Weekend

Hands...

I Remember...

Workers

Workers

Connection < Disconnection

Is it a memory?  A wish?  The future?

All of the above maybe?

Stuck at Work

Occupation

How did I get here?

My first job was a paper route, I think I was 12.  My route covered the area from Willow street north to the tracks between Chase and Washington.  This neighborhood is an older part of Wheaton, and was always a mixed income neighborhood.  Just south of the train tracks you would find students for Wheaton College and some lower income homes and apartments.  As you move south away from the tracks the income level grows by each street.  

Back in the late 80's when I delivered papers there the neighborhood was mostly older folks, if I had to guess I would say the average age of my customers was about 65.  I helped the people on my route; I mowed the lawn for one of my customers, and once I helped another set up their garage sale.  I usually got pretty good tips on the holidays, most of my customers lived through the depression so they appreciated the plight of the young paperboy trying to earn a dime.  

They weren't all good though, I had one customer spit at me... a grown man spitting at a child.  I got hit by a car while riding my bike to deliver papers on halloween when I was in sixth grade, obviously not on purpose.  I ended up throwing my last bundle of papers into a vacant house down the street instead of delivering them.  

I am not sure how long I had my paper route, couldn't have been more than a year or two.  I don't think they really had paper routes for kids too much longer after I had mine.  It's kind of weird that no one will be sending their 12 year old a couple of miles away to deliver paper to strangers.... wait that isn't weird anymore is it?  What would happen to someone who sent their 12 year old child on a paper route now?  Probably get arrested.

That was the first work experience I got payed for.

It was a valuable experience and one that I am glad I was able to have.

Family Pictures

Mom with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa

My great grandparents immigrated from Germany.  They were farmers in central Illinois.  My grandfather was their youngest child; I was told that he was named after his older brother who died as a child.

Family Pictures

Olan Mills

When I was a kid we would take a family portrait at least once a year.  It was very important to my mom.  Olan Mills popularized a style of family portrait that wound up on the walls of almost every home in America in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  Every thing had to be just so; the grouping of the people, the placement of a hand, the negative space, the soft gradient background.  You didn't need to see the little gold script seal in the corner to know where it was made.

Looking at the pictures now it is interesting to see us as kids, it brings back good memories.  The standardized way that Olan Mills worked created an affordable memory, a snap shot in time of you trying to look your best.  I remember getting ready for the picture sessions; we all had to get into our Sunday best... if mom was going to take us there and spend the money we were going to look our best.  Waiting in the lobby was like waiting for a doctor, there was redeeming value though in getting to see all of the pictures of other people on the walls... I loved looking at those pictures on the wall...

When they were ready for us we would be ushered into the studio.  Mom would select the backdrop she wanted and they would set up the boxes and the rugs.  The photographer posed everyone, said something stupid to make us smile and snapped the shot.  He replaced the film holder and the process started again.  A week(?) later mom would go see the proofs and pick out the ones she liked.  A couple weeks after that she would pick the prints up and replace the previous portrait in the living room.

Listen...

From Yo Gabba Gabba
(appropriated)
Listen

Dad made this..

..photograph.

It hung in his office.

He probably stood right there when he made it.

Dad was a mechanic for a pump repair company.   The pumps that he repaired were not the kind of pumps you have in your basement... he could repair those too but, the companies he worked for serviced power plants, waste treatment plants, water stations, etc.
This is a photograph of the Coffeen power station in Coffeen, Illinois.  I am not sure when this photograph was made but I believe that it was the mid nineties.  That would have been when he was running a repair facility in Joliet.  He would have made this picture while visiting the power station on business.  He used his Pentax K1000 35mm camera; when I first started taking pictures I used his camera.  In a way this photograph is sort of like corporate art.

I have had this photograph sitting in a frame in the back of my closet for years.

Embrace

After School

Home

1977-1986

This is the house that I spent the first few years of my life in.  My father and grandfather built the garage.  

1986-1997

This is the house my parents built.  It will always be home.  Ghost in the graveyard, underage drinking parties on the back patio.  Basketball on the driveway.  We planted the lawn from seed.  We were the first house facing the street on this side of the block.

I also lived in Florida for a little over a year but I have no photographs of where I lived.  I lived in a trailer park off of the first exit into the state on I-95.  

1998-2003

I did not live in this house but, this is where my grandparents house once stood.  After my grandmother passed away we moved in with my grandfather.  After grandpa passed away the house was torn down and this house was built.  The big tree in front was planted by my mother when she was in elementary school.  That is the sidewalk where I first learned to ride a bike.

2003-present

We live in a townhouse now.  It is about half the size of any house we have lived in.  It  was interesting to downsize- all of the sudden you have too much stuff.  I think we must have spent the first four years either throwing stuff away or donating it.  We have the windows and door to the right of the tree.  Kinda nice to have an inside unit.

I care.

Middle-Class ... Working-Class

"That middle-class students will go to college, strive for professional jobs, and live in typical, middle-class neighborhoods are matters that are clearly assumed by both the general population as well as by social researchers who are for the most part middle-class themselves."

Peter Kaufman- 

Middle-Class Social Reproduction

     As a young child my family was a working class family.  My father was a mechanic and my mother stayed at home and raised the kids; three of us.  Through his experience and connections my father was able to move into management and get a bigger salary.  During the mid 1990's we enjoyed a typical suburban middle-class life because of what my father did for a living.  As a middle-class family we would go on vacations every summer, we had toys, life was good.  After dad lost his job and couldn't find another one, he got sick and was gone in less than 3 years.  Mom had to go back to work and we had to down-size.  There are a lot of 'could'a, would'a, should'a' moments but things went the way they went and it's useless to dwell on what might have been.  

     We are working-class and proud of it.  As a working-class man I have done my best and gone into a great deal of debt to strive for college; completing seven, soon to be nine years of college.  I am still striving for the professional job and the white picket fence, 2.4 kids.... maybe not in a middle class neighborhood, but.... One day I might find it and I might be able to provide a life like I had for my own family.  Until then...

Matriarch Patriarch

Roles

I come from a strong family.   A family run by the women and backed up by the men.  My grandmother ran the show and was the glue that held the extended family together.  When she passed away the family never fully recovered.  I was lucky to experience the kind of family that a strong relationship produces.  In my later experiences I see that our family was an anomaly;  nobody in our family ever got divorced.  My parents actually loved each other and I know that it was the same for all of my aunts and uncles as well.  There is no denying that there were problems, disagreements and disappointments... we had plenty of ghosts in the closet like any other family.  But, no matter what, we were all kept in line and put on the right path by strong female leadership that was backed by a strong male presence.

I am not saying that this is what you must have in order to become a whole person.  The definition of "family" can mean many things all of which can work if the members put forth an honest effort to make it work.  This is where I came from, my experience.

Power Over Others

Possession of objects without responsibility can lead to a sense of entitlement.

John

John- "I thought I was having psychotic experiences.  We were walking down the street... and there is a house down there with sunflowers out front; there is a girl out front playing with her dog or something.... the little girl goes running up to the front of the house, yells in the front door, 'Daddy, Daddy the Jews are coming down the street!'"

Me- "But, you're not Jewish, are you?"

John- "No, well, we have a Mezuzah on the front door that a friend of ours gave us...  A couple weeks later I am pulling out of the Marathon station [and the preachers kid, who lives down the street], he's walking by the meat market and he looks at me and goes, 'Hey Jew!'."

Me- "How do people even know [the Mezuzah is] there?"

John- "All this started after we hosted the block party, and people went in to use the bathroom."

Me-"Did anyone ask you what it was for?"

John-"No, the only people that have asked are friends that we have known before we moved here."

I interviewed John in his home in Wheaton.  If you are not familiar with Wheaton, it is located in the western suburbs of Chicago.  Wheaton is the home of Wheaton College (an evangelical college that only recently allowed it's students to have a dance) and more churches per square mile than any other town in the country.  It has been the seat of the Republican party in Illinois for years and is a very conservative community.  

After hearing about John's experiences I came across this clip of Louie C.K. on Conan and found it to be an appropriate addition to the conversation.  I was amazed by what these children had said to John and began to wonder how a child learns to speak that way to or about an adult or even another person.  You don't look at a child and expect bigotry; in my mind bigotry can only be indoctrinated by an adult.  While the clip of Louie C.K. is humorous it is also frightening that this kind of racial intolerance is still around.  There is no doubt that the parallels are there and it didn't feel like too much of a stretch to put the two vignettes together.

How do you feel about these cases?

What are your experiences?