Hard Times

by Studs Terkel

  In 1930, my stepfather had this flat, where we had a speak-easy going. People from a small syndicate moved in the next flat. In our neighborhood, we wouldn’t drink moonshine, just refined alcohol. My stepfather would peddle the moonshine on the South Side.

  These moonshiners, they got the gas company men to tap the main with a three-inch pipe. Using company tools to steal their own gas. The gas company men, I mean, they take money, too. They tapped the gas main pipe and ran it up to the second floor and put a burner on it. Put a hundred-gallon still on it, going twenty-four hours a day. Just time off to put a new batch in.

  There was cooperation in the neighborhood. Like this friend of mine, his father ran a joint. He got a job with the utility company to repair meters. Things got rough in the neighborhood. So everybody was cheatin’ on gas, electricity, everything they could. A lot of people had their meters taken out. So he’d rig up jumpers on the meters in the whole neighborhood. He warned ’em: if they see anybody climbin’ up a pole to put a meter on, let him know. The electric company came around, put a meter on it. So he climbed the pole and put a jumper27 on the meter.

  The whole neighborhood would cooperate … ?

  Yeah, to beat the utility. And there’s the bit about the case workers, too. The case worker was the enemy. They’d see case workers snoopin’ around—they’d know ’em by sight—they’d pass the word around. If they were havin’ parties or they were eatin’ or the old man was moonlighting somewhere to pick up a few bucks, they’d cover up for each other.

  The syndicate boys had barrels of mash all over the place. One day my stepfather gets drunk—he was goofy that way. He liked to get arguments goin’ and get pounded up. So they asked my mother if it’s all right to kill him. She said: “No, I haven’t got insurance on him.”

  Our speak-easy had a candy-store front. That was the come-on. The fuzz wasn’t botherin’ us. They were just shakin’ down the syndicate. They were tryin’ to get money from them because it was a big operation. They’d take out two truckloads of this moonshine. In five-gallon cans that were always a quart short. Even the one-gallon cans were about four ounces short. They never gave you a full measure. That was the standard practice in them days. They were gyppers.

  Did you pay off the syndicate?

  No, we bought through their channels. We bought alcohol. This moonshine was obviously for the South Side trade, the colored. The syndicate got a big place cheap to cook, about eight rooms. They used to get knocked off every so often, but not too often. Because the police captain was taken care of. They didn’t believe in payin’ off the men on the beat. They’d give him a drink and that was it. Because it would run into many expenses otherwise. ’Cause if one got something, he’d tell everybody else, and they’d all be in on it. This way, they’d pay the captain off and he wouldn’t come around.

  We’d been raided a couple of times, but they never could find the booze. My mother had a clever gimmick. She’d drive a nail in the wall, take a jug of booze and put a hat and coat on top on it. They never found it.

  There was another candy-store front used by a woman. A cop started comin’ around and gettin’ friendly. She knew he was workin’ up to a pinch. So she prepared a bottle for him. He talked her into sellin’ it to him. He pinches her, takes her to court. He said: “I bought this half a dog of a booze. Half a pint.” The woman said, “How do you know it’s booze?” The cop takes a swig of it and spits it out. It was urine. Case dismissed.

  When we had this place, the downtown Cadillac squad came in there—the open cars with sawed-off shotguns. They didn’t want to drag us in. They wanted money. They wanted $40. My mother wasn’t holding that day. So she had to wait for the customers to come in and borrow it from’em. It took about three hours to pay these guys off.

  Later on, in 1933, when Prohibition was lifted, alcohol dropped from $40 a gallon to $5. For a while $8 was the standard price, but $5 was the low point.

  I wanted to get out of this. Get a job, more or less. I was goin’ to work one day with seven cents and my lunch in my pocket. Believe it or not, I was waitin’ for a streetcar. A truck was goin’ out of town. Its tail gate was down. I jumped on it and was gone for six months. This was maybe ’31. Still in Hoover’s time. I went as far as the truck went. A freight train comes by.

  I had my seven cents, but I ate my lunch. I bought a pack of Bull Durham, but I needed food. I found a jungle, ate somethin’, and learned a few tricks from these ’boes.

  Freight trains were amazing in them days. When a train would stop in a small town and the bums got off, the population tripled. So many ridin’ the freight. Women even, and quite a few were tryin’ to disguise themselves.

  I ran into a couple of self-styled professors, safe blowers, skilled mechanics and all that. Quite a few boomers were traveling. These people usually had money. When they finished a job, they’d get paid, go on a bender and get rolled. They didn’t like the farmer types. And there were quite a few farmers buried.

  I’m talkin’ about this big dam job out west, this big Hoover Dam. There was a lot of farmers in the concrete. They just shoved ’em in there. They didn’t like ‘em as job competition. Oh, there were some mean people travelin’ around.

  Old time hoboes had a circuit, like a preacher or a salesman. The towns knew ‘em. They knew the good jails to spend the winter in. They would associate with each other, clannish. They wouldn’t let outsiders in very much. A young boy, somebody they took a fancy to, they’d break him in. There was quite a bit of homosexual down there—wolves, punks and all that. I pushed one guy in the river. I don’t know if he came up or not,’cause I ran.

  There was always Sally. While you listened to a sermon, they’d feed you a little something, and then you’d go on your way. The missions are pretty horrible because they pre-judge ya. I wanted a flop so I took it. Once in a while somebody would take a nose dive, profess religion. They’d stick around a while just to have a roof. The first time they get enough money to get drunk, they did.

  If you got lucky and got yourself a package of cigarettes, Camels was the bit, you put ’em in your socks and your Bull Durham was in your shirt pocket. So the ones that didn’t have would mooch the Bull Durham instead of the Camels.

  These kids amaze me today. I mean, they’re smokin’ and a bus comes, and they throw away the whole butt. I can’t. I gotta clinch it. Put it in my pocket. Some days when I’m ridin’ around in buses, I find the next day a half a dozen butts. I put ’em in the ash tray for when I run out of cigarettes.

  The locals didn’t care for the bums, they wouldn’t take to ‘em. There were always people bummin’. At back doors, tryin’ to get a handout.

  Did they know which doors to knock on?

  No, this bit about the code that the old bums had broke down. If it was still being used, they weren’t letting the newcomers know—the nouveau paupers.

  Sometimes you’d sleep in a field, if the weather was nice. One time in North Dakota, all I had to cover myself was a road map underneath me and a road map on top of me. I woke up in the morning, there was frost on the road map. It didn’t bother me, I slept. Now I’m paying the penalty. Arthritis.

  Kitty McCulloch

  “I’m seventy-one and I can still swim.”

  THERE WERE many beggars, who would come to your back door, and they would say they were hungry. I wouldn’t give them money because I didn’t have it. But I did take them in and put them in my kitchen and give them something to eat.

  This one man came in—it was right before Christmas. My husband had a very nice suit, tailored. It was a black suit with a fine white pin-stripe in it. He put it to one side. I thought he didn’t like the suit. I said to this man, “Your clothes are all ragged. I think I have a nice suit for you.” So I gave him this suit.

  The following Sunday my husband was to go to a wake. He said, “Where’s my good suit?” And I said, “Well, Daddy, you never wore it. I—well, it’s gone.” He said, “Where is it gone to?” I said, “I gave it to a
man who had such shabby clothes. Anyway, you got three other suits and he didn’t have any. So I gave it to him.” He said, “You’re the limit, Mother.”

  One elderly man that had white whiskers and all, he came to my back door. He was pretty much of a philosopher. He was just charming. A man probably in his sixties. And he did look like St. Nicholas, I’ll tell you that. I gave him a good, warm meal. He said, “Bring me a pencil and paper and I’ll draw you a picture.” So he sketched. And he was really good. He was an artist.

  (Laughing.) A man came to my door, and I could smell liquor a little. He said, “You don’t suppose you could have a couple of shirts you could give me, old shirts of your husband’s?” I said, “Oh, I’m so very sorry, my husband hasn’t anything but old shirts, really. That’s all he has right now and he wears those.” He said, “Lady, if I get some extra ones, I’ll come back and give them to you.” I said, “Go on, mind your own business.”

  And another one, I smelled liquor on his breath, too. He wanted to know if he could have a few pennies. I said, “Are you hungry?” He said, “I haven’t had any food. I’d like some money to buy some food.” I said, “I’ll make you a nice sandwich.” So I made him a sandwich with mayonnaise and chicken and lettuce, a double sandwich, put it in wax paper. He gave me a dirty look and he started down the alley. I watched him when he got, oh, two or three doors down, he threw it down the street.

  Dawn, Kitty’s Daughter

  I REMEMBER that our apartment was marked. They had a mark, an actual chalk mark or something. You could see these marks on the bricks near the back porch. One mark signified: You could get something at this apartment, buddy, but you can’t get anything up there. We’d be out in the alley playing, and we’d hear comments from people: “Here’s one.” They wouldn’t go to the neighbors upstairs, ’cause they didn’t give them anything. But ours was marked. They’d come out from Chicago and they’d hit our apartment, and they knew they’d get something. Whatever the mark meant, some of them were like an X. They’d say, “You can’t get money out of this place, but there’s food here anyway.” My mother was hospitable to people, it didn’t matter who they were.

  Louis Banks

  From a bed at a Veteran’s Hospital, he talks feverishly; the words pour out… .

  “My family had a little old farm, cotton, McGehee, Arkansas. I came to Chicago, I was a little bitty boy, I used to prize-fight. When the big boys got through, they put us on there.”

  I GOT TO BE fourteen years old, I went to work on the Great Lakes at $41.50 a month. I thought: Someday I’m gonna be a great chef. Rough times, though. It was the year 1929. I would work from five in the morning till seven at night. Washing dishes, peeling potatoes, carrying heavy garbage. We would get to Detroit.

  They was sleepin’ on the docks and be drunk. Next day he’d be dead. I’d see ’em floatin’ on the river where they would commit suicide because they didn’t have anything. White guys and colored.

  I’d get paid off, I’d draw $21 every two weeks and then comin’ back I’d have to see where I was goin’. ‘Cause I would get robbed. One fella named Scotty, he worked down there, he was firin’ a boiler. He was tryin’ to send some money home. He’d work so hard and sweat, the hot fire was cookin’ his stomach. I felt sorry for him. They killed ‘im and throwed ’im in the river, trying to get the $15 or $20 from him. They’d steal and kill each other for fifty cents.

  1929 was pretty hard. I hoboed, I bummed, I begged for a nickel to get somethin’ to eat. Go get a job, oh, at the foundry there. They didn’t hire me because I didn’t belong to the right kind of race. ’Nother time I went into Saginaw, it was two white fellas and myself made three. The fella there hired the two men and didn’t hire me. I was back out on the streets. That hurt me pretty bad, the race part.

  When I was hoboing, I would lay on the side of the tracks and wait until I could see the train comin’. I would always carry a bottle of water in my pocket and a piece of tape or rag to keep it from bustin’ and put a piece of bread in my pocket, so I wouldn’t starve on the way. I would ride all day and all night long in the hot sun.

  I’d ride atop a boxcar and went to Los Angeles, four days and four nights. The Santa Fe, we’d go all the way with Santa Fe. I was goin’ over the hump and I was so hungry and weak ’cause I was goin’ into the d.t.’s, and I could see snakes draggin’ through the smoke. I was sayin’, “Lord, help me, Oh Lord, help me,” until a white hobo named Callahan, he was a great big guy, looked like Jack Dempsey, and he got a scissors on me, took his legs and wrapped ’em around me. Otherwise, I was about to fall off the Flyer into a cornfield there. I was sick as a dog until I got into Long Beach, California.

  Black and white, it didn’t make any difference who you were, ’cause everybody was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle. We used to take a big pot and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together. We all set together, we made a tent. Twenty-five or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white and colored. They didn’t have no mothers or sisters, they didn’t have no home, they were dirty, they had overalls on, they didn’t have no food, they didn’t have anything.

  Sometimes we sent one hobo to walk, to see if there were any jobs open. He’d come back and say: Detroit, no jobs. He’d say: they’re hirin’ in New York City. So we went to New York City. Sometimes ten or fifteen of us would be on the train. And I’d hear one of ’em holler. He’d fall off, he’d get killed. He was tryin’ to get off the train, he thought he was gettin’ home there. He heard a sound. (Imitates train whistle, a low, long, mournful sound.)

  And then I saw a railroad police, a white police. They call him Texas Slim. He shoots you off all trains. We come out of Lima, Ohio … Lima Slim, he would kill you if he catch you on any train. Sheep train or any kind of merchandise train. He would shoot you off, he wouldn’t ask you to get off.

  I was in chain gangs and been in jail all over the country. I was in a chain gang in Georgia. I had to pick cotton for four months, for just hoboin’ on a train. Just for vag. They gave me thirty-five cents and a pair of overalls when I got out. Just took me off the train, the guard. 1930, during the Depression, in the summertime. Yes, sir, thirty-five cents, that’s what they gave me.

  I knocked on people’s doors. They’d say, “What do you want? I’ll call the police.” And they’d put you in jail for vag. They’d make you milk cows, thirty or ninety days. Up in Wisconsin, they’d do the same thing. Alabama, they’d do the same thing. California, anywhere you’d go. Always in jail, and I never did nothin’.

  A man had to be on the road. Had to leave his wife, had to leave his mother, leave his family just to try to get money to live on. But he think: my dear mother, tryin’ to send her money, worryin’ how she’s starvin’.

  The shame I was feeling. I walked out because I didn’t have a job. I said, “I’m goin’ out in the world and get me a job.” And God help me, I couldn’t get anything. I wouldn’t let them see me dirty and ragged and I hadn’t shaved. I wouldn’t send ’em no picture.

  I’d write: “Dear Mother, I’m doin’ wonderful and wish you’re all fine.” That was in Los Angeles and I was sleeping under some steps and there was some paper over me. This is the slum part, Negroes lived down there. And my ma, she’d say, “Oh, my son is in Los Angeles, he’s doin’ pretty fair.”

  And I was with a bunch of hoboes, drinkin’ canned heat. I wouldn’t eat two or three days, ’cause I was too sick to eat. It’s a wonder I didn’t die. But I believe in God.

  I went to the hospital there in Los Angeles. They said, “Where do you live?” I’d say, “Travelers Aid, please send me home.” Police says, “O.K., put him in jail.” I’d get ninety days for vag. When I was hoboing I was in jail two-thirds of the time. Instead of sayin’ five or ten days, they’d say sixty or ninety days. ’Cause that’s free labor. Pick the fruit or pick the cotton, then they’d turn you loose.

  I had fifteen or twenty jobs. Each job I would have it would be so hard. From six o‘clock in the morning t
ill seven o’clock at night. I was fixin’ the meat, cookin’, washin’ dishes and cleaning up. Just like you throwed the ball at one end and run down and catch it on the other. You’re jack of all trade, you’re doin’ it all. White chefs were gettin’ $40 a week, but I was gettin’ $21 for doin’ what they were doin’ and everything else. The poor people had it rough. The rich people was livin’ off the poor.

  ‘Cause I picked cotton down in Arkansas when I was a little bitty boy and I saw my dad, he was workin’ all day long. $2 is what one day the poor man would make. A piece of salt pork and a barrel of flour for us and that was McGehee, Arkansas.

  God knows, when he’d get that sack he would pick up maybe two, three hundred pounds of cotton a day, gettin’ snake bit and everything in that hot sun. And all he had was a little house and a tub to keep the water. ’Cause I went down there to see him in 1930. I got tired of hoboing and went down to see him and my daddy was all gray and didn’t have no bank account and no Blue Cross. He didn’t have nothin’, and he worked himself to death. (Weeps.) And the white man, he would drive a tractor in there… . It seems like yesterday to me, but it was 1930.

  ‘33 in Chicago they had the World’s Fair. A big hotel was hirin’ colored fellas as bellboys. The bellboys could make more money as a white boy for the next ten or fifteen years. I worked as a bellhop on the North Side at a hotel, lots of gangsters there. They don’t have no colored bellboys at no exclusive hotels now. I guess maybe in the small ones they may have some.

  Jobs were doing a little better after ‘35, after the World’s Fair. You could get dishwashin’ jobs, little porter jobs.

  Work on the WPA, earn $27.50. We just dig a ditch and cover it back up. You thought you was rich. You could buy a suit of clothes. Before that, you wanted money, you didn’t have any. No clothes for the kids. My little niece and my little kids had to have hand-down clothes. Couldn’t steal. If you did, you went to the penitentiary. You had to shoot pool, walk all night and all day, the best you could make was $15. I raised up all my kids during the Depression. Scuffled … a hard way to go.