Jack’s Winning Words 9/14/07
“The pitcher cries for water to carry, and a person for work that is real.” (Marge Piercy) Marge was a Depression Baby born and raised in Detroit, in a home with strong union ties. Her writings generally have an edge to them. This particular quote shows the importance of work to a laboring family. I’d like to tell you about all the jobs I’ve had. For me, work has been a real satisfaction. How about you? ;-) Jack

FROM C.R., NOW IN MARYLAND: .....did I ever tell you about the garbage dump? It was a landfill in Baltimore , in Summer of 1957. I pushed garbage with a tractor and my folks could smell me returning from work from a block away. But I got a great tan and the following Fall when I returned to Gettysburg, the girls thought that I was a lifeguard. That was a good dating year.

STUDS TERKEL SAID IT: "Americans get up and go to work each day every bit as much for daily meaning as for daily bread."

FROM S.H. IN MICHIGAN: Work has been a real satisfaction to me too. Your Winning Words today and the connection to union ties makes me think of a couple of things. Namely how proud I am of my own parents. Tomorrow night I will be attending a Sojourners meeting, a small group of people who discuss topics relating to faith and justice. Our subject this time will be on immigration. I intend to share that there is concern for the immigrants and how fearful their lives are beginning to be, constantly looking over their shoulders, etc. But also I think I will share that there needs to be care and concern for a whole group of workers that are most impacted by these incoming workers; namely the people who have less education and are also losing their livelihoods too. My dad worked for Oscar Meyers in Perry, Iowa, a meat packing plant. He had only a tenth grade education but he did very well there until the Mexicans moved in and the union was broken. My dad took an early buyout and his work was gone. I didn't live at home at the time but I wonder now at possibly how that taking away of his job might have felt powerless. Something he did for so many years now going to Mexican workers at a very reduced salary. Earlier in our country wasn't there a big Catholic Workers Organization or something, working to unionize men and women so they wouldn't be exploited by their bosses? However, my dad worked all this out in his mind, maybe he did feel a sense of self-giving in enabling an immigrant to now have a job and support his own family. Maybe my dad actually was sacrificial in his act. If a whole class of lesser educated people are now sacrificial in the whole bigger scheme of things, I only hope and pray that the classes on up the line also make their own sacrifices. The other person I'm proud of is my mom. She mothered 7 of us kids and earlier without running water or an indoor toilet. In her 40''s she started getting arthritis real bad. At one point, because she was disabled, she went to the Social Security office to see if she could get disability. They told her she couldn't get disability because she had never worked. My parents are both dead now and finally when the last one of them died we discovered that there was enough to cover the funeral and about $400 for each of us kids. I'm also proud of that--they could easily go through the eye of a needle. They lived very, very, very good lives. And they both had work that was real. I learned a lot from them about work.

FROM M.N. IN MINNESOTA: My jobs were rather mundane compared to his. I was a nurses aid at Midway Hospital for a summer in college years. I did some summer recreation in Warren a couple of summers too. Not too exciting.