by Studs Terkel
I work on a yearly retainer with a corporation. I spend, oh, two, three days a month in various corporate structures. The key executives can talk to me and bounce things off me. The president may have a specific problem that I will investigate and come back to him with my ideas. The reason I came into this work is that all my corporate life I was looking for somebody like me, somebody who’s been there. Because there’s no new problems in business today. There’s just a different name for different problems that have been going on for years and years and years. Nobody’s come up yet with a problem that isn’t familiar. I’ve been there.
Example. The chief executive isn’t happy with the marketing structure. He raises many questions which I may not know specifically. I’ll find out, and come back with a proposal. He might be thinking of promoting one of his executives. It’s narrowed down to two or three. Let’s say two young guys who’ve been moved to a new city. It’s a tossup. I notice one has bought a new house, invested heavily in it. The other rented. I’d recommend the second. He’s more realistic.
If he comes before his board of directors, there’s always the vise. The poor sonofabitch is caught in the squeeze from the people below and the people above. When he comes to the board, he’s got to come with a firm hand. I can help him because I’m completely objective. I’m out of the jungle. I don’t have the trauma that I used to have when I had to fire somebody. What is it gonna do to this guy? I can give it to him cold and hard and logical. I’m not involved.
I left that world because suddenly the power and the status were empty. I’d been there, and when I got there it was nothing. Suddenly you have a feeling of little boys playing at business. Suddenly you have a feeling—so what? It started to happen to me, this feeling, oh, in ’67, ’68. So when the corporation was sold, my share of the sale was such . . . I didn’t have to go back into the jungle. I don’t have to fight to the top. I’ve been to the mountain top. (Laughs.) It isn’t worth it.
It was very difficult, the transition of retiring from the status position, where there’s people on the phone all day trying to talk to you. Suddenly nobody calls you. This is a psychological . . . (Halts, a long pause.) I don’t want to get into that. Why didn’t I retire completely? I really don’t know. In the last four, five years, people have come to me with tempting offers. Suddenly I realized what I’m doing is much more fun than going into that jungle again. So I turned them down.
I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give back the knowledge I gained in corporate life. People have always told me I’d always been a great sales manager. In every sales group you always have two or three young men with stars in their eyes. They always sat at the edge of the chair. I knew they were comers. I always felt I could take ‘em, develop ’em, and build ’em. A lot of old fogies like me—I can point out this guy, that guy who worked for me, and now he’s the head of this, the head of that.
Yeah, I always wanted to teach. But I had no formal education and no university would touch me. I was willing to teach for nothing. But there also, they have their jungle. They don’t want a businessman. They only want people in the academic world, who have a formalized and, I think, empty training. This is what I’d really like to do. I’d like to get involved with the young people and give my knowledge to them before it’s buried with me. Not that what I have is so great, but there’s a certain understanding, a certain feeling . . .
MA AND PA COURAGE
During the Thirty Years’ War, Anna Fierling, known as “Mother Courage,” survives as a small entrepeneur, following the army. She sells beer, shoes, and sundries to the soldiers. She speaks:
“If there is too much virtue somewhere, it is a sure sign that there is something wrong. Why, if a general or a king is stupid and lands his people in a mess, they need desperate courage, a virtue. And if he is slovenly and pays no attention, they must be as clever as snakes, or else they are done for.”
—Bertolt Brecht,
Mother Courage and Her Children
GEORGE AND IRENE BREWER
It is a grocery and gift store. “We got a sign out front: 10,000 items. We got all your cigarettes, ice creams, novelties. All your paints, crayons, school supplies. Drugs—not prescription, just your headache—remedies, alcohols, peroxide, and your bandages. Then we go into jewelry, which is now just costume. Before, we used to have diamonds. But the clientele didn’t care for ‘em. We have sundry, your hair goods, your sewing things, needles, threads, and buttons. Greeting cards . . . Ma, pa stores are foldin’ fast because they don’t have enough variety. Like chain stores, where they can get everything and anything they want.
“We started out toys and hobbies. Then I put milk in. I said, ‘Honey, that’s gonna be the ruin of us. We’re gonna become a slave to it.’ Then they started hollerin’ for bread. Then they wanted lunch meat. Then they wanted canned goods. So it became the old country general store.”
They have owned the business for fourteen years. “Before that,” says George, “my folks had it since 1943.” He has since expanded it. We’re in the living quarters behind the store: five rooms, including one for “meditation.” There are all manner of appliances and artifacts including a player piano. To the rear is a two-car garage.
Their fourteen-year-old daughter is minding the store. Their eldest daughter, twenty-one, lives elsewhere. Their son, nineteen, has been in the army three years. A dog, “mixed terrier,” wanders in and out.
It is one of the oldest blue-collar communities in Chicago: Back Of The Yards. Though the stockyards have gone—to such unlikely places as Greeley, Colorado, and Clovis, New Mexico—the people who live here are still working-class. But there have been changes. “This used to be an old-time Polish, Lithuanian neighborhood. Now it’s more young, mixed, Puerto Ricans, hillbillies. Blacks are movin’ closer, nothing here yet, but closer. It’s not as clannish as it used to be. In the old days if you offended one, you’d have the whole block mad at you. Now it don’t matter. The next will come in and take the place of him.”
IRENE: We used to know ninety-five percent of our customers by name. Now it’s hardly anyone we know by name any more. You could walk down the street at six in the morning and you’d see these Polish women out with their brooms and they’d be washin’ the concrete down, fixin’ the alleys. You don’t see too much of this any more.
GEORGE: The personal touch. “How’s the kids?” “How’s this one?” “How’s that one?” “Work goin’ okay?” “Sorry to hear you lost your job.” All this sort of thing—gone.
It’s more of a transient deal, even though they live in the neighborhood. They’re so flighty you don’t know who’s livin’ where. You can’t even trust somebody who’s come in for six months, because they just up and turn that fast. We would cash checks and give ’em credit and carry ‘em along. As the area changed, you’d get stuck with bad debts. So we’ve eliminated cashin’ checks due to the fact that we have thirteen hundred dollars worth of bad checks. We allow a little bit of credit to old stand-bys for about a week.
IRENE: If we take a chance and cash a check that does bounce, we find ‘em walkin’ on the other side of the street. They don’t want to acknowledge they’re in the neighborhood—for a measly five dollars. The people, they’ve changed in such a way it’s unbelievable. We had magazines and books, but we took ’em out two years ago because the theft was so bad.
GEORGE: We had thirteen hundred dollars of books stolen in the last three months of the last year we handled books. A lot of cases with food. Women would open their purse and drop lunch meat in it. I caught a guy one evening puttin’ two dozen eggs in his Eisenhower jacket.
IRENE: I was standin’ at the bread rack there. I see this guy tryin’ to stuff the second dozen eggs down his jacket, with a zipper and to the waistline. (Laughs.) He was havin’ a tough time gettin’ that second dozen in. I said,
“Hey, hon, some guy’s stealin’ two dozen eggs back here.” George’s runnin’ around and all the other customers are lookin’ at on
e another. No one knows who’s got the eggs.
GEORGE: I’m runnin’ around one way and he’s comin’ around the other. I said, “Where is he?” He said, “Here I am.” (Laughs.) He gave ’em back. The customers would come in and tease and say to Irene, “Hey, you want to search? I got eggs.” (Laughs.)
IRENE: Nylons were stolen. Now we’ll lock the door after eleven and only let the ones we know in. Forget it, there isn’t many that you know any more. We were always open to midnight, all through the years. We used to work in the store to two, three in the morning and leave the door open. Now we can’t wait to bolt the door at night, it’s so bad. I take a chance when I open it. It’s hard to tell any more by looks who’s all right and who isn’t. Some of ‘em are the worst lookin’ people but they’re really all right when you get talkin’ to ’em.
GEORGE: The worst lookin’ hippie things that come in the door are so polite and some of ’em, the ones that are very well dressed, are so ignorant. When the folks had this store, it was all family. This is not too much a ma and pa area any more. The ones that are left close at six. They’re scared to death.
IRENE: We’ve had several holdups. It was around eleven-fifteen at night, three young people came with ski masks over their face. Two guys and a girl.
GEORGE: I’m checkin’ out and they put the gun to the side of my head. I said, “Aw, go to hell.” I thought it was the kids in the neighborhood horsin’ around. I look up—they backed us around the jewelry counter. The front part was more expensive stuff, high-class, diamonds, gold rings. They scooped off the cheap costume jewelry off the back shelf. I said, “Damn it, leave me somethin’ for the next time you come in.” They said, “Okay, okay,” and they backed off. (Laughs.) We’ve had several holdups since then. I don’t worry too much about it.
IRENE: When Martin Luther King was killed, you can imagine the tension. I was alone here. People were panicky. They were announcing on the radio and television that people should be off the street at eight o‘clock at night. The stores were forced to close. Our youngest was nine and was instigator of our selling a lot of food that night. She would say, “We may not be here tomorrow because there’ll be a riot tonight and they might come in the neighborhood. You better get all you can get. Stock up now.” She was half-hysterical and she put the fear in everyone else. They cleaned out the refrigerators, all the food. I couldn’t ring it up fast enough. The police came by three times tellin’ me to close the store. We really made a haul that night.
When she was three years old she’d come out in the store. We had girlie books on the rack. The guy would stand there lookin’ at Playboy. She’d come up behind him on a ladder and hold a crucifix in front of him. That was too much for him. He had to fold the book. (Laughs.)
GEORGE: We used to open at six in the morning. One day, one mother come in hollerin’ I shouldn’t sell Johnny penny candy on the way to school. Next day, another mother come: Susie shouldn’t have bubble gum because she’s got fillin’ in her teeth. Another come. So I says, “Listen, I’m not gettin’ fringe benefits of bein’ married to you. If you can’t handle your children—I’ m doin’ this for your convenience so you can get things for your breakfast. I won’t open till they’re in school.” So now I don’t open till around ten-thirty.
There usually isn’t that much sleep. We used to average two, three hours. That went on for ten years that way. Now we get on an average of four hours. Sometimes you have time to eat breakfast. In the morning I mop the floors, haul fifteen twenty cases of soda from the basement, throw it in the cooler. For the first three hours you have your variety of salesmen, your bread men and your milkmen. You might open with a $200 bank in the morning. By two in the afternoon, you’ve paid out $197 and taken in $6. Then your evening trade starts. We switch hours between meals. I wouldn’t say we’re tired at the end of the day, we just drop. (Laughs.)
Seven days a week. Sundays we’re open from 7:00 to 10:00 A.M., close to go to church, have dinner, and reopen at four to midnight. We started goin’ out for dinner because they would come to the window (mimics high-pitched voice): “I gotta have a greeting card.” “I need a quart of milk.” We couldn’t eat our dinner in peace.
IRENE: Some people think ownin’ a store is real easy. All you have to do is stand there and sell it. They say, “What’s your old man doin’, sleepin’?” He hardly ever sleeps. Movin’ all the stock, the refrigerator’s blocked up, cleanin’ all those drains, he hauls all the groceries home, cuts up boxes, moving all the time.
GEORGE: I usually say to her, “Hi, good-by.” That’s the extent of our conversation.
IRENE: After twelve ’ we unwind for an hour, but we’re so exhausted we fall asleep. It’s always been a rough life, but we’ve made a decent living out of it and raised three children and have never gone without.
“Our boy was almost the ruination of us. He supplied the whole neighborhood with everything and anything they wanted. He could never say no. The kids pressured him: ‘You get me that or we’ll beat you up.’ He was haulin’ the soda out as fast as we could bring it in. We almost went bankrupt with the boy. When he was in his first year high school he had nothin’ on his mind but army. So when he reached the age we signed papers for him.”
GEORGE: Chain stores don’t bother me. People gotta have a place where they can run for a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, or somethin’ for a snack, a pint of ice cream or a bottle of soda. Instead of goin’ in the chain store and standing in line. The cold indifference. They still get the personal touch here, the chatter back and forth, the gossip and the laughter.
IRENE: George and I like to kid with the customers. He horses around with the women and flatters them, no matter what they look like. I’ll kid the guys.
GEORGE: A new customer come in, she got shocked. I said, “Still love me like you never did?” She said, “I beg your pardon. I love only my husband.” (Laughs.) We have a standard joke. People come in and buy a box of Kotex, we’d say, “Use it here or take it with you?” They’d get all shook up. (Laughs.)
IRENE: Prophylactics, there’s another joke. A man would come in at night and say, “Is your husband here?” I’d just know, and they’d turn so red, like a woman askin’ a man for Kotex.
What I notice is a big change in the people’s attitudes. They come in and they may look grouchy. I’d say, “Hi, how are you?” They used to answer, “Hi.” Now they look at you like I’m nuts. They think you’re crazy because you say hello to them. It’s more like a big city now than a small neighborhood. Peopie are kind of cold.
Years ago, every Halloween we’d give about five hundred dollars worth of toys away. We’d have several hundred kids out front. We would drop balloons from the upstairs windows with tickets in ‘em. They would turn the tickets in and get prizes. When the neighborhood changed, the parents would start grabbin’ the balloons and steppin’ on the kids. So we just cut it out.
GEORGE: Actually, this is a gold mine. We’re on the main drag. People on this side of the street don’t want to send the children on the other side. Your main trade here is all the little darlings who want “one of dem, one of dese, one of dose.” Penny candy. They come in, three cents, and it takes them twenty minutes to make up their minds.
IRENE: They say, “How do you have the patience to stand and wait on those kids?” It’s really difficult, but if you allow yourself to get uptight, you look bad in front of your customers. So we just shrug our shoulders.
We’ve seen people now that are married and divorced who were in grammar school when we came in, have got two and three children. They were miserable little kids and George taught most of ‘em manners. They’d come in: “Gimme change for a dollar.” He’d teach ’em to say, “Could I please have change for a dollar?” Some of ’em, you wonder where the teachings are at home.
GEORGE: One of the things in a ma, pa store you have to put up with—mothers use it as a baby sitter. It’s much easier for a mother to give the child a penny and go to the store. It takes a kid ten min
utes to walk to the store, ten minutes in the store, and ten minutes back. Mom says, “You’re a good boy, here’s another penny.” So for two cents an hour they got a baby sitter. In the course of the day you’ll have the same monster in eight, ten times a day. A penny at a time.
IRENE: It’s unbelievable what we go through. All through the years we’ve had all sorts of telephone calls during the night. Not so much any more, because we don’t have our name in the book like we used to. We had so many goofy calls. They call and ask if we have Prince Albert and I say yes and they’d say, “Let the poor guy out of the can.” Those kind of jokes. Oh, a lot of people will stand around waitin’ for papers and they talk about bingo and they complain about the blacks who take all their parking areas. We have to hear all that.
