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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  Jack & The Reformatory  ]             [  By Eric Chaet  ]


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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."

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 uXu #602              Underground eXperts United 2002              uXu #602
                     ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/uXu/
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