Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-602

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ## ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ####### ####### [ Jack & The Reformatory ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ JACK & THE REFORMATORY (c) 2002 by Eric Chaet Jack says he used to work at the reformatory. It's a big, 19th century brick building at the edge of town, with lots of lawn & trees keeping it low-profile from the cars on the roads--except on one side, where its yard's high cement wall is right at the curb of Washington Boulevard--which is heavily trafficked, rush-hours. Jack is broad-chested, stubby legs, nearly bald, tired eyes with bags under them--but he'll look right into your eyes. I've seen him take & swallow pills from a vial, where he's eating eggs & potatoes--it's obvious he enjoys eating--& drinking coffee at the corner of the counter of the Farmer's Friend, & talking with a couple of guys about car parts, or about finding responsible tenants for the four apartments he rents out, & convincing employees of various state agencies that doing so isn't discrimination against any set of people--except irresponsible ones--&, so, illegal. Jack has told me that, these days, his job is buying used cars--he studies a book of prices, & looks for weaknesses he's learned to spot, which are carefully hidden by the sellers--at auction in Milwaukee; & driving them up here, for the weekly auction along the Highway. Before the referendum, when the voters of the county were asked to vote to tax themselves, an additional .5% sales tax, to subsidize the refurbishing of & adding on to Force Field (home of our sometime champion, shareholder-owned, professional football team, the Wolves--the least well paid of whom earns $550,000/year, & the ones who make the most getting many millions/year, for playing 20 ball-games)--Jack & I talked a lot about fair & unfair & wise & unwise taxation. Even before the Wolves tax, Jack & I found common ground, groaning about the county's spending binge, building arenas with borrowed money. The county executive--who likes to appear on TV & on the front page of newspapers, & is quick to attribute base motives to anyone who criticizes what she is doing--keeps telling us how it will bring in conventioneers, who will spend lots of money. Jack was giving away bumper-stickers for people against the Wolves tax: "Go, Wolves, Go--But No Tax, No!"--red & black, the Wolves' colors, that you see everywhere around here. The well-paid management of the Wolves & their allies--several companies & unions are in line for big contracts, doing the refurbishing & building the additions--spent between half a million & a million dollars persuading county supervisors & the public at large. Thousands of people around here are more dedicated to the Wolves than to the Virgin Mary, statues of whom are sprinkled among lawns, frequently sheltered by partially buried old bath-tubs. People paid to do so rallied the fans least politically awake--or absolutely awake but utterly cynical that anything for the good of all could ever come of politics, so why not get what you can for what you want yourself for a change?--to vote to tax themselves & the rest of us, too, for the glory of the team. Opponents spent ten to fifteen thousand dollars. The measure passed by about 53% to 47% of the voters who were eligible to vote, & voted. Or so we were told in the papers, on the radio, & on TV. When Jack worked in the reformatory, a big black guy approached him, Jacks says--relaxing now that we have agreed so much--& asked Jack if he could work for him. No one else would let this guy work for them--they were all afraid of him. "'Sure, I'll give anyone a chance. But if you screw up, you're out.' "Anything you told him to do," Jack says, "wash the walls or floor, whatever, he took the time, & did a good job. Most of the other guys wouldn't. "A couple of black guys & 3 white guys were going at it in a hall, & all of a sudden, one of them says, 'Get the guard,' & comes after me. This black guy pops up from the side, & just NAILS this white guy. 'You gotta go thru me, first!' he says. "I felt sorry for some of those guys. Some of them could do anything--draw, build anything. I was running the carpentry shop. But some of them, no matter how many times they tried, couldn't saw a board the right length. "Eli and Blake used to work there, too," Jack says. He's talking about two other guys about his--& my--age, who come to the Farmer's Friend regularly, too. Eli did some work as an electrician, an independent contractor, til recently--he had some surgery, &, once he healed, he didn't take up the work again. I don't know what kind of work Blake does--he seems to have done some coaching of high school ball teams at one time or another, & is frequently about to attend a high school or college game. Most of the people who come to the Farmer's Friend are among the small dairy farmers who haven't yet been driven out of business, & who are taking a break after milking, & sometimes smell of the barn; or mill-workers from the paper factories that haven't shut down yet, getting ready to punch in for their shifts. "Once there was a big riot, & one of the captains was beat up so bad that me & another guy had to drag him out," Jack says. "I got beat on pretty bad, too, but I could still move. My back's been bad ever since. They let me retire with full benefits after 24 years, even tho the rule was 25 years." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #602 Underground eXperts United 2002 uXu #602 ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/uXu/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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