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Roaldus Richmond
JUST ANOTHER GUY WORKING
"I work in the shed," Dave Bernie said. "It's pretty good,
but my brother is the one makes the money. Eels on the road a
salesman. A good man on the road makes ten or eleven thousand
a year, maybe better than that. You don't make nothing like
that in the sheds. I'm a polisher and I get eight -fifty a day.
That'd be pretty good if a man worked every day. I've be7m
luckier than some. I work most all the time. Over the holi-
days we got three weeks off. I don't mind that. I'm glad to
lay off that long. Especially when I know I'm
work January 9th, and we'll work right through
through the big Memorial Day rush next spring.
a few weeks off again, after Memorial Day."
Bernie was a thick -set Scotsman with a broad ruddy
going back to
then. Right
Then we'll get
face
that dimpled when he grinned. He was always bareheaded and his
brown hair stood in a tumbled shock. His hands were graceful
and well -kept.
"All I've done since I stopped work is eat and drink,"
Bernie went on. "Today I was supposed to tend the house. My
wife works for the paper, you know. That's a big help too.
It takes two people working to make a decent living nowadays.
I'm supposed to get supper tonight, but I guess I ain't going to
make it. I'll probably eat at the diner. This is my vacation
and I ain't going to spoil it by cooking and cleaning house.
2.
"I take a few drinks every day anyway. When I ain't work-
ing I take a few extra ones. But I don't get drunk. I always
keep eating, see? If you keep eating you can drink and it won't
hurt you.
"We got a good shed to work in. We got a cement floor
instead of dirt. Some of the sheds are pretty cold and damp,
but ours is o.k. The thermostat keeps the temperature the same,
wintPr and summer, seventy degrees. The lights are good and
it's cleaner than most sheds. It's all right working there.
The suctions are good. They suck the dust away from the cutting
tools, you know. Of course polishing you don't get no dust
anyway. But the way it is now the other fellow don't get no-
where near so much dust either.
"There's seventy-five manufacturers in Barre City. In
Barre District that takes in Barre, Montpelier, Northfield
and Waterbury --there's ninety-three manufacturing firma. On
the Hill, up round Websterville and Graniteville, there's six
quarry companies. The Bill is where we get the stone from.
Them quarries are big, hundreds of feet deep. That Hill is
all cut up with quarries and piled with grout. You see it from
some places it looks like the ruins of an old fort or something.
The towns on the Fill look just like mining towns. Wooden
houses thrown together fast and not kept up too good. But
you'd be surprised at the insides of some of them homes. Fur-
nished good with everything, comfortable, clean, nice to live
in. There's money up on the Hill. But I wouldn't care for
quarry work. I'd rather be in the sheds than down in them
holes.
3.
"In the shed when the stones get to me they've been sawed
to about the right size and smoothed down by the surface -cutters.
After they've set in the bed I put the polisher on them. It's
a big machine, a big disk you move around the face of the stone.
You use different abrasives in order, one after another. You
guide the disk with a wheel. It's a slow work; everything in
granite business is slow. With stuff like that you can't work
very fast. After the machine sometimes the edges and corners
are finished by hand polishing. You can't get it all with the
machine. After it's all polished the stone goes to the sand-
blast room or the hand -carvers and letterers. They all get
the same pay, eight -fifty a day, except some of the best carvers
and letter cutters get more. They used to get a lot more, the
good ones did.
"But like I told you the guys on the road make the money.
Today the money is in selling no matter what the line of bus-
iness is. You don't need to know nothing to sell either. You
just got to have that gift of gab. Lots of nerve and plenty
of gab. The salesmen get a ten percent commission. If they
sell a job for thirty-five thousand they get thirty-five hundred
for their cut. If they sell one big job like that along with
the smaller pieces they've got a good year's pay. Nowadays
they don't sell so many big mausoleums any more, but they still
sell some big pieces.
"My brother sold Mrs. Palmer remember Palmer Method
Writing they teach in the schools? Well, it was that family.
She wasn't interested at first. She didn't intend to buy noth-
ing. But my brother used to be a draftsman. he sketched the
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stone all out for her, showed her just what it would look like.
She got no interested she ordered it off him. It was a big
job. He didn't need to work no more that year.
"If they was going to cut that table in stone, say, and
the company figured it was a three thousand dollar job. They
add ten percent to that, and that's the salesman's commission.
That's the way they figure it out. You see they get a nice
cut even on a small job. You ain't selling magazines when you
sell granitel But it burns me up to think of some of them dumb
bastards knocking off over ten thousand a year. My brother
don't make that much. He did once but he don't now. But he
still makes a good living all right.
"I think I'll go to Boston for New Years on the excursion.
You can get a round-trip ticket for about eight bucks. That's
just about one-way fare, the regular rate. You can get a good
hotel down there for a dollar -and -a -half. The Bradford's all
right; I like it just as good as the Statler. The Bradford's
right across from the Met, a good location. I think I'll go
down, take in a hockey game, see some shows. I won't spend
no more there than I will just hanging round here. It does
a fellow good to gat away once in awhile, sure it does. If
I hang round here I'll spend ten -fifteen bucks a day and
do nothing. I know some people down there I'd like to see,
too. There's some fellows I used to out atone with in Cmincy.
It's good to see old friends this time of year. If we get to-
gether down there we'll have a hell of a time, I know that.
Might as well celebrate when you can. It's a long grind through
the winter from January to the end of May.
5.
"Yeah, this town looks pretty busy through t holidays.
It always looks kind of curly busier than it is. There's
always people on the streets, and you can't find a place to
park a car. The stores do pretty good here, just like the beer
joints and bars. There's always money circulating =round here.
Sometimes when the granite business is slow you wonder where
the money comes from. I guess most of them got a little saved
up to fall back on. I couldn't spend so much myself, but my
wife's got that newspaper sob. he goes round gathering up
local news you know. All about who visits who, and who goes
where, stuff like that. It's foolish stuff, but it helps us
out a lot. We ain't got any kids either, that makes it easier.
I'd like to have kids. I'd like a boy anyway, but Well, we
can't have them, that's all. No use thinking about it.
"I wasn't born in this country but it's the only country
I know. I don't remember Scotland. My folks came from around
Edinburgh. That's where Rhind lived, you know, the fellow that
designed the Robert Burns Statue. He never saw it though. A
Barre stonecutter named Novelli did the carving, and Eli Corti,
the one who got shot, cut the panels in the base. I was just
a baby when we came across, too small te remenber. My father
was a stone mason over there a good carver. My mother al-
ways wanted to go back to Scotland. '.11e, talked about it a lot,
but they never got back there. Now they're both dead. My
father died first. My mother went pretty quick after that. I
think it was about 19C0 when we came over. te came right to
Barre. I grew up here and learned the trade here.
"The granite workers get along all right with the other
6.
people in the City. At first, the old-timers I rcun, used to
keep more to themselves. It was natural to do that way at
first. But now they mix right in like anybody else. Lots of
the younger ones have gone into business here, and lots of them
are doctors and lawyers now. Their folks came ove;. to tut stone,
and the money they made in granite started the sons off in
business or educated them to be lawyers or doctors. Naturally
the granite people are a class by themselves like any people
who work the same trade. hut they ain't cut off from the rest
of the people any more... Maybe some of the bigshots think they're
better than the stonecutters, but the stonecutters feel the
same way about them too. Ltonocutters are pretty proud and
independent, and they don't kneel down to nobody*
"You see it in the sheds. Lots of.the owners and all the
bosses started out cutting stone themselves. It's different
from most kinds of business.
he bosAes don't bother you much.
They leave you alone to do your work. 1::hey don't try to drive
a man; they know it ain't no use. Stonecutters won't stand for
it. In the sheds every man knows his work and does his job.
don't need nobody standing over him, and the bosses know it.
livto
work eight hours a day, five days a week. That gives
us forty hours a week, and my week's pay is forty -two -fifty.
It ain't enough either. hut it's more than you can get in any
other line around here.
"It ain't bad in the sheds. The noise is the worst thing.
It makes me deaf. It's a hell of a racket with the saws grind-
ing back and forth. You know it takes an hour to saw four
inches into granite. The drills are going all the time, and
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them big cranes smashing overhead. You get a vibration from
the air -pressure machines. Jack hammers sound like machine
guns. At quitting time when the noise stops your head feels
funny inside, the ringing stays in your ears, but you get used
to it.
"Looking down one of them long atonesheds you nee every
man bent over his own job, minding his own business. You see
that every man knows his own business and tends to it. Ihe
bosses are thore to check up and keep things going =oath.
raybe they stop here or there to talk with a cutter about his
stone. but mostly they let you alone to do your work. It's
the beet way, the only way in the granite business.
"There was some anarchists here a long time ago. I was
still just a kid. Lost people here don't talk much about it.
I've heard stories though. A man named Galleani ran an anar-
chist newspaper here. They say he's in Italy now, one of kuss-
clini's ministers or something over there. Anyway he was arrested
here. It was mostly on account of a riot he had caused before
in Faterson, New Jersey, when the strike in the silk mills was
on. Galleani was arrested there after about forty men got
wounded in a riot, but he jumped his bail I think it Was
45,000. The next they heard of him he was in "-Arr.. Lie was
arrested once up here, they say, at a Zunday beer picnic where
they got to fighting. Women fighting along with the men.
Calleani was there and they got him for breach of peace.
"There was a lot of trouble between the anarchists and
socialists here. I don't know much about it. I don't even
know the difference between them. But I've heard of shooting
8.
scrapes, and I guess it was in one of thew. that (pl-ti i7ot shot.
They say when Oalleanils newspaper burned out they found a
picture of the man who killed President Mcicinley, after the
fire. I don't know how true all this stuff is. I know they
come and arrested Calleani and took him to ?aterson. That
was sometime about 1906. And now they claim he's in Italy
with Mussolini.
"There ain't any more or that stuff round here that I
klow of. If there is they keep it pretty quiet. I never got
worked about politics much anyway. I'm a citizen, sure, and
I pay my taxes and vote. Eut I ain't crazy over politics. Ira
just another guy working for a living, trying to get by and
have a little fun too while I'm here. I got a good home and
a nice wife and some good friends. I got a pretty good job.
I wouldn't swap places with Mussolini or Hitler or Roose-
velt either. I ain't a big shot and I don't want to be. None
of tat stuf.:', not for me.
"that burns me up is t1-.6 way them politicians in 'i,ashington
keep fighting among themselves when the country ought to be
getting ready to fight Pitler. He won't stop with Fngland,
no more than he stopped with Yranoe or Poland. Fe won't stop
nowhere until he's licked. Thew guys in Ilashington ought to
forget they're Republicans and 7.)emocrats. They ought to forget
all that crap arl, be Americana for a while now."