Working

by Studs Terkel

  I still like the physicality, the sensuality of life. I still like to use my body. But the things I like now are more soft. I don’t want to beat people. I don’t want to prove anything. I have a friend who used to play pro football, but who shares my philosophy. We get into the country that is stark and cold and harsh, but there’s a great aesthetic feedback. It’s soft and comforting and sweet. We come out there with such enormous energy and so fit. We often go into town like a couple of fools and get mildly drunk and laugh a lot.

  Being a physical man in the modern world is becoming obsolete. The machines have taken the place of that. We work in offices, we fight rules and corporations, but we hardly ever hit anybody. Not that hitting anybody is a solution. But to survive in the world at one time, one had to stand up and fight—fight the weather, fight the land, or fight the rocks. I think there is a real desire for man to do that. Today he has evolved into being more passive, conforming . . .

  I think that is why the professional game, with its terrific physicality—men getting together on a cooperative basis—this is appealing to the middle-class man. He’s the one who supports professional sports.

  I think it’s a reflection of the North American way of life. This is one of the ways you are somebody—you beat somebody. (Laughs.) You’re better than they are. Somebody has to be less than you in order for you to be somebody. I don’t know if that’s right any more. I don’t have that drive any more. If I function hard, it’s against a hard environment. That’s preferable to knocking somebody down.

  I come up against a hard young stud now, and he wants the puck very badly, I’m inclined to give it to him. (Laughs.) When you start thinking like that you’re in trouble, as far as being a pro athlete is involved. But I don’t want to be anybody any more in those terms. I’ve had some money, I’ve had some big fat times, I’ve been on the stage.

  It’s been a good life. Maybe I could have done better, have a better record or something like that. But I’ve really had very few regrets over the past twenty years. I can enjoy some of the arts that I had shut myself off from as a kid. Perhaps that is my only regret. The passion for the game was so all-consuming when I was a kid that I blocked myself from music. I cut myself off from a certain broadness of experience. Maybe one has to do that to fully explore what they want to do the most passionately.

  I know a lot of pro athletes who have a capacity for a wider experience. But they wanted to become champions. They had to focus themselves on their one thing completely. His primary force when he becomes champion is his ego trip, his desire to excel, to be somebody special. To some degree, he must dehumanize himself. I look forward to a lower key way of living. But it must be physical. I’m sure I would die without it, become a drunk or something.

  I still like to skate. One day last year on a cold, clear, crisp afternoon, I saw this huge sheet of ice in the street. Goddamn, if I didn’t drive out there and put on my skates. I took off my camel-hair coat. I was just in a suit jacket, on my skates. And I flew. Nobody was there. I was free as a bird. I was really happy. That goes back to when I was a kid. I’ll do that until I die, I hope. Oh, I was free!

  The wind was blowing from the north. With the wind behind you, you’re in motion, you can wheel and dive and turn, you can lay yourself into impossible angles that you never could walking or running. You lay yourself at a forty-five degree angle, your elbows virtually touching the ice as you’re in a turn. Incredible! It’s beautiful! You’re breaking the bounds of gravity. I have a feeling this is the innate desire of man.

  (His eyes are glowing.) I haven’t kept many photographs of myself, but I found one where I’m in full flight. I’m leaning into a turn. You pick up the centrifugal forces and you lay in it. For a few seconds, like a gyroscope, they support you. I’m in full flight and my head is turned. I’m concentrating on something and I’m grinning. That’s the way I like to picture myself. I’m something else there. I’m on another level of existence, just being in pure motion. Going wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go. That’s nice, you know. (Laughs softly.)

  GEORGE ALLEN

  Head coach and general manager of the Washington Redskins. One word, if but one were chosen, describes him: intense. One aim, if but one were chosen, explains him: to win. An air of monasticism as well as industry pervades. He is Parsifal seeking the Holy Grail each Sunday afternoon of the season.

  We’re at the headquarters of the professional football team. It is an enclave in Virginia, some twenty-five miles outside Washington. It has the appearance of a successful industrial complex. Aside from blackboards, chalked with arcane diagrams, there are plaques on the walls of the offices bearing the recurring encomium: “. . . for the unselfish sacrifice while serving with outstanding leadership, vision, ability. . . .” Most striking are two silver discs under glass: it is the Fiftieth Anniversary American Legion Award for God and Country.

  The conference room, in which the frequently interrupted conversation took place (his secretary, besieged by callers, in person and on the telephone, beckoned him out every few minutes), has the feel of “clout.” The enormous table should be the envy of any board of directors. He appears harried by the pressures of the moment. Tomorrow the training camp opens in preparation for the forthcoming season.

  I took the job and walked out in the middle of this woods. I call it our Shangri-La. We’ve got everything we need here to win. And we’re going to improve it. We’re putting in a hundred yards of Astroturf, and they’re replacing the cinder track with a synthetic track, tartan. There will be no distractions.

  We’ve been working in the off-season as much as twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours a day. When the season begins, it’s seven days a week, morning, noon, and night. To get ready for football.

  I like to make notes at home and go over things. I take a pad and a pencil and carry it around with me all the time. I want to read, things that have to be done.

  Among the books in his office were The Encyclopedia of Football, Best Plays, several by himself, including Defense Drills, How to Train a Quarterback, The Complete Book of Winning Football Drills, as well as the Football Register, the Congressional Directory for the 92nd Congress, Outstanding Young Men in America, and What the Executive Should Know About the Accounting Statements.

  You have to put a priority on everything you do each day. If you don’t, you won’t finish it. If you enjoy your job, it isn’t work. It’s fun. If you detest going to work, then you’re looking for ways to beat the clock. I’d rather come to the Redskin Park and do my thing, so to speak, than I would play golf. Golf is a fine sport, but it’s too time-consuming. I don’t have that time schedule.

  When you get so engrossed in your job during the season it has to come ahead of your family. I’m fortunate that I have an understanding wife, who’s a good mother. My children have now kind of accepted that routine. They’ve been brought up with it and it’s just the way I am. It may be a mistake. It should be that your family and church come first. But I think that during the season there’s so much to be done. I am even working right up to the kickoff to figure out a way that we can still win.

  Everything we do is based on winning. I don’t care how hard you work or how well organized you are, if you don’t win, what good is it? It’s down the drain. You can have a tremendous game plan, but if you lose the game, what good was the plan?

  One of the greatest things is to be in a locker room after a win. And be with the players and coaches and realize what’s been accomplished, what you’ve gone through. The rewards are not necessarily tangible. It’s the hard work and the agony and the blood and sweat and tears.

  When you lose, it’s a morgue. That’s the way it should be, because you’ve failed. Once in a while you’ll see some tears. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying. I think it’s good, it’s emotional. I think when you put a lot of yourself into something it should take a lot out. Some people can lose and then go out and be the life of the party. I can’t. The only way you can get
over a loss is to win the next week.

  Grantland Rice, who was one of our great sports writers, said it didn’t matter if you won or lost, it was how you played the game. I disagree completely. The main thing is to win. That’s what the game is for. Just to go out and play and then say, “Well, I didn’t win but I played the game, I participated”—anybody can do that. You have to be number one, whether it’s football or selling insurance or anything.

  Most coaches aren’t too business-minded. I’m the general manager of the Redskins, so I have to be a little more aware of business than just a coach. I’m more interested in how we can get more income in, to use that to help us win. So we can spend more money. Anything you can learn on accounting or business is helpful. We’re an organization.

  Each player is part of a whole team. A football team is a lot like a machine. It’s made up of parts. I like to think of it as a Cadillac. A Cadillac’s a pretty good car. All the refined parts working together make the team. If one part doesn’t work, one player pulling against you and not doing his job, the whole machine fails.

  Nobody is indispensable. If he can’t play, we let him know that he’s not going to be with us. “Do you want to play somewhere else?” We try to improve and replace some of the parts every year.

  The only time you relax is when you win. If you lose, you don’t relax until you win. That’s the way I am. It’s a state of tension almost continuously.

  Allen’s Ten Commandments59

  1. Football comes first. “During the off-season, I tell my players that their family and church should come one, two, with football third. But during the six months of the season, the competition in the NFL is so tough that we have to put football ahead of everything else.”

  2. The greatest feeling in life is to take an ordinary job and accomplish something with it. . . .

  3. If you can accept defeat and open your pay envelope without feeling guilty, you’re stealing. “You’re stealing from your employer and from yourself. Winning is the only way to go. . . . Losers just look foolish in a new car or partying it up. As far as I’m concerned, life without victories is like being in prison.”

  4. Everyone, the head coach especially, must give 110 percent. . . . “The average good American pictures himself as a hard worker. But most persons are really operating at less than half-power. They never get above fifty percent. . . . Therefore, to get one hundred, you must aim for 110. A man who is concerned with an eight-hour day never works that long, and seldom works half that long. The same man, however, when challenged by a seventeen-hour day, will be just warmed up and driving when he hits the eighth hour. . . .

  5. Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night. “Nobody should work all the time. Everybody should have some leisure. . . . You can combine two good things at once, sleep and leisure.”

  6. No detail is too small. No task is too small or too big. “Winning can be defined as the science of being totally prepared. I define preparation in three words: leave nothing undone. . . . Nowadays there is . . . no difference between one team and another in the NFL. Usually the winner is going to be the team that’s better prepared. . . .”

  7. You must accomplish things in life, otherwise you are like the paper on the wall. “The achiever is the only individual who is truly alive. There can be no inner satisfaction in simply driving a fine car or eating in a fine restaurant or watching a good movie or television program. Those who think they’re enjoying themselves doing any of that are half-dead and don’t know it. . . .”

  8. A person with problems is dead. “Everybody has problems. The successful person solves his. He acknowledges them, works on them, and solves them. He is not disturbed when another day brings another kind of problem. . . . The winner . . . . solves his own problems. The man swayed by someone else is a two-time loser. First, he hasn’t believed in his own convictions and second, he is still lost.”

  9. We win and lose as a team . . . .

  10. My prayer is that each man will be allowed to play to the best of his ability.

  IN CHARGE

  WARD QUAAL

  We’re at Tribune Square, Chicago. We’re in the well-appointed office of the president of WGN-Continental Broadcasting Corporation—“the most powerful broadcast medium in the Midwest.” He has been battling a slight sinus condition, but his presence is, nonetheless, felt.

  “I’m responsible for all its broadcasting properties. We have radio and television here. We have a travel company here. We have a sales company here. We have the Continental Productions Company here. We have radio and television in Minnesota and translator systems in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Minnesota. We have cable television in Michigan and California. We have television in Denver. We have sales companies in New York and Tokyo. I operate sixteen different organizations in the United States and Japan.”

  My day starts between four thirty and five in the morning, at home in Winnetka. I dictate in my library until about seven thirty. Then I have breakfast. The driver gets there about eight ’ and oftentimes I continue dictating in the car on the way to the office. I go to the Broadcast Center in the morning and then to Tribune Square around noon. Of course, I do a lot of reading in the car.

  I talk into a dictaphone. I will probably have as many as 150 letters dictated by seven-thirty in the morning. I have five full-time secretaries, who do nothing but work for Ward Quaal. I have seven swing girls, who work for me part-time. This does not include my secretaries in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and San Francisco. They get dicta-belts from me every day. They also take telephone messages. My personal secretary doesn’t do any of that. She handles appointments and my trips. She tries to work out my schedule to fit these other secretaries.

  I get home around six-thirty, seven at night. After dinner with the family I spend a minimum of two and a half hours each night going over the mail and dictating. I should have a secretary at home just to handle the mail that comes there. I’m not talking about bills and personal notes, I’m talking about business mail only. Although I don’t go to the office on Saturday or Sunday, I do have mail brought out to my home for the weekend. I dictate on Saturday and Sunday. When I do this on holidays, like Christmas, New Year’s, and Thanksgiving, I have to sneak a little bit, so the family doesn’t know what I’m doing.

  Ours is a twenty-four-hour-a-day business. We’re not turning out three thousand gross of shoes, beans, or neckties. We’re turning out a new product every day, with new problems. It’s not unusual for me to get a phone call on a weekend: “What are your thoughts on it, Mr. Quaal? Would you speak out on it?” I’m not going to hide my posture on it. I’m going to answer that. This may mean going into the studio to make a recording. Or I may do a tape recording at home. Or maybe I’ll just make a statement. I am in a seven-day-a-week job and I love it!

  “I grew up in a very poor family. Not only did no one come to us for advice, we went to other people for advice. We wondered what we were going to do for the next dollar. We did manage during the Depression. But I know others who didn’t extricate themselves from these difficulties. I won’t forget them. A letter from one of those individuals asking for help is just as important to me as a suggestion from the chairman of the board of the Chase Manhattan Bank. They get the same weight. They get a personal letter from me. He didn’t write to my assistant, he didn’t write to my secretary. He wants to hear from Ward Quaal.”

  When I come to the Broadcast Center, I’ll probably have about five or six different stacks of mail. One stack is urgent and should be acted upon before I make any phone calls. Once I handle that, which usually takes about fifteen, twenty minutes, I start the important phone calls. In-between these phone calls and others of lesser importance, I get into the other mail. On a typical day we’ll get thirteen hundred pieces of first-class mail addressed to me personally. Every letter is answered within forty-eight hours —and not a form letter. There are no form letters. If they write to the president of the company, they don’t want
to hear from the third vice president. They hear from the president. Mail and the telephone, that’s the name of the game in this business.

  I imagine your phone calls are not long in nature?

  No, they’re not long in nature. I have this ability—I learned this when I was an announcer years ago, and we were feeding six networks out of here. I could listen to all these channels with earphones and I knew when to say the right cue at the right time. I can still do that.

  “In high school I wanted to be a good football player, a good basketball player, a good baseball player. I managed to be captain of every team on which I ever played. At the end of my freshman year my coach said, ‘There’s a shortage of people to do oratory and declamatory work.’ He said, ‘We’ve just simply got to have somebody with your voice. If you would do this, I would excuse you from football practice a couple of nights a week.’ I won the oratorical and declamatory championship for the state of Michigan. On the night of the finals in Ishpeming, which were broadcast, the chief engineer of a radio station, a Polish gentleman, called my mother and told her I’d be a network announcer someday.

  “I started working during my freshman year in high school as an announcer at WBEO in Marquette. I worked from 10:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. and got $17.50 a week. At the same time, I drove a commercial milk truck from four in the morning to eight, and I got $22-50 a week for that. The two jobs gave me money to go to the University of Michigan. I have great pride in my university. I was chairman of the Alumni Fund and its Development Council.