Document text
Accession no.
W 3332
k. 4
WPA L. C. PROJECT
Form -3
.rr r
britr' UNIT
Folklore Collection (or Type)
Date received
Consignment no.
1
Shipped from
*ash, Cdtioe
Label
Amount
2p
Tide 4arican liTes.
21c_TPuy
Place of originc h c 14,9_, I 11 in o Date 6/17139
Project worker.. Dirtty Burke
Project editor
Remarks
BIG TONY
Betty Burks
May 17, 1939
..........•••••••••••••=0•••••me•••••••••Maiii•w..
Big Tony works in Reliable's Pecking Co. It's one of theme two
by four plants. There's just about thirty girls in the whole pleas.
JUL 6.,
One time Big Tony tried to get the girls in the union. He'sagood CIO
man, Tony is, and helped organize the union all over the yards.
Those girls up at Reliable's were funny as hell. Ask them, darn
near any one of them, where did they work, what dept., and they'd all
have the same answer. 110h, I'm the switchboard operator, I work in
the office.. They didn't want anybody to know the work they actually
did. Ashamed, see. Say, they'd even tell their boyfriends that crap.
Well, they handed Big Tony that. He didn't say nothing, then.
Just stood there looking them over, all those dumb dames putting on an
act like that. Telephone operators. Yeah.
Next day, fellows kept calling Reliable's, all day long, I want
to talk to Stella W., the switchboard operator. Or Mary, the seitoh-
board operator, or Liz, or Helen, and so on, all of them 'switchboard'
operators. They had the foremen standing on their heads, running back
and forth, yelling at the girls, and finally the super names in and wants
to know what's the big idea. Funniest part of it was, the girls didn't
know what it was all about and they were soared as hell, with the super
threatening to lay off any girl who ever again misrepresented her work at
the piint.
Bit Tony, after work, be hung around outside with his gang, and when
the girls some out, he started wisecracking about the swell switchboard
operators. His gang was in on it, see, and be talked real loud, pretending
be didn't know the girls was listening. Finally, they naught on, but not
W3632
-2-
a peep out of them. They put their foot in it and so they took the
razzing. Tony laid it on thiokt Bow he laid it out
Most of those girls are in the CIO now, but they still get kidded
about being 'switchboard' operators.
It's hard to put anything over on Big Tony,