“Look, fucko.  Keep this up and I’ll kick the shit out of ya!”

Really!  I’m so flabby I can’t swat a mosquito.

The voice was higher now.  It was a countertenor.  No, it was a despairing falsetto.  A castrato, that was it.

“I’m Shea of the FBI!”

“You prick . . .”

A click.  He had hung up.  From Feodor Chaliapin to Alfred Deller.  It was a remarkable piece of virtuosity, surpassing even Yma Sumac.  That was the last I heard from the FBI.  Oh well.

            This phone scene is, to me, classic Chicagoesque:  sixty four dollar words and names like stentorian, badinage, tremolo, countertenor, castrato, Feodor Chaliapin and Yma Sumac mixed with words like sonofabitch, fucko, cocksucker, shit and prick.  How wonderfully Chicagoesque.  How I do miss hearing on a regular basis that kind of mixed speech, the speech of part of my long ago youth. 

            A related linguistic point arises from Terkel’s book.  There were, in the old days, common forms of expression whose use has languished, almost died out, though they are wonderfully descriptive.  Very occasionally, with a shock of recognition, one still hears them used, invariably by guys who are nearing their 70s or are even older.  One of my favorites has always been a phrase used to describe someone who is thoroughly dishonest:  he is said to lie, cheat and steal.  Another favorite was used by Terkel.  It is a phrase that means something can or will or has happened in a whole variety of different ways or, sometimes, just to mean that something has or will happen a lot:  It happens “eight ways from Sunday” is the phrase.  Terkel uses it to describe a triple revolution in the United States in the 1960s, one of the three revolutions being “the advancing ability to wipe out the planet eight ways from Sunday.”  Just so.  Mankind does have the ability to wipe out everything and everyone eight ways from Sunday, and we seem to be advancing down at least a couple of those eight avenues.  The old phrase Terkel used is wonderful and apt.

            There are also the interrelated questions of income, self regard, and collective action in a capitalist society whose 24-7 emphasis on money, fostered by Milton Friedman  and Ronald Reagan, causes a person of low or no income to be regarded as, and, even worse, to regard himself as, someone of little worth -- causes him to question his own ability and/or his own worth as a person.  This is a terrible, terrible thing, but is a phenomenon that widely exists and can destroy a human being.  Terkel writes of it. 

In the late 1940s and early ’50s Terkel had a TV program, “Stud’s Place,” which was doing well and was broadcast nationally from Chicago.  His program was suddenly cancelled because he was a man of the left and had picketed a petroleum company.  Here is what he says of the self doubt created by the experience:

During the blacklist, you’re not working for a time, you start thinking maybe you ain’t got something you thought you had.  I knew my work troubles were for political reasons, but the situation seemed somewhat hopeless.  There’s something that’s interesting psychologically, moments when you feel self-doubt:  that is, was your talent there to begin with?  Maybe you’re not that good.

            Later in the book he writes of what “     My friend Virginia Durr said about the Depression:”

People started to blame themselves.  The preacher was saying, “You shouldn’t have bought that second radio.  You shouldn’t have bought that secondhand car.”  People started thinking, “this is America; if I were good, I’d be behind that mahogany desk.  I’m not smart enough, I’m not tough enough, I’m not strong enough, I’m not energetic enough.  Therefore, I hold my hat in my hand with my head slightly bowed.”

Which feeds the belief that you don’t count.  (Emphases in original.)

            In connection with regarding oneself badly, Terkel speaks of people feeling they don’t count and of overcoming the feeling of helplessness by joining with others.  “When people feel they don’t count,” he says, “they are lost.  What’s left?  Get as much as you can for yourself and forget the rest.”  In short, let personal greed rule and to hell with others.  On the other hand, in collective action -- collective action which can make one count -- there can be protection from this descent into purely selfish, wholly narcissistic greed.  Terkel quotes Nicholas Von Hoffman on this and then extends the point:

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