WATERFRONT WORKING
This Old Joe built a bunch of step stools at the shop. And he built them good and strong. The
only thing, he made the first step about four inches too long and without expending the base a
likewise distance—so if you stepped on it full-footed, you was ok, but if you came down with
the ball of the foot, you was hurting; the damned thing got you shin bone every time.
So, Walt Potter, he’s the Forman, he used to be a big old wrestler and he’s still big, only now all
he does is run them gray hounds of his—he says “Russ” he says, “go cut four inches off the first
step of them damn stools.” So, I walked all over that ship cutting four inches off them damned
stools.
And I was cutting four inches off this one damned stool and his here young electrician speaks
up real loud-like so you can hear him three decks fore and aft anyway. I didn’t see as he
needed to speak that loud. He says, “Whoever it was built these damned stools ought to have
his head examined.” (I figured he’d got one on the shin.) “By God,” he says, “that guy ought to
have his head examined.” And he says it a few more times just to be sure we all heard him.
And we sure did.
So, I speaks up a little and I guess he heard me, too, on account of most of the other guys did. I
days, “We examined him. We examined him real good, and then we examined him all over
again. He’s never going to make a shipwright. They’re going to make him an electrician out of
him.”
Him and me never did have anymore conversations on that boat.
You know, you work with a lot of guys on them boats. They call them ships and laugh at me
with I say boats. And so, I says to them, “What’s a ship:” And they says, “it’s a big boat.”
So, I work with a lot of guys on them big boats. Fitters and burners and layoutmen and welders
and riggers and asbestosmen and machinists and pipefitters and painters and laborers and
maybe I missed a few—sometimes a couple hundred on a boat.
And some of them you get to know real well. You get to know if they’re tip craftsmen or just
along for the job and the paycheck, and if they’re good drinking men and who’ll stand up for
the Union. Some of them you get to know real well in the three, four months you work with
them on a big boat. And so some of these guys you get to be real good friends with.
But some of them you never get to know real well. You just kind of casually get thrown in with
them as the work goes along. Account of you don’t know them very good, it’s kind of hard to
strike up a conversation and I guess they got the same problem. They’ll start out a
conversation by saying, “Well, I guess it won’t rain today after all.” I used to get real sick
hearing about that rain we didn’t get after all or got too much of. So, I got so I kind of beat
them to the punch. When a couple of them would get thrown together-like, I’d furrow up by
brow and look them over and I’d say, “Think you’ll amount to much?”
And he’d say, Hell no, not down here!” Or “Naw, I give up.” One guy says “Man I ‘m six-foot-two
already! And he wasn’t thirty yet. Most of them says something like “Too late now.” I only run
into three that ever thought they’d amount to very much. And a couple of them you could see
wasn’t any too smart.
This one young guy, I broke it on him this one morning. He looks me up and down for a minute
or so and then he looks me down and up real god-like. “Well,” he says, “You never did.” And
he walks on down the gang plank. I didn’t like the looks of that guy in the first place.
We generally get to work a little early, so we got time to sit around and drink a cup of black and
shoot some bull and a few old dried-up cows. You know what about: hunting and fishing and
what happened while downing a couple at the town pump or what dogs was in the quinella and
naturally, there is some little talk about women.
Being’s I don’t hunt, and I don’t fish, and I don’t stop for a drink, and I don’t bet on the rabbit-
chasers and there ain’t nobody want to talk about women all the time, I got to angle the
conversation round to something I’m interested in. And that’s politics.
I’m sitting here this morning alongside this old German fellow that I ain’t talked to too much
before and I’m telling him there’s a lot of things wrong with this here country that we better
get busy fixing up while there’s still time. And he’s nodding his head and agreeing with me.
“Yes sir,” he days, “and the main thing’s wrong is these Niggers and these Goddamned Jews.
When we get rid of them things is bound to get better.”
“There’s just people,” I says, “good and bad, just like you and me.”
“By God,” he says, “them Jews own half of America, and the Niggers is trying to get the rest.
Look at the clothing industry, look at that Jew Rubenstein,” he says, “and everybody he’s got
slaving for him.”
“Yeah,” I says, look at the people that’s working for him. Plenty of them’s Jews, and they’re
damned good Union people. And they’ve stopped a lot of that slave driving.”
“By Christ, “he says, “wake up man, bad as them Jews is, them Niggers is worse. Look at all
them Martin Luther King’s got marching all over hell. Them black bastard’s going to take over
the government!”
“Listen,” I says, “they’re just people…”
“People!” he says way louder. “How’d you like to have you sister married to a Nigger?” he says,
“what if your own sister married a Goddamned Nigger?”
“Well, “I says quiet-like and reasonable-like because I’m naturally a quiet, reasonable guy,
“Well,” I says, “she’s already got her one husband and she’s a sixty-one so as I doubt she’s
interested in changing. But if she, should it’s her own business.”
“By Christ,” he says, (I think he likes saying, “By Christ”) “By Christ,” he says, “if my daughter
married a Nigger, I’d kill her! I’d break her stupid neck!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I says, “any time you got a chance to improve the blood, you should go for
it.”
And I got up real quick and stepped behind this big old Walt Potter and another big shipwright
he’s jawing with. It sure surprised them when the roof went off straight over their heads.
I was real careful I didn’t work too close to that guy for a couple of days.