Words and Wisdom

In the winter of 1960 the snow was wet, heavy, and the temperature just hung around freezing, making the streets a combination of ice and slush. For reasons I seem to have misplaced somewhere in my white matter my father had gotten me a job, full time, twelve hours a day and six days a week for six weeks in the New York Sanitation Department, in the Port Richmond Depot, shoveling snow from streets. Now he had arranged with my school’s headmaster, since by that time I had finished all my requirements for graduation, had gotten early admission, had scholarships, and was I guess getting to feel my oats, so manual labor amongst the folks was the wise thing to expose me to. Of course such a course of action would be unheard of this day, but then it was I suspect a way for a growing young man to see what the real world was like.

So up at 4 AM, by bus to the depot, and in a large garage filled with exhaust I assembled with fifty other young men, yet for all the others this was their real life, for me I saw it as some form of punishment, but one never questioned father or Brother Richard. One just got there and pitched in. Out into the streets, not having boots and long underwear, I wanted to look cool, I set about my tasks, shovel in hand, with my nice rabbit lined gloves, digging out gutters, crossings, being splashed by every vehicle, through sunrise, noon, sun set and back to the depot. Then home, drop, then start all over again.

Not what helicopter moms subject their kinder to but it was a learning experience. But where does this lead? Well in this environment with these lost folks whose lives would gone on this way forever I learned how to use the four letter word, f**k as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, infinitive, prefex, I could decline and conjugate it, active and passive voice, I could use it as a subjunctive, and thank God for my Latin, Greek, and French, I had learned a new one word language, imagine that, just one word, carefully emphasized by syllable and ending and I could conduct a full conversation. I do not think either my father of the Headmaster had fully thought through this but upon my return it did help my Middle English translation of Chaucer. Thus I now had the ability to speak as any good Staten Islander, just look at Jersey Shore; they are all my successors in linguistics and rhetoric, examples par excellence of Staten Island dialects.

Now this never did me any good in Cambridge, MIT or Harvard, in fact I never recall using it, but there have been times when it can so easily fall from my lips, fluid and clear, perfect pronunciation and crisp and clear diction and well parsed word structures.

Thus reading Woodward slates tome, The Price of Politics, well worth every penny, I was reminded by the actions of the then Chief of Staff at the White House how self centered egotistic amateurs use this dialect. This may was an interloper, he had no style, part thug, part Martinette, he would use this wonderful word just to show off, as if he had learned it the way I had, in the streets, amongst the people. But when you really learn, I mean really learn its use, you have an almost operatic flow, it requires hands, head, and eye motions, choreographed in a manner which can only be gained by shoveling slush in the New York Streets. Somehow the bonding which occurs with the slush, the splash, the sinister drivers, all blends into a manner of using this word with full grammatical correctness.

Frankly it is a shame that we have those in public service act this way, it becomes their legacy, it proves nothing than perhaps the thug like character of their very being, hollow men hiding in feigned words, and as one well versed in its usage, trained by some of the world’s best semiotic professionals, understanding the full sign carrying elements, I find it undignified and harmful.