CH1) Working the land
Roberto Acuna, Farmworker
P14
All of a sudden I’d be rudely awakened by a broken carrot in my back. That would bust your whole dream apart and you’d work for awhile and come back daydreaming.
P18
I didn't quit because I was afraid of them, but because they were trying to make me into a mean man.
P19
I began to see how everything was so wrong. When growers can have an intricate watering system to irrigate their crops but can’t have running water inside the houses of the workers. Veterinarians tend to the needs of domestic animals, but they can’t have medical care for the workers. They can have subsidies for the growers but they can’t have a adequate unemployment compensation for the workers. They treat him like a farm implement. In fact they treat their implements better and their domestic animals better. They have heat and insulated barns for the animals but the workers live in beat up shacks with no heat at all.
P22
If we have proper compensation we wouldn't have to be working seventeen hours a days and following the crops. We could stay in one area and it would give us roots. Being a migrant, it tears the family apart. You get in debt. You leave the area penniless. The children are the ones hurt the most. They go to school three months in one place, then on to another. No sooner do they make friends, they are uprooted. Right here your childhood is taken away. So when they grow up, they’re looking for this childhood they have lost.
CH2) Pecking order
Bill Talcott, Organizer
P31
If they’re going to save themselves, they’re going to have to do it themselves. I have some skills that can help them.
P33
Christian brotherhood is enlightened self-interest. Most sins committed on poor people are by people who've come to help them.
P38
I work all the way from two in the morning until two the next morning seven days a week. I'm not a martyr. I'm one of the few people who was lucky in life to find out what he really wanted to do. I feel sorry for all the people who aren't doing what they want to do. Their lives are hell. I think everybody ought to quit their job and do what they want. You've got one life. How on earth can you blow that doing something you hate?
Roberta Victor, Hooker
P43
Youth is the premium.
Barbara Terwilliger, Idleness
P50
It can be splendid not to work for a while, because it changes the rhythm – you can reflect on what you've done. There’s no feeling of being indolent. I like being by myself for long periods of time and do not need an occupation. After two months though, it doesn't work for me. I begin to feel the need for a raison d’etre.
P51
About work and idleness…
You raise the subject of guilt.
I did?
I have come to some conclusions after having been free economically from the necessity of work. A great poet can make love and idleness fructify into poetry, a beautiful occupation. He wouldn't think of calling it work.
Work has a pejorative sound. It shouldn't I can’t tell you how strongly I feel about work. But so much of what we call work is dehumanizing and brutalizing.
I've done typing as a young girl. I've worked in places where the office was like a factory. A bell rang and that was time for a ten-minute coffee break. It was horrifying.
Still, most people are better off—their sanity is maintained in anything that gives their life some structure. I disliked the working conditions and I disliked the regimentation, but I enjoyed the process of typing.
P52
I really feel work is gorgeous. It’s the only thing you can depend on in life. You can’t depend on love. Oh, love is quite ephemeral. Work has a dignity you can count on.
Work has to be a game in order for it to be well-done. You have to be able to play in it, to compete with yourself. You push yourself to your limits in order to enjoy it. There’s quite a wonderful rhythm you can find yourself involved in, in the process of any kind of work.
P55
Even there, the process—being part of something, making something happen, was important. That’s the difference between being alive and being dead. Everyone needs to feel they have a place in the world. It would be unbearable not to. I don’t like to feel superfluous. One needs to be needed. I'm saying being idle and leisured, doing nothing, is tragic and disgraceful. Everyone must have an occupation. Love doesn't suffice. It doesn't fill up enough hours. I don’t mean work must be activity for activity’s sake I don’t mean obsessive, empty moving around. I mean creating something new. But idleness is an evil. I don’t think man can maintain his balance or sanity in idleness. Human beings must work to create some coherence. You do it only through work and through love, and you can only count on work.
CH3) Footwork
Dolores Dante, Waitress
P74
Everyone says all waitresses have broken homes. What they don’t realize is when people have broken homes they need to make money fast, and do this work. They don’t have broken homes because they’re waitresses.
P77
When somebody says to me, “you’re great, how come you’re just a waitress?” Just a waitress. I’d say, “why, don’t you think you deserve to be served by me?” it’s implying that he’s not worthy, not that I'm not worthy. It makes me irate. I don’t feel lowly at all. I myself feel sure. I don’t want to change the job. I love it.
P82
I don’t give anything away. I just give myself. Informers will manufacture things in order to make their job worthwhile. They’re not sure of themselves as workers. There’s always someone who wants your station, who would be pretender to the crown. In life there is always someone who wants somebody’s job.
P86
I tell everyone I'm a waitress and I'm proud. If a nurse gives service, I say, “you’re a professional.” Whatever you do, be professional. I always compliment people.
P89
If you come out in anger at things that were done to you, it would only make you feel cheapened. Really, I've been keeping it to myself. But of late, I’m beginning to spew it out. It’s almost as though I sensed my body and soul had had quite enough.
CH4) In the spotlight
Bud Freeman, Jazz Musician
P99
I get up about noon. I would only consider myself outside the norm because of the way other people live. They’re constantly reminding me I'm abnormal. I could never bear to live the dull lives that most people live, locked up in offices. I live in absolute freedom. I do what I do because I want to do it. What’s wrong with making a living doing something interesting? I wouldn't work for anybody. I'm working for me. Oddly enough, jazz is a music that came out of the black man’s oppression, yet it allows for great freedom of expression, perhaps more than any other art form. The jazz man is expressing freedom in every note he plays. We can only please the audience doing what we do. We have to please ourselves first.
P104
Real talent takes a long time to mature, to learn how to bring what character you have into sound, into your playing. Not the instrument, but the style of music you’re trying to create should be an extension of you. And this takes a whole life.
CH5) Behind the desk
CH6) Appearance
Sam Mature, Barber
P131
I’ll tell ya, by tipping that way it made me feel like a beggar. A doctor, you don’t give him a tip. He’s a professional man. You go to the dentist, you don’t give him a tip because he fixed your tooth. Well a barber is a professional man too, so I don’t think you should tip him.
CH7) Cleaning up
Nick Salerno, Garbageman
P153
People ask what I do, I say, I drive a garbage truck for the city. They call you G-man or, “How’s business, picking up?” Just the standard… or sanitary engineer. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I put in my eight hours. We make a pretty good salary. I feel I earn my money. I can go anywhere I want. I conduct myself as a gentleman any place I go. My wife is happy, this is the big thing. She doesn't look down at me.
They made a crack to my children in school. My kids would just love to see me do something else. I tell’m, “Honey, this is a good job. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re not stealin’ the money. You have everything you need.” I don’t like my salary compared to anyone else’s. I don’t like to hear that we’re makin’ more than a school teacher. A school teacher should get more money, but don’t take it away from em.
CH8) Second chance
Nick Lindsay, Carpenter/poet
P166
I don’t think there’s less pride in craftsmanship. I don’t know about pride. Do you take pride in embracing a woman? You don’t take pride in that. You take delight in it. There may be less delight. If you can build a house cheap and really get it to a man that needs it, that’s kind of a social satisfaction for you. At the same time, you wish you could have done a fancier job, a more unique kind of a job.
But every once in a while there’s stuff that comes in on you. All of a sudden something falls into place. Suppose you’re driving an eight-penny galvanized fish in nail into this siding. Your whole universe is rolled onto the head of that nail. Each lick is sufficient to justify your life. You say, “Okay, I'm not trying to get this nail out of the way so I can get onto something important. There’s nothing more important. It’s right there.” And it goes…pow! It’s not getting that nail in that’s in your mind. It’s hitting it…hitting it square, hitting it straight. Getting it now. That one lick.
CH9) Looking after each other (from cradle to grave)
Elmer Ruiz, Gravedigger
P192
I enjoy it very much, especially in the summer. I don’t think any job inside a factory or an office is so nice. You have the air all day and it’s just beautiful. The smell of grass when it’s cut, it’s just FANTASTIC. Winter goes so fast, sometimes you just don’t feel it.
When I finish my work here, I just don’t remember my work. I like music so much that I have lots more time listen’n to music or play’n. That’s where I spend my time.
