Well, you don’t always need many interviews to finish off a chapter. Sometimes you just need one. A long one. Frank Decker is your guy for that sort of thing. Frank Decker (Interstate Truckdriver) So this time Terkel has it as “truckdriver” but my web browser disagrees this is a word. It’s a nice(?) middle…
The Driving Booker Page (Cabdriver) Well, I hope you like hearing about the sea, because Page talks more about that instead of what his job is like. But don’t worry, the next interviewee will make up for it as they are also a cabdriver. Come to think of it, it originally surprised me that Terkel…
This time we’ve got a general foreman and a president of United Automobile Workers in Lordstown, Ohio. This is gonna be good. Wheeler Stanley (General Foreman) Stanley (no, not that one) is your stereotypical working man who loves his company and wants to do right by it. It doesn’t matter whether he disagrees or his…
Last week we started from the bottom and now we’re…here? This continuation of The Demon Lover (referring to those who work with cars) is more focused on the middle and upper echelon of the Ford factory we saw in the last part. Whereas Phil Stallings the spot-welder wanted to be a utility worker, this time…
I’ve had a pretty exhausting day for various reasons so I’m sticking to a smaller entry to kick of this section. There should be three sections in total and they will gain momentum in terms of length as we go on. The Making Phil Stallings (Spot-Welder) We start this section of Book Four with two…
Here we have an interesting mixture of jobs: a private investigator, a photographer and a film critic. What’s notable about this section is that despite however much you might think a photographer and a film critic may have to say, it’s the PI who spends around ten pages talking about his job, not the critic or…
Oh boy. This is going to be quite an entry. We’ve got two interviews with police officers. So that’s going to be a thing. But first, something a little more laid back. Fritz Ritter (Doorman) The doorman as an occupation is (surprisingly enough) still alive. I still see doormen (usually not women) in the front…
Maggie Holmes (Domestic) This time we don’t have the flurry of individuals we often have per section. The rest of the section is made up of two (relatively) lengthy interviews. Both are interesting in many ways and it starts with Holmes who is a person of color that mostly works cleaning folks homes. Her perspectives…
Nick Salerno (Garbage Man) Supposedly the lowest of the low is the garbage man. After all, what could be lower than literally basing your entire job (and much of your existence) around the things that people throw away? Although I’ve never seen these biases actually enunciated against folks who handle trash, I don’t doubt for…
Did You Ever Hear The One About The Farmer’s Daughter? Barbara Herrick (Writer/Producer) While the last chapter was mainly concerned with the struggle of women and (in my opinion) showed the need for for feminism, via stories from the airline industry, being a secretary and being a sex-worker, this chapter deals with the need for…