Not that it matters, but Laura was quite real. Even to the name. A bunch of guys, married, single, teens, old guys all had one thought. I can only imagine, 52 years down the road, what's become of her. Well, I had several blue collar jobs over my life--the collection agency, to an IBM factory while I was in graduate school, newspaper delivery manager, supermarket deli clerking, telephone company phone support. Except for my time in investing bank back offices in the '90s, the blue collar work was more memorable than most of the college jobs--better people, a true sense of teamwork. Academe had a Screw You attitude I never found in blue collar.
Ken
On Oct 26, 2012, at 11:20 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It's not exactly relevant, Kenneth but it does stir up memories of taking a blue collar job to augment an a burgeoning white collar existence. In my case, it was a plastic factory in Hawthorn for six weeks, earning money before the next year at uni. My Laura the bookkeeper was Greek-Australian smock-wearing Jenna, writing with black crayon on cardboard boxes full of stacked toilet seat lids 'Six only, black'.
>
> Bill
>
> On 27/10/2012, at 3:51 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> It's an old poem. Still strikes me. If it's relevant, that's scary.
>>
>> ALLEGHENY REALTY CORP.
>>
>> A collection man had shown me a door,
>> right by a dingy fileroom on the 3rd floor
>> Allegheny Realty Corp. it said, in black stencil.
>> Behind the door was a broom closet.
>> It was some slumlord's rent-check mail-drop:
>> a place he could go without fear of getting shot
>> by some tenant-in-arrears.
>>
>> Downstairs, on Two, we worked the tenants who owed our client:
>> a Su Credito Es Bueno Aqui jewelry store on the street floor
>> that gave Easy Terms, sold the Norteamericano White Man's Dream
>> to cleaning girls from Bayamon, Black countermen,
>> day-laborers without Union books:
>> the Olympic TV, sapphire ring, Gruen watch, or set of silverplate.
>> We ogled Laura, the hourglass body Puerto Riquena bookkeeper,
>> said she was worth a sterling silver diaphragm,
>> and that we'd fight to install it ourselves.
>>
>> Divorced guys and a high-school kid: me.
>> I knew where I had come from: an upstairs neighbor
>> fixed an off-the-books summer job for a kid
>> with a future in English Lit'ra'cha.
>> But I never dreamed what fate had brought these
>> wrinkled collars and dollar ties to this place.
>> I wondered only why these middle-aged men looked at me with envy
>> or anger, snarled "Kid, why the fuck are you here?"
>> as they hung up from a minimum wage debtor
>> who'd told them to burn in hell for the hundredth time that week.
>>
>> They always fell behind, our clients,
>> so we garnished them because that's what the job was:
>> called the Brooklyn Civil Court and kept a magistrate hopping:
>> The buff cards of broken dreams were piled floor to ceiling,
>> scattered on desktops, wedged under phone books.
>> We worked the horn to work out terms: but got false addresses,
>> disconnected phones, crazed accented voices telling us to
>> make much too good friends with our mothers,
>> or to put our fates in the hands of the gods
>> as those we garnished had put theirs.
>>
>> At noon I'd cross the street, sit in the old Pennsylvania Station,
>> marked by '61 for the wrecker's ball,
>> look up at my glass ceiling,
>> and thank God that my ticket was punched,
>> that I would go to college in the fall,
>> forget this place, forget the vengeful phone calls,
>> forget the cursing manager who struck out last night
>> and took it out on a widow,
>> forget my sticky virgin night-fantasies of Laura the bookkeeper,
>> and inhabit a world of high art, of poetry
>> that would soar into an Avalon of misty hills and kings.
>>
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