To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (14461 ) 9/15/1999 6:53:00 PM From: D. Long Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Now Gustave, we have known each other too long with these discussions to start getting personal now. As to me living off my daddy's plastic, you are definately barking up the wrong tree. My father grew up the son (one of 12 kids) of a literal dirt farmer and occasional grave digger. He has been a carpenter, a brick layer, a truck driver, a steel mill grinder, and currently has worked in a carpet mill for the past 20 years. My mother has been a secretary for the past 30 years. I currently make more in my present job than both of them combined. As to myself, I was working trimming christmas trees arm in arm with Mexican migrant laborors during the summer at 12 years old, mowing lawns and painting houses with a contractor friend of my fathers by that age as well. I worked my way through college by taking jobs at the local textile mill, the local ribbon factory, several jobs as a forklift driver, working in a dog food plant hosing the meat and maggots off the production floor, working in a potato chip factory, working in a local foundry grinding steel, amongst others. Ive been a dish washer, a fry cook, a waiter, a busboy, a pizza delivery man, a pizza maker, and several sundry janitorial jobs. After travelling extensively, I have moved to Texas where I landed a nice office job with an ISP. I am currently throwing together a little business enterprise with one of the former partners of said ISP. You see Gustave, I am probably more aquainted with the travails of the "proletariat" than yourself. As a matter of fact, I am no doubt the epitomy of the "blue collar worker done good." If you ask any Pennsylvania factory worker or steel mill employee what they think of unions and such, you would no doubt get an earful. But of course that is false consciousness I suppose. Its funny that it seems those the least familiar with working for a living have been the most ardent supporters of socialism, ala Marx and Engels.
