Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel Read Free Book Online

I think of on a Sunday night? Lord, I wish the fuck I could do something else for a living.
    I don’t know who the guy is who said there is nothing sweeter than an unfinished symphony. Like an unfinished painting and an unfinished poem. If he creates this thing one day—let’s say, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It took him a long time to do this, this beautiful work of art. But what if he had to create this Sistine Chapel a thousand times a year? Don’t you think that would even dull Michelangelo’s mind? Or if da Vinci had to draw his anatomical charts thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, eighty, ninety, a hundred times a day? Don’t you think that would even bore da Vinci?
     
    Way back, you spoke of the guys who built the pyramids, not the pharaohs, the unknowns. You put yourself in their category?
     
    Yes. I want my signature on ’em, too. Sometimes, out of pure meanness, when I make something, I put a little dent in it. I like to do something to make it really unique. Hit it with a hammer. I deliberately fuck it up to see if it’ll get by, just so I can say I did it. It could be anything. Let me put it this way: I think God invented the dodo bird so when we get up there we could tell Him, “Don’t you ever make mistakes?” and He’d say, “Sure, look.” (Laughs.) I’d like to make my imprint. My dodo bird. A mistake, mine. Let’s say the whole building is nothing but red bricks. I’d like to have just the black one or the white one or the purple one. Deliberately fuck up.
    This is gonna sound square, but my kid is my imprint. He’s my freedom. There’s a line in one of Hemingway’s books. I think it’s from For Whom the Bell Tolls. They’re behind the enemy lines, somewhere in Spain, and she’s pregnant. She wants to stay with him. He tells her no. He says, “if you die, I die,” knowing he’s gonna die. But if you go, I go. Know what I mean? The mystics call it the brass bowl. Continuum. You know what I mean? This is why I work. Every time I see a young guy walk by with a shirt and tie and dressed up real sharp, I’m lookin’ at my kid, you know? That’s it.

PREFACE II
    WHO SPREAD THE NEWS?

BILLY CARPENTER
    Newburgh, Indiana, is Lincoln boyhood country. It borders Kentucky to the northwest. The Ohio River sluggishly flows alongside the town; industrial sludge in its waters.
    He is twelve. He has been a newsboy, off and on, for seven years. He delivers by bicycle. After school each day he works his paper route for about an hour. On Sunday, he’s up at four in the morning. “It’s dark and it’s spooky. You gotta cut through these woods. It’s scary.” He has sixty-nine customers.
     
    I like my work. You know a lot of guys on your route. If you’re nice, they tell everybody about how nice you are and they would pass it on. But now I’m kind of in a hurry and I do it just any old way to get it done.’Cause it’s wintertime. It gets dark earlier. And if I don’t get home in time, the stuff’s cold and it ain’t any good.
    Before, I’d put it anywhere they’d want me to. I still do for this old man, he’s a cripple. I put it on the table. But for the guys who can walk, if I have to put it on the porch for everybody, it’d take me about two hours. This one lady, she lives about thirty yards from the street. I just throw the paper. She came one day and started to bawl me out ’cause she got a box. You gotta go up this alley, turn around, and go to the box on the side of the house. It takes about a minute. If I had to do it for everybody, I’d never get done. Then she says, “Put it in the door.” I’ll put it in the door. Now she keeps the door locked, so I just throw it on the porch.
    They used to bawl us out more. They don’t do it so much now. They hold back payin’ you. I collect at the beginning of the month. About three of my people, it’s hard to collect. This one is always gone. He comes home around twelve o’clock and he leaves about six in the morning. I’d