Working. Part 40

There's all kinds of problems in retiring. The inflation makes it difficult for a man to retire because the money he gets is wiped out and the number of years he has to be in a union in order to acquire a pension is such that he never reaches it. Most of my friends died on the verge of getting pensions. I have pictures of when I was a truckdriver. There's eight guys in the picture. Me and one other fellow are left. All the rest are dead. So retirement for the average man is pretty rough. He feels he's finished and even then he can't be finished because he hasn't got the means to live on, or has to depend on his family. And he doesn't want that.

He recounts past jobs, more than a half-century's worth, with the detail and in the manner of a Leporello cataloguing the amorous adventures of Don Giovanni: "I was an errand boy, I drove horses, I drove automobiles, small ones, and I drove trailers and trucks about twenty-five years. I worked as a seaman, I was on ships and fired below as fireman. I worked as a longsh.o.r.eman, loaded coffee on ships, workin' for the Panama Pacific and Morgan Line and the various Cunard lines. I drove a winch on a ship. For a while I was a sailor on deck. I worked as a rigger. I worked as a bricklayer's helper. I worked cutting trees down, cleaning roads to put up telephone poles. I guess I done most every kind of work."

There's not the same fraternalism today. There was a pride. A fireman on a ship, he took a certain pride. Then, he was a truckdriver amongst truckdrivers. 99 He was proud of being a truckdriver, he wasn't ashamed. Today it's impersonal.

Oh, there was a certain amount of adventure to it. In 1933 I drove a trailer from New York to Pittsburgh. They didn't have the roads they have today and the lights. You went over the Alleghany Mountains, you didn't go through short cuts. You arrived at places where drivers always met. These roadhouses had logs and the driver would jot down who he was and where he came from. They would meet in Pittsburgh at four, five in the morning in a bar, and they had a party. Everybody got charged up and went to bed and then went back to work again. Everybody seemed to know each other.

He re-creates the conditions at sea before the birth of the National Maritime Union: eight men in a room, no doctor aboard, tensions, fights . . . As for the longsh.o.r.eman's lot, it was purgatory ash.o.r.e: the shouldering of two-hundred-pound bags from one end of the dock to the other, hour after hour . . . "The only break was if you went to take a c.r.a.p or five minutes to steal off a smoke." At six dollars a day, "It was during the Depression and you were glad to get it. When the ship was loaded, you wasn't workin' no more-till you caught the next ship. You drove a taxi all day and came home with a quarter. I don't leave you untouched. That's a physical grind. If you don't think sittin' in a chair and bitin' your nails to the elbows wasn't physical . . ." (Laughs.) Operatin' a freight elevator doesn't take too much imagination. Plenty opportunity to think. You think maybe I shoulda did this or I shoulda did that. But ah, what the h.e.l.l, you don't worry too much. After all, I recognize my limitations. Ninety percent of the freight elevators is automatic today. That's the thing that's going down with the gandy dancer. He's gone too.

You have all kinds of problems, especially with the disgruntled. If the elevator isn't there fast enough . . . there's speed-up in everything. A truckdriver comes, he's got a load, he wants to get rid of it, right? He's in a hurry. You have to have a certain amount of patience to understand his problem. It's not easy to be an elevator operator, because you get all kinds of abuse unless you understand why the other guy's upset. He understands that you know it, then you become friends.

The boss gives the guy a bad time. He says, "Where the h.e.l.l are ya hangin' out?" Jesus Christ, the guy's sittin' there, he's givin' me a call, "Why the h.e.l.l don't you hurry up?" He says to his boss, "I had to wait for the elevator." Then the elevator man becomes the guy who you can blame all your problems on. That's the way it is.

Each boss on each floor-say I have twelve floors-seems to feel he's the guy that pays the elevator's wages. If there's no heat in the buildin', he gets the elevator man, "Where the h.e.l.l's the heat?" Or the water or the lights go out or the hallway gets dirty. He says, "Where the h.e.l.l is the elevator? The hallway's got no lights, my workers are gonna fall down." He's worried about his workers only so far as it affects his production, where his profits are involved. The elevator man, you're young, you can be more demanding. But as you get older, it's not so easy to be as demanding. Once you get white it's not so easy to walk around and say you want a job. Soon as the snow gets on top of your head you ain't wanted no more.

The elevator man is usually older, he's on his way down. But he can out-survive the truckdriver. Because the truckdriver at forty, his kidneys are beginning to kick up or he's got his whole prostate gland giving him a bad time. Forty, forty-five, many of them I know, they begin to get ulcers because of the pressures-the traffic cop, the lights, the speed-up . . .

Of course, there's humiliations with the elevator man. There's no measure of intelligence. It's a simple job and you gotta survive. Now there's limitations . . . Don't think the elevator man just takes s.h.i.t. He's as abusive as the next guy. He got the chip there too. He knows the guy's comin' in and the guy's gonna holler at him and he's gonna holler back at the guy, right? What the h.e.l.l, n.o.body's mad, really. They call each other names, but that doesn't mean nothin'. If you didn't have that, you'd really blow, you're finished.

Every worker looks down at the other. Let's say he's a guy who's on top of the skysc.r.a.per and he's tossin' these things and he's walkin' out on the beam: I'm number one. Here, boy. I'm makin' the biggest buildin'. He's proud, right? The truckdriver that drives the big trailer in and out and backs it into . . . he's got a certain pride. And he looks down. Now the guy who sweeps the floor in one of the shops, the elevator man can look over him, he's a little bit lower. (Laughs.) Each one has their guy . . . But what pride is there in lookin' down?

The guy that opens the door, could he have pride? Even the elevator man has pride. But the guy that opens the door for the rich man and holds the umbrella on his head, it's a little more harder for him to take pride in it.

You have to understand the worker in this society. This is a society of profit, right? But in the socialist society the elevator man could be an honored person, too, just the same as the highest person. Because they don't get there unless the elevator man lets them up . . .

I believe socialism is gonna be the future. I believed that fifty years ago and I believe that today. I never lost my doubts which way the human race is gonna go. The capitalists are puttin' together cars, it's socialized, the production. But the means of returns are not socialized. It goes into a few, but it's produced by the many. You see the results in the workers around you. Some of 'em are broken at thirty, at forty, some of 'em at fifty.

If you could live your life over . . . ?

It's been so busy I've never really thought, Oh, I'd love to be this. But I never dreamt of being boss. I tried to influence the drivers to get better conditions for themselves. I partic.i.p.ated as one of the leaders of the two biggest teamster strikes in the history of New York-1938 and 1947. In '38 we tied up the entire city of New York. We won conditions for the drivers, but I never enjoyed those conditions. Immediately following I was never able to get a job any more.100 That's the way it went, but I don't regret it. I'm proud of the fact that the drivers got those things. I don't begrudge 'em. I wish they'd got 'em sooner, that's all.

Only a few of 'em enjoy it. That's the sad part of it. It's the same in medicine, same in everything. The wealthy, the ruling crowds, they enjoy all the things that workers produce. They're greedy, they're just like animals. I've seen dogs that they have just filled themselves and they couldn't eat another bite, but they would not tolerate another animal comin' near the food. The human animals, too, some of 'em are the same. No matter how much they have, they wouldn't part with any of it and they wouldn't let n.o.body else get it if they could help it.

I'm proud of my sons. They have principles and they have courage. We mustn't put a stigma around a uniform. A postman delivers mail, and he can be a very kindly man and you have lots of respect for him. So why shouldn't we respect a policeman or a fireman? But he must be the kind of man that justifies the respect of the people, that's all.

POSTSCRIPT: "I have a piece of land in New Jersey and now my boys are building their places on it for their children. I run up there on Friday and get the place tidied up. I like farmin'. I like to grow it and I like to eat it better. (Laughs.) When you get your corn, you never taste corn like that in the store. And you have your big red tomatoes come in and cabbage, and make sauerkraut. In the fall you can tomatoes and you can string beans and you make grape jelly and blackberry jelly. Now I put a pond in and I had fish put in, and now wild birds come, and ducks and geese and swans and pheasant and all that. Deer come down and they drink out of the pond . . .

"Oh yeah, I work like h.e.l.l on that. I work harder than I work on my elevator. Of course, you take pride. I go around to the fairs and I make comparisons of my vegetables with the others. I feel mine are just as good. Oh, I love it. I would have liked that-if I had been a boy. But I was city-bred. The children and the grandchildren are going up there and we have a h.e.l.l of a good time." (Laughs.) BOB PATRICK.

Harold's son. He is thirty-three, married, and has a child. He has been a member of the city police force for six years. For the past three years he has been an emergency service patrolman.

"Emergency service is like a rescue squad. You respond to any call, any incident: a man under a train, trapped in an auto, bridge jumpers, psychos, guys that murdered people and barricaded themselves in. We go in and get these people out. It is sometimes a little too exciting. I felt like I wasn't gonna come home on two incidents."

He finished among the highest in his cla.s.s at the police academy, though he was "eleven years out of high school." Most of his colleagues were twenty-one, twenty-two. "I always wanted to be with the city. I felt that was the best job in the world. If I wasn't a cop, see, I don't think I could be anything else. Oh, maybe a truckdriver."

I got a.s.signed to foot patrolman in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I never knew where Bedford-Stuyvesant was. I heard it was a low, poverty-stricken area, and it was a name that people feared. It's black. Something like Harlem, even worse. Harlem was where colored people actually grew up. But Bedford-Stuyvesant is where colored people migrated from Harlem or from North Carolina. They were a tougher cla.s.s of people.

Myself and two friends from the neighborhood went there. We packed a lunch because we never really ventured outside the neighborhood. We met that morning about six '. We had to be in roll call by eight. We got there a quarter after six. We couldn't believe it was so close. We laughed like h.e.l.l because this is our neighborhood, more or less. We were like on the outskirts of our precinct. It was only ten minutes from my house.

When we got our orders, everybody said, "Oh wow, forget it." One guy thought he was going there, we had to chase him up three stories to tell him we're only kidding. He was ready to turn in his badge. Great fear, that was a danger area.

I was scared. Most people at Bedford-Stuyvesant were unemployed, mostly welfare, and they more or less didn't care too much for the police. The tour I feared most was four to twelve on a Friday or Sat.u.r.day night. I'm not a drinker, I never drank, but I'd stop off at a bar over here and have a few beers just to get keyed up enough to put up with the problems we knew we were gonna come up against.

I would argue face to face with these people that I knew had their problems, too. But it's hard to use selective enforcement with 'em. Then get off at midnight and still feel nervous about it. And go for another few drinks and go home and I'd fall right to sleep. Two or three beers and I would calm down and feel like a husband again with the family at home.

I rode with a colored guy quite a few times. They would put you in a radio car and you'd be working with an old-timer. One of the calls we went on was a baby in convulsions, stopped breathing. The elevator was out of order and we ran up eight flights of stairs. This was a colored baby. It was blue. I had taken the baby from the aunt and my partner and I rushed down the stairs with the mother. In the radio car I gave the baby mouth to mouth resuscitation. The baby had regurgitated and started breathing again. The doctor at the hospital said whatever it was, we had gotten it up.

The sergeant wanted to write it up because of the problem we were having in the area. For a white cop doin' what I did. But I didn't want it. I said I would do it for anybody, regardless of black or white. They wrote it up and gave me a citation. The guys from the precinct was kidding me that I was now integrated. The mother had said she was willing to even change the baby's name to Robert after what I did.

The guy I worked with had more time on the job than I did. When we went on a family dispute, he would do all the talking. I got the impression that they were more aggressive than we were, the people we were tryin' to settle the dispute with. A husband and wife fight or a boyfriend and a husband. Most of the time you have to separate 'em. "You take the wife into the room and I'll take the husband into the other room." I looked up to my partner on the way he settled disputes. It was very quick and he knew what he was doing.

I've been shot. The only thing I haven't been in Bedford-Stuyvesant is stabbed. I've been spit at. I've been hit with bottles, rocks, bricks, Molotov c.o.c.ktails, cherry bombs in my eye . . . I've gotten in disputes where I've had 10-13s called on me. That would be to a.s.sist the patrolman on the corner. Called by black people to help me against other black people.

After three years at Bedford-Stuyvesant he was a.s.signed to the emergency service patrol. "Our truck is a $55,000 truck and it's maybe $150,000 in equipment. We have shotguns, we have sniper rifles, we have tear gas, bullet-proof vests, we have nets for jumpers, we have Morrissey belts for the patrolman to hold himself in when he goes up on a bridge, we have Kelly tools to pry out trapped people, we give oxygen . . ."

Fifty to seventy-five percent of our calls are for oxygen. I had people that were p.r.o.nounced DOA by a doctor-dead on arrival. We have resuscitated them. I had brought him back. The man had lived for eight hours after I had brought him back. The doctor was flabbergasted. He had written letters on it and thought we were the greatest rescue team in New York City. We give oxygen until the arrival of the ambulance. Most of the time we beat the ambulance.

We set up a net for jumpers. We caught a person jumping from twenty-three stories in Manhattan. It musta looked like a postage stamp to him. We caught a girl from a high school four stories high. If it saves one life, it's worth it, this net.

A young man was out on a ledge on a six-story building. He was a mental patient. We try to get a close friend to talk to him, a girl friend, a priest, a guy from the old baseball team . . . Then you start talkin' to him. You talk to him as long as you can. A lot of times they kid and laugh with you-until you get too close. Then they'll tell you, "Stop right where you are or I'll jump." You try to be his friend. Sometimes you take off the police shirt to make him believe you're just a citizen. A lot of people don't like the uniform.

You straddle the wall. You use a Morrissey belt, tie it around with a line your partner holds. Sometimes you jump from a ledge and come right up in front of the jumper to trap him. But a lot of times they'll jump if they spot you. You try to be as cautious as possible. It's a life . . .

Sometimes you have eleven jobs in one night. I had to shoot a vicious dog in the street. The kids would curse me for doin' it. The dog was foaming at the mouth and snapping at everybody. We come behind him and put three bullets in his head. You want to get the kids outa there. He sees the cop shooting a dog, he's not gonna like the cop.

We get some terrible collisions. The cars are absolutly like accordians. The first week we had a head-on collision on a parkway. I was just pa.s.sing by when it happened and we jumped out. There were parents in there and a girl and a boy about six years old. I carried the girl out. She had no face. Then we carried out the parents. The father had lived until we jacked him out and he had collapsed. The whole family was DOA. It happens twenty-four hours a day. If emergency's gonna be like this, I'd rather go back to Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The next day I read in the papers they were both boys, but had mod haircuts. You look across the breakfast table and see your son. My wife plenty times asked me, "How can you do that? How can you go under a train with a person that's severed the legs off, come home and eat breakfast, and feel . . . ?" That's what I'm waiting for: when I can go home and not feel anything for my family. See, I have to feel.

A patrolman will call you for a guy that's DOA for a month. He hanged himself. I'm cuttin' him down. You're dancing to get out of the way of the maggots. I caught myself dancing in the middle of the livingroom, trying to get a ring off a DOA for a month, while the maggots are jumping all over my pants. I just put the d.a.m.n pants on, brand-new, dry cleaned. I go back to the precinct and still itch and jump in the shower.

And to go under a train and the guy sealed his body to the wheel because of the heat from the third rail. And you know you're gonna drop him into the bag. A sixteen-year-old kid gets his hand caught in a meat grinder. His hand was comin' out in front. And he asks us not to tell his mother. A surgeon pukes on the job and tells you to do it.

One time we had a guy trapped between the platform and the train. His body was below, his head was above. He was talking to the doctor. He had a couple of kids home. In order to get him out we had to use a Z-bar, to jack the train away from the platform. The doctor said, "The minute you jack this train away from the platform, he's gonna go." He was talkin' and smokin' with us for about fifteen minutes. The minute we jacked, he was gone. (Snaps fingers.) I couldn't believe I could snuff out life, just like that. We just jacked this thing away and his life. And to give him a cigarette before it happened was even worse.

While you're en route to the job, to build yourself up, you say, This is part of the job that has to be done. Somebody's gotta do it. After this, there couldn't be nothing worse. No other job's gonna be as bad as this one. And another job comes up worse. Eventually you get used to what you're doin'.

Homicides are bad. I seen the medical examiner put his finger into seventeen knife wounds. I was holding the porto-light so he could see where his finger was going. Knuckle deep. And telling me, "It's. .h.i.t the bone, the bullet here, the knife wound through the neck." I figure I've seen too much. Jeez, this is not for me. You wouldn't believe it. Maybe I don't believe it. Maybe it didn't hit me yet.

I'm afraid that after seein' so much of this I can come home and hear my kid in pain and not feel for him. So far it hasn't happened. I hope to G.o.d it never happens. I hope to G.o.d I always feel. When my grandmother pa.s.sed away a couple of months ago, I didn't feel anything. I wonder, gee, is it happening to me?

One time a guy had shot up a cop in the hospital and threw the cop down the stairs and his wheel chair on top of him. He escaped with a bullet in him. He held up a tenement in Brownsville. They called us down at three' in the morning, with bullet-proof vests and shotguns. I said to myself, This is something out of the movies. The captain had a blackboard. There's eight of us and he gave each of us a job: "Two cover the back yard, you three cover the front, you three will have to secure the roof."

This guy wasn't gonna be taken alive. Frank and me will be the a.s.sault team to secure the roof. We're loaded with shotguns and we're gonna sneak in there. We met at four o'clock in the morning. We're goin' up the back stairs. On the first stairway there was a German shepherd dog outside the doorway. The dog cowered in the corner, thank G.o.d. We went up three more stories. We secured the roof.

We could hear them a.s.saulting in each apartment, trying to flush this guy out. He fled to the fire escape. As he was comin' up, we told him to freeze, Tony, it was all over. He started to go back down. We radioed team one in the back yard. We heard shots. The rooftops had actually lit up. The a.s.sault man had fired twenty-seven bullets into this guy and he recovered. He's still standing trial from what I heard. This was one of the jobs I felt, when I was goin' up the stairs, should I give my wife a call? I felt like I had to call her.

If a perpetrator's in a building, you either talk to him or contain him or flush him out with tear gas rather than runnin' in and shoot. They feel a life is more important than anything else. Most cops feel this, yes.

I went on the prison riots we had in the Tombs. I was the first one on the scene, where we had to burn the gates out of the prison, where the prisoners had boarded up the gates with chairs and furniture. We had to use acetylene torches. My wife knew I was in on it. I was on the front page. They had me with a shotgun and the bullet-proof vest and all the ammunition, waiting to go into the prison.

I wonder to myself, Is death a challenge? Is it something I want to pursue or get away from? I'm there and I don't have to be. I want to be. You have chances of being killed yourself. I've come so close . . .

I went on a job two weeks ago. A nineteen-year-old, he just got back from Vietnam on a medical discharge. He had ransacked his parents' house. He broke all the windows, kicked in the color television set, and hid upstairs with a homemade spear and two butcher knives in one hand. He had cut up his father's face.

We were called down to go in and get this kid. He tore the bannister up and used every pole for a weapon. We had put gas masks on. All the cops was there, with sticks and everything. They couldn't get near him. He kept throwing down these iron ash trays. I went up two steps and he was c.o.c.king this spear. We cleared out all the policemen. They just wanted emergency, us.

If you wait long enough, he'll come out. We had everybody talk to him, his mother . . . He didn't come out. The sergeant gave orders to fire tear gas. I could hear it go in the windows. I went up a little further and I seen this nozzle come out of his face. I said, "Sarge, he's got a gas mask on." We fired something like sixteen cannisters in the apartment. When he went back to close one of the doors, I lunged upstairs. I'm very agile. I hit him in the face and his mask went flying. I grabbed his spear and gave him a bear hug. He just didn't put up any resistance. It was all over.

The patrol force rushed in. They were so anxious to get this guy, they were tearing at me. I was tellin' him, "Hey, fella, you got my leg. We got him, it's all over." They pulled my gas mask off. Now the big party starts. This was the guy who was agitating them for hours. "You b.u.m, we got you." They dragged him down the stairs and put him in a body bag. It's like a straitjacket.

When we had him face down a patrolman grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the ground. I grabbed his wrist, "Hey, that's not necessary. The guy's handcuffed, he's secure." I brushed the kid's hair out of his eyes. He had mod long hair. My kid has mod hair. The guy says, "What's the matter with you?" I said, "Knock it off, you're not gonna slam the kid."

The neighbors congratulated me because the kid didn't get a scratch on him. I read in the paper, patrolman so-and-so moved in to make the arrest after a preliminary rush by the emergency service. Patrolman so-and-so is the same one who slammed the kid's face in the ground.

I'm gonna get him tonight. I'm gonna ask if he's writing up for a commendation. I'm gonna tell him to withdraw it. Because I'm gonna be a witness against him. The lieutenant recommended giving me a day off. I told my sergeant the night before last the lieutenant can have his day off and shove it up his a.s.s.

A lot of the barricade snipers are Vietnam veterans. Oh, the war plays a role. A lot of 'em go in the army because it's a better deal. They can eat, they can get an income, they get room and board. They take a lot of s.h.i.t from the upper cla.s.s and they don't have to take it in the service.

It sounds like a fairy tale to the guys at the bar, in one ear and out the other. After a rough tour, a guy's dead, shot, people stabbed, you go into a bar where the guys work on Wall Street, margin clerks, "How ya doin'? What's new?" You say, "You wouldn't understand." They couldn't comprehend what I did just last night. With my wife, sometimes I come home after twelve and she knows somethin's up. She waits up. "What happened?" Sometimes I'm shaking, trembling. I tell her, "We had a guy . . ." (Sighs.) I feel better and I go to bed. I can sleep.

The one that kept me awake was three years ago. The barricaded kid. The first night I went right to sleep. The second night you start thinking, you start picturing the kid and taking him down. With the kid and the tear gas, the sergeant says, "Okay fire." And you hear the tear gas . . . Like you're playing, fooling around with death. You don't want to die, but you're comin' close to it, to really skin it. It's a joke, it's not happening.

I notice since I been in emergency she says, "Be careful." I hate that, because I feel jinxed. Every time she says be careful, a big job comes up. I feel, s.h.i.t, why did she say that? I hope she doesn't say it. She'll say, "I'll see you in the morning. Be careful." Ooohhh!

Bad accidents, where I've held the guys' skulls . . . I'm getting used to it, because there are younger guys comin' into emergency and I feel I have to be the one to take charge. 'Cause I seen a retired guy come back and go on a bad job, like the kid that drowned and we pulled him out with hooks. I'm lookin' to him for help and I see him foldin'. I don't want that to happen to me. When you're workin' with a guy that has eighteen years and he gets sick, who else you gonna look up to?

Floaters, a guy that drowns and eventually comes up. Two weeks ago, we pulled this kid out. You look at him with the hook in the eye . . . You're holdin' in because your partner's holdin' in. I pulled a kid out of the pond, drowned. A woman asked me, "What color was he?" I said, "Miss, he's ten years old. What difference does it make what color he was?" "Well, you pulled him out, you should know." I just walked away from her.

Emergency got a waiting list of three thousand. I have one of the highest ratings. I do have status, especially with the young guys. When a guy says, "Bob, if they change the chart, could I ride with you?" that makes me feel great.

I feel like I'm helpin' people. When you come into a crowd, and a guy's been hit by a car, they call you. Ambulance is standing there dumfounded, and the people are, too. When you give orders to tell this one to get a blanket, this one to get a telephone book, so I can splint a leg and wrap it with my own belt off my gun, that looks good in front of the public. They say, "Gee, who are these guys?"

Last week we responded to a baby in convulsions. We got there in two minutes. The guy barely hung up the phone. I put my finger down the baby's throat and pulled the tongue back. Put the baby upside down, held him in the radio car. I could feel the heat from the baby's mouth on my knuckles. At the hospital the father wanted to know who was the guy in the car. I gave the baby to the nurse. She said, "He's all right." I said, "Good." The father was in tears and I wanted to get the h.e.l.l out of there.

This morning I read the paper about that cop that was shot up. His six-year-old son wrote a letter: "Hope you get better, Dad." My wife was fixin' breakfast. I said, "Did you read the paper, hon?" She says, "Not yet." "Did you read the letter this cop's son sent to his father when he was in the hospital?" She says, "No." "Well, he's dead now." So I read the part of it and I started to choke. I says, "What the h.e.l.l . . ." I dropped the paper just to get my attention away. I divided my attention to my son that was in the swing. What the h.e.l.l. All the s.h.i.t I seen and did and I gotta read a letter . . . But it made me feel like I'm still maybe a while away from feeling like I have no feeling left. I knew I still had feelings left. I still have quite a few jobs to go . . .

TOM PATRICK.

Bob's brother.

He has been a city fireman for two years. During the preceding four years he had been a member of the city's police force. He is thirty-two, married. "It's terrific for a guy that just got out of high school with a general diploma. I don't even know English. My wife is Spanish, she knows syllables, verbs, where to put the period . . . I wish I was a lawyer. s.h.i.t, I wish I was a doctor. But I just didn't have it. You gotta have the smarts.

"There was seven of us. Three brothers, myself and my sister, mother and father. It was a railroad flat. Me and my brother used to sleep in bunk beds until we were twenty-seven years old. And they're supposed to be for kids, right?"

He owns his own house and can't get over the wonder of it, mortgage or not. A back yard, "it's like a piece of country back there. It smells like Jersey. We have barbecues, drink beer, the neighbors are good.

"Twenty years ago it was all Irish, Italian, Polish. I went in the army in '62 and everybody was moving out to Long Island. There's a lot of Puerto Ricans now. They say the spics are movin' in, the black are movin' in. They're good people. They don't bother me and I don't bother them. I think I'm worse than them. Sometimes I come home four in the morning, p.i.s.s in the street. I think they might sign a pet.i.tion to get me out.

"The guys in this thing were prejudiced. I'm probably prejudiced too. It's a very conservative neighborhood. A lot of the cops are here. Up to the fifties, these guys were my heroes, these guys in the bar. You hear this guy was in the Second World War . . . I was a kid and a lot of these guys are dead now. Forty-eight, fifty years old, they died young, from drinking and s.h.i.t. You just grow up into this prejudice-guy's a spic, a n.i.g.g.e.r. When I was in the army I didn't think I was prejudiced, until the colored guy told me to clean the floor five, six times, and I was calling him n.i.g.g.e.r. You express yourself, get the frustration out.

"One o'clock in the morning, in August, we had a block party. They were dancing on the fire escapes. People were drinking. We had three, four hundred people there. We had a barricade up on the corner and the cops never came around. The f.u.c.kin' cops never came around. We don't need 'em. I think when you see a cop everybody gets tense. Instead of concentrating on the music and drinkin' beer, you keep lookin' over your shoulder Where's the cop? You know."

I got out of the army in '64. I took the test for transit police, housing police, and city police. It's the same test. It was in March '66 when I got called. I got called for the housing police. For the first six months you just bounce around different housing projects.

I was engaged to this other girl and her father was mad that I didn't take the city police, because I could make more money on the side. He said I was a dope. He said, "What are you gonna get in the housing projects? The people there don't pay you off." Because they were poor people. I said, "The money they give me as a cop is good enough." Most of the people around here don't go on to be doctors or lawyers. The thing to get is a city job, because it's security.

I worked in Harlem and East Harlem for three years. There was ten, eleven cops and they were all black guys. I was the only white cop. When they saw me come into the office they started laughin'. "What the f.u.c.k are they sendin' you here for? You're f.u.c.kin' dead." They told me to get a helmet and hide on the roof.

This one project, there were five percenters. That's a hate gang. They believed that seventy percent of the black population are Uncle Toms, twenty-five percent are alcoholics, and five percent are the elite. These f.u.c.kin' guys'll kill ya in a minute.

This project was twenty-five buildings, thirteen stories each. Covered maybe twenty acres. It was like a city. I remember the first night I got there, July fourth. It was 105 degrees out. I had come in for the midnight to eight tour. I had an uncle that was a regular city cop. He called me up the night before and he said they expected a riot in this project. He said the cops had helicopters going around above the people and a lot of cops in plain clothes and cars. He was worried about me: "Be careful."

This one black guy said, "You stay with me." That night we went on the roof and we're lookin' down and people are walkin' around and drinkin' on the benches. This colored guy was drinkin' and I went down there seven in the morning. I told him to move. "Somebody's gonna rob you." He said, "Man, I ain't got a penny on me. The most they could do is give me somethin'." And he went back to sleep.

The thing is you gotta like people. If you like people, you have a good time with 'em. But if you have the att.i.tude that people are the cause of what's wrong with this country, they're gonna f.u.c.kin' get you upset and you're gonna start to hate 'em, and when you hate, you get a s.h.i.tty feeling in your stomach that can destroy you, right?

When I went to the housing project, I said, There's a lot of people around here and you meet 'em and the older people want you to come in and have a beer with 'em. I used to go to some great parties. I'd go up there nine ' at night and I'm in uniform with my gun on and you'd be in the kitchen, drinking Scotch, rye, beer, talking to these beautiful Spanish girls. These are people, right? Poor people. My family's poor. They talk about the same thing and the kids come over to me and they'd pet you or they'd touch the gun.

I made an arrest. Some kid came over and told me a guy across the street had robbed his camera. So I ran over and grabbed the guy. It was petty larceny. The colored cop said I broke my cherry. So he took me to the bas.e.m.e.nt that night and they had a party. A portable bar, record player, girls come down, they were dancin'.

I couldn't wait to go to work, because I felt at ease with these people. Sometimes I'd look in the mirror and I'd see this hat and I couldn't believe it was me in this uniform. Somebody'd say, "Officer, officer." I'd have to think, Oh yeah, that's me. I wouldn't really know I was a cop. To me, it was standin' on the corner in my own neighborhood. Poor. I'd see drunks that are like my father. A black drunk with a long beard and his eyes . . . He'd bring back memories of my father. I'd be able to talk to the kids. They'd be on the roof, f.u.c.kin', and I'd say, "I'll give you ten minutes." It took me two minutes to come. "Ten minutes is enough for you, right?"

One project I worked out of I made nineteen arrests in one year, which was tops. I didn't go out lookin' to make 'em, I ran into s.h.i.t. If you run into a person that's robbin' another person, man, that's wrong! My mind was easy. I just figured if a guy was drunk or a guy's makin' out with a girl, it shouldn't be a crime. I was with this one cop, he used to sneak up on cars and look in and see people gettin' laid or b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs. I used to be embarra.s.sed. I don't like that s.h.i.t.

I made all these arrests and they transferred me out. I didn't want to leave, 'cause I knew the people and I thought I could be an a.s.set. It was Puerto Rican, black, I had like a rapport. Jesus Christ, I loved it. They're sending me to Harlem because I'm so good. Bulls.h.i.t! That jerked me off. I wanted East Harlem because you had every thing there. You had Italians, still. I used to go up the block and drink beer. I used to listen to Spanish music. And the girls are beautiful. Jesus! Unbelievable! Spanish girls. My wife's from Colombia. She's beautiful. I love it when her hair's down. I think that's where I got the idea of marrying a Spanish girl. In East Harlem.

I wasn't against Harlem, but there was no people. It was a new project. I was just there to watch the Frigidaires. I was a watchman. Sewers open, the ground wasn't fixed, no gra.s.s, holes. We used to stand in lobbies of an empty building. I want to be where people are. So I got p.i.s.sed off and put a transfer in. After six months people started moving in-and I liked it. But they transferred me to Canarsie. Middle-income white. And all these bulls.h.i.t complaints. "Somebody's on my gra.s.s." "I hear a noise in the elevator." Up in Harlem they'll complain maybe they saw a dead guy in the elevator.

I never felt my life threatened. I never felt like I had to look over my shoulder. I was the only white cop in that project. The kids'd be playin', come over and talk to me. Beautiful. But sometimes they just hate you. I'm in uniform and they just go around and say, "You motherf.u.c.ker," and stuff like that. I can't say, "Wait, just get to know me, I'm not that bad." You haven't got time. If you start explainin', it's a sign of weakness. Most people, if you try to be nice, they're nice. But you get some of these guys that got hurt, they really got f.u.c.ked, they got arrested for not doing anything.

I was with a cop who arrested a guy for starin' at him! Starin' at him! The cop I was with, Vince, he had a baby face and the guy on the bus stop kept lookin' at him because this cop never shaved. He said, "Motherf.u.c.ker, what're you lookin' at?" The guy said, "I'm just lookin'." I said, "The guy probably thinks you're not a cop 'cause you got a pretty face." Vince puts the night stick under the guy's chin. Naturally when a guy puts a night stick under your chin, you push it away. As soon as you do that, you got an a.s.sault. He arrested the guy. The guy was waitin' for a bus!

With this same Vince, another kid came around, a Puerto Rican seventeen years old. They all knew me. He says, "Hi, baby," and he slapped my hand like that. "How you doin', man?" Vince said, "What're ya lettin' the kid talk to you like that for?" I said, "This is the way they talk, this is their language. They ain't meanin' to be offensive." He says, "Hey f.u.c.ko, come over here." He grabbed him by the shirt. He said, "You f.u.c.ker, talk mister, sir, to this cop." He flung the kid down the ramp. We had a little police room. His girl started crying. I went down after this Vince, I said, "What're you doin'? You lock that f.u.c.kin' kid up, I'm against you. That f.u.c.kin' kid's a good friend of mine, you're f.u.c.kin' wrong." He said, "I'm not gonna lock him up, I'm just gonna scare him. You gotta teach people. You gotta keep 'em down."

Just about that time twenty kids start poundin' on the door. The kid's brother was there and his friends. We're gonna get a riot. And the kid didn't do anything. He was just walkin' with his girl.

I was in the riots in '67 in Harlem. I saw a gang of kids throwin' rocks and they hit this policeman. The cops inside the car couldn't see where the rocks was comin' from. When they all piled out, the kids was gone. They thought the rocks was comin' from the roof. So these guys come out shootin' to the blues. One big white guy got out, he says, "Come out, you motherf.u.c.kin' black b.a.s.t.a.r.d." I was with five black cops and one said to me, "Get that f.u.c.ker away from me or I'll kill him."

City cops, they got clubs, they think they're the elite. Housing is H.A.-they call us ha-ha cops. Transit cops are called cave cops because they're in the subway. These are little ribs they give. Who's better, who's New York's Finest? . . . I was in the park three years ago with a transit cop. We're with these two nice lookin' girls-I was still single. It's about one o'clock in the morning. We had a couple of six-packs and a pizza pie. We're tryin' to make out, right? Cops pull up, city cops, and they shine the light on us. So my friend shows the cop his badge. The cop says, "That's more reason you shouldnt' be here. You're f.u.c.kin' on the job, just get the f.u.c.k outa the park." 'Cause he was a transit cop they gave him a hard time. My friend was goin' after this cop and this cop was goin' after him. I grabbed him and the driver in the police car grabbed his buddy and they were yelling, "Keep outa the park." And the other guy's yellin', "Don't come down in the subways." I coulda turned around and said, "Don't ever come in the housing projects." It was stupid s.h.i.t, right? A guy'll pull out a gun and get killed.

You can't laugh at a gun. I had a gun put to my head in a bar, over the Pueblo incident. A cop. I got a load on and argue with these guys about s.h.i.t in Vietnam. I said, "Saigon's got a million-dollar police station and my brother's got a station a hundred years old. Where's the money come from? The cops and firemen are paying taxes and they're not fixin' up their stations." This guy, Jim, who's a city cop for twenty-four years, is everything you want a cop to be. When I was eighteen he was thirty-eight, he was a supercop. But the hate just f.u.c.ked him up, and the war.

I was in the bar and Jim had his load on, too. He's got personal problems, he's married twice, divorced. He said, "We should invade Korea, bomb it." I said, "You're ready to drop a bomb on a country with civilians." He said, "Ah, you f.u.c.kin' commie." So I turn my back. I feel this thing on my temple, he had the gun to my head. Two guys next to me dived for the ground. With my left hand I came towards his f.u.c.kin' left wrist. The gun went to the ground and I grabbed him in a headlock. Three other cops in civilian clothes broke it up. You gotta watch that gun.

I coulda been like Jim or Vince. I started seein' the problems of people. Ten people in an apartment and there's no place to go except sit out on the street drinkin' beer. I guess I got this feeling from my father.

My father's a great man. I see what he went through and the s.h.i.t and hard times. I don't see how he lived through it. I used to lay awake when I was drinkin' and listen to him talk all night. And I used to cry. He talked about the s.h.i.ttin' war, all the money goin' for war. And the workers' sons are the ones that fight these wars, right? And people that got nothin' to eat . . . I tell ya, if I didn't have an income comin' in . . . These kids hangin' around here, Irish kids, Italian kids, twenty-five years old, alcoholics, winos. One guy died of exposure. He went out with my kid sister and he's dead now.