twenty-five years. He is forty-eight.

He and his son are partners in the business: Glenn & Dave's Complete Auto Repair. They run a Texaco service station in a fairly affluent community some thirty miles outside Cleveland. "There's eight of us on the payroll, counting my son and I. Of course, the wife, she's the bookkeeper." There are three tow trucks.

"Glenn & Dave's is equipped to do all nature of repair work: everything from transmission, air conditioning, valves, all . . . everything. I refer to it as a garage because we do everything garages do.

"We have been here four years." He himself has been of it "steady" for twenty-nine years. "When I was a kid in high school I worked at the Studebaker garage part-time for seven dollars a week. And I paid seven dollars a week board and room." (Laughs.) It more or less runs in our family. My great-grandfather used to make spokes for automobiles back in Pennsylvania when they used wooden wheels. I have a brother, he's a mechanic. I have another brother in California, he's in the same business as I'm in. My dad, he was a steam engine repairman.

"Another reason I went into this business: it's Depression-proof. A good repairman will always have a job. Even though they're making cars so they don't last so long and people trade 'em in more often, there's still gonna be people that have to know what they're doing."

I work eight days a week. (Laughs.) My average weeks usually run to eighty, ninety hours. We get every other Sunday off, my son and I. Alternate, you know. Oh, I love it. There's never a day long enough. We never get through. And that's a good way to have it, 'cause people rely on you and you rely on them, and it's one big business. Sometimes they're all three trucks goin'. All we sell is service, and if you can't give service, you might as well give up.

All our business has come to us from mouth to mouth. We've never run a big ad in the paper. That itself is a good sign that people are satisfied. Of course, there's some people that n.o.body could satisfy. I've learned: Why let one person spoil your whole day?

A new customer comes to town, he would say, "So-and-so, I met him on the train and he recommended you folks very highly." Oh, we've had a lot of compliments where people, they say they've never had anything like that done to a car. They are real happy that we did point out things and do things. Preventive maintenance I call it.

A man come in, we'd Xed his tires, sold him a set of shocks, repacked his wheel bearings, aligned his front, serviced his car-by service I mean lubricate, change oil, filter . . . But he had only one tail light working and didn't know it. So we fixed that and he'll be grateful for it. If it's something big, a matter of a set of tires or if he needs a valve job, we call the customer and discuss it with him.

Sometimes, but not very often, I've learned to relax. When I walk out of here I try to leave everything, 'cause we have a loud bell at home. If I'm out in the yard working, people call. They want to know about a car, maybe make a date for next week, or maybe there's a car here that we've had and there's a question on it. The night man will call me up at home. We have twenty-four-hour service, too, towing. My son and I, we take turns. So this phone is hooked up outside so you can hear it. And all the neighbors can hear it too. (Laughs.) Turn down calls? No, never. Well, if it's some trucking outfit and they don't have an account with us-they're the worst risk there is. If they don't have a credit card or if the person they're delivering won't vouch for them, there's gotta be some sort of agreement on payment before we go out. Of course, if it's a stranger, if it's broke down, naturally we have the car.

Sometimes if we're busy, bad weather and this and that, why we won't get any lunch, unless the wife runs uptown and grabs a sandwich. I usually go home, it varies anywhere between six thirty, seven, eight. Whatever the public demands. In the wintertime, my G.o.d, we don't get out of here till nine. I have worked thirty-seven hours non-stop.

I don't do it for the money. People are in trouble and they call you and you feel obligated enough to go out there and straighten them out as much as you can. My wife tells me I take my business more serious than a doctor. Every now and then a compet.i.tor will come down and ask me to diagnose something. And I go ahead and do it. I'll tell anybody anything I know if it'll help him. That's a good way to be. You might want a favor from them sometime. Live and let live.

You get irritated a lot of times, but you keep it within yourself. You can't be too eccentric. You gotta be the same. Customers like people the same all the time. Another thing I noticed: the fact that I got gray hair, that helps in business. Even though my son's in with me and we have capable men working for us, they always want to talk to Glenn. They respect me and what I tell 'em.

If I'm tensed up and there'll be somebody pull in on the driveway, ring all the bells, park right in front of the door, then go in and use the washroom-those kind of people are the most inconsiderate kind of people there is. If you're out there in the back, say you're repacking wheel bearings. Your hands are full of grease. In order to go out in that drive, you have to clean your hands. And all the customer wanted to know was where the courtroom is. When I travel, if I want information, I'll park out on the ap.r.o.n. Sometimes we have as high as fifty, sixty people a day in here for information. They pull up, ring all the bells . . . You can imagine how much time it takes if you go out fifty, sixty times and you don't pump gas. I call'em IWW: Information, wind, and water. It's worse the last four years we've been here. People don't care. They don't think of us. All they think of is themself.

Oh, I lose my temper sometimes. You wouldn't be a red-blooded American if you wouldn't, would you? At the same time you're dealing with the public. You have to control yourself. Like I say, people like an even-tempered person. When I do lose my temper, the wife, she can't get over it. She says, "Glenn, I don't know how you can blow your stack at one person and then five minutes later you're tellin' him a joke." I don't hold grudges. Why hold a grudge? Let people know what you think, express your opinion, and then forget it. Of course, you don't forget, you just don't keep harpin' on it.

In the summertime, when I get home I don't even go in the house. I grab a garden tool and go out and work till dark. I have a small garden-lettuce, onions, small vegetables. By the time you're on your feet all day you're ready to relax, watch television, sometimes have a fire in the fireplace. At social gatherings, if somebody's in the same business, we compare notes. If we run into something that's a time saver, we usually exchange. But not too much. Because who likes to talk shop?

There's a few good mechanics left. Most of 'em in this day and age, all they are is parts replacers. This is a new trend. You need an air conditioner, you don't repair 'em any more. You can get exchange units, factory guaranteed and much cheaper, much faster. People don't want to lay up their car long enough to get it fixed. If they can't look out and see their car in the driveway, they feel like they've lost something. They get nervous. It's very seldom people will overhaul a car. They'll trade it in instead.

This is something hard to find any more, a really good, conscientious worker. When the whistle blows, they're all washed up, ready to go before they're punched out. You don't get a guy who'll stay two or three hours later, just to get a job done.

Take my son, Dave. Say a person's car broke down. It's on a Sunday or a Sat.u.r.day night. Maybe it would take an hour to fix. Why, I'll go ahead and fix it. Dave's the type that'll say, "Leave it sit till Monday." I put myself in the other guy's boots and I'll go ahead and fix his car, because time don't mean that much to me. Consequently we got a lot of good customers. Last winter we had a snowstorm. People wanted some snow tires. I put 'em on. He's a steady customer now. He just sold his house for $265,000.

When we took this last cruise, my customers told me Dave did a terrific job. "Before, we didn't think much of him. But he did a really good job this last time." I guess compared to the average young person Dave is above average as far as being conscientious. Although he does sleep in the morning. Today's Wednesday? Nine o'clock this morning. It was ten o'clock yesterday morning. He's supposed to be here at seven. Rather than argue and fight about it, I just forget it.

Another thing I trained myself: I know the address and phone number of all the places we do business with and a lot of our customers. I never even look in the phone book. (Dave had just made a phone call after leafing through the directory.) If he asked me, I coulda told him.

DAVE STRIBLING.

He is twenty-three, married, and has two baby children. He has been working with his father "more or less since I was twelve years old. It's one of those deals where the son does carry on the family tradition.

"I actually worked full-time when I was in junior high school. School was a bore. But when you stop and look back at it you wish to h.e.l.l you'd done a lot more. I wanted to go get that fast buck. Some people are fortunate to make it overnight. My dad and I had a few quarrels and I quit him. I used to work down at Chrysler while I was in high school. I worked at least eight hours a day. That was great. You don't work Sat.u.r.days and you don't work Sundays. Then I came back and worked for my dad."

How would I describe myself? Mixed up really. (Laughs.) I like my work. (Sighs.) But I wish I hadn't started that early. I wish I would have tried another trade, actually. At my age I could quit this. I could always come back. But I'm pretty deep now. If I were to walk out, it would be pretty bad. (Laughs.) I don't think I'll change my occupation, really.

I think I'da tried to be an architect or, h.e.l.l, maybe even a real top-notch good salesman. Or maybe even a farmer. It's hard to say. The gra.s.s is always greener on the other side of the fence. You turn around and there's an attorney. It makes you feel different. You work during the day and you're dirty from this and that. The majority of the people overlook the fact as long as you're established and this and that. They don't really care what your occupation is as long as you're a pretty good citizen.

Where it really gets you down is, you're at some place and you'll meet a person and strike up a conversation with 'em. Naturally, sometime during that conversation he's going to ask about your occupation, what you do for a living. So this guy, he manages this, he manages that, see? When I tell him-and I've seen it happen lots of times-there's a kind of question mark in his head. Just what is this guy? You work. You just sweat. It's not mental. 'Cause a lot of these jobs that you do, you do so many of the same thing, it just becomes automatic. You know what you're doing blindfolded.

It's made me a pretty good livin' so far. But I don't have a lot of time that a lot of these guys do that are in my age and in the same status that I am. I put in every week at least sixty, sixty-five hours. And then at night, you never know. If somebody breaks down, you can't tell 'em no. You gotta go. My friends work forty hours a week and they're done. Five days a week. I work seven, actually. Every other Sunday. I have to come and open up.

I don't really like to talk about my work with my friends. They don't really seem to, either. A lot of times somebody will ask me something about their car. How much will this cost? How much will that cost? I don't really even want to quote my price to them. A couple of 'em work for the state, in an office. A couple of 'em are body men. One's a carpenter, one's a real estate salesman. A few of 'em, they just work.

I come home, I gotta go in the back door, 'cause I've got on greasy boots. (Laughs.) If it does happen to be about six thirty, then I won't get cleaned up before I eat. I'll sit down and eat with the wife and kids. If they've already eaten, I'll take a shower and I'll get cleaned up and I'll come down and eat. If it's a nice night, I might go out and putz around the yard. If it's not nice outside, I'll just sit and watch the TV. I don't really read that much. I probably read as much as the average American. But nothing any more. Sometimes you really put out a lot of work that day-in general, I'm tired. I'm asleep by ten o'clock at night. I come to work, it varies, I might come in between eight and nine, maybe even ten ' in the morning. I like my sleep. (Laughs.) He's the one that opens it up. He believes the early bird gets the worm. But that's not always true either. I might come in late, but actually I do more work than he does here in a day. Most of it probably is as careful as his. I can't understand a lot of the stuff he does. But he can't understand a lot of the stuff I do either. (Laughs.) He's getting better. He's kinda come around. But he still does think old-fas.h.i.+oned.

Like tools. You can buy equipment, it might cost a lot more money but it'll do the job faster and easier. He'll go grab hand tools, that you gotta use your own muscle. He doesn't go in for power tools.

Like judging people. Anybody with long hair is no good to him-even me. If he caught me asleep, he'd probably give me a Yul Brynner. Hair doesn't have anything to do with it. I've met a lot of people with hair really long, just like a female. They're still the same. They still got their ideas and they're not hippies or anything. They go to work every day just like everybody else does. It gets him. Especially if someone will come in and ask him to do something, he'll let them know he doesn't like them. I don't give people that much static.

When somebody comes in and they're in a rage and it's all directed at you, I either go get the h.e.l.l out of there or my rage is brought up towards them. I've definitely lost customers by tellin' 'em. I don't know how to just slough it off. In the majority of cases you're sorry for it.

I've seen my father flare up a lot of times. Somebody gives him a bad time during the day, he'll take it home. Whereas instead of tellin' 'em right there on the spot, he'll just keep it within himself. Then half-hour later he might be mumblin' somethin'. When I used to live at home, you could tell by thirty seconds after he got in the door that he either didn't feel good or somebody gave him a bad time. He just keeps it going through his mind. He won't forget it. Whereas when I go home to the wife and the two kids, I just like to forget it. I don't want to talk about it at all.

I yell a lot, cuss a lot. I might throw things around down here, take a hammer and hit the bench as hard as it'll go, I'm getting better though, really. I used to throw a lot of stuff. I'd just grab and throw a wrench or something. But I haven't done that in a long time now. When you get older and you start thinking about it, you really have changed a lot in the last few years. (Laughs.) It'll stay inside me. You learn to absorb more of it. More so than when you were a kid. You realize you're not doing any good. Lotta times you might damage something. It's just gonna come out of your pocket.

When I was younger, if there was something I didn't agree upon, I was ready to go right then against it. But now I don't. I kinda step back a half a step and think it out. I've gotten into pretty good arguments with my buddies. It never really comes down to fists, but if you're with somebody long enough, it's bound to happen, you're gonna fight. You had a hard day and somebody gave you a hard time and, say you went out to eat and the waitress, she screwed something up? Yeah, it'll flare up. But not as much as it used to be.

As far as customers goes, there's not too many of 'em I like. A lot of customers, you can joke with, you can kid with. There are a lot of 'em, they don't want to hear any of it. They don't want to discuss anything else but the business while they're here. Older people, yeah, they're pretty hard. Because they've gone through a change from a Model T to what you got nowadays. Nowadays a lot of 'em will put up the hood and they just shake their heads. They just can't figure it out.

Some of 'em, when they get old they get real grumpy. Anything you say, you're just a kid and you don't know what you're doin'. (Laughs.) They don't want to listen to you, they want to talk to somebody else. There's a lot of 'em that'll just talk to him. But there's a lot of 'em that want to talk to me and don't want to talk to him. My-age people. It's a mixed-up generation. (Laughs.) I have pride in what I do. This day and age, you don't always repair something. You renew. Whereas in his era you could buy a kit to rebuild pretty near anything. Take a water pump. You can buy 'em. You can put on a new one. I wouldn't even bother to repair a water pump. You can buy rebuilts, factory rebuilts. Back in his time you rebuilt water pumps.

His ideas are old, really. You gotta do this a certain way and this a certain way. There's short cuts found that you could just eliminate half the stuff you do. But he won't. A lot of the new stuff that comes out, he won't believe anybody. He won't even believe me. He might call three or four people before he'll believe it. Why he won't believe me I don't know. I guess he must figure I bull him a lot. (Laughs.) When he was working for a living as a mechanic, his ability was pretty good. Actually, he doesn't do that much work. I mean, he more or less is a front. (Laughs.) Many people come in here that think he does work on their car. But he doesn't. He's mostly the one that meets people. He brings the work in. In his own mind he believes he's putting out the work. But we're the ones that put out the work.

He's kind of funny to figure out. (Laughs.) He has no hobbies, really. When he's out he'll still talk his trade. He just can't forget it, leave it go.

I'd like to go bigger in this business, but father says no for right now. He's too skeptical. We're limited here. He doesn't want to go in debt. But you gotta spend money to make money. He's had to work harder than I have. There's n.o.body that ever really gave him anything. He's had to work for everything he's got. He's given me a lot. Sometimes he gives too much. His grand-kids, they've got clothes at home still in boxes, brand-new as they got 'em. He just goes overboard. If I need money, he'll loan it to me. He's lent me money that I haven't even paid back, really. (Laughs.) (Sighs.) I used to play music. I used to play in a rock group. Ba.s.s. I didn't know very much on the ba.s.s. Everybody that was in the band really didn't know all that much. We more or less progressed together. We played together for a year and a half, then everything just broke up. Oh yeah, we enjoyed it. It was altogether different. I like to play music now but don't have the time . . . I like to play, but you can't do both. This is my living. You have to look at it that way.