Reflections from the River

I've cleaned toilets for a living.

February 01, 2021 Bill Enyart
Reflections from the River
I've cleaned toilets for a living.
Show Notes Transcript

“Have any of you ever worked cleaning toilets for a living? Or as a waitress?” 

Cleaning toilets for a living. 

“Have any of you ever worked cleaning toilets for a living? Or as a waitress?” Reverend Faye, the part-time lay minister at the tiny Methodist Church we attend on Sundays, when we’re at the River House, our cottage overlooking the Mississippi, opened her sermon with Sunday.

          The church, is in Chester, Illinois, about an hour south of St. Louis. Chester is home to Illinois’ notorious Menard Penitentiary, built in the 1870’s and home to the state’s death row, back when Illinois had a death penalty. Faye, although raised a Baptist, became a Methodist minister due to the Baptist’s prohibition on women as ministers. She occasionally, much to my delight, delivers a rather strong progressive message for a conservative Bible-belt community.

          I can’t begin to tell you about the rest of her sermon that day because her question thrust me back forty years into a reverie of my law school days. “Yes,” I thought, “I’ve cleaned toilets for a living.” My initial experience with cleaning toilets for a living took place in basic training in the US Air Force, thankfully a relatively brief experience as I was soon promoted to the far more prestigious chore of cleaning the drill instructor’s barracks room.

          Fast forward eight years to the summer of 1977. Just finished with my first year of law school at Southern Illinois University, the part-time, unpaid law clerkship with the Monroe County, Illinois, State’s Attorney’s office in Waterloo, provided valuable experience, but no funds to pay the rent on the Pink Pagoda, a 1950’s era trailer, nicknamed for its color and filled with cat hair from its previous occupant of twenty years. The GI Bill which paid a monthly stipend during the school year provided no funds for the summer months.

          I needed a job that allowed me to perform my clerkship during normal business hours.  Second shift it would have to be. Inventorying my skills, former sportswriter, former reporter, poli sci and journalism undergrad degree, US Air Force veteran, assorted unskilled labor jobs, mostly involving cutting torches, sooty air and scarred hands.  A downtown St. Louis business needed a night shift janitor. I needed a job. A bit more than minimum wage. A bit less than I’d made as a working journalist. Fit the hours I could work. On the clock I went.

          The reverse commute, that is, driving in to downtown St. Louis, while most people were commuting home to the outlying areas, suited me. The job site, at 20th and Washington, lies in what today is a vibrant urban scene.  Then it was nearly deserted and viewed as a dangerous area of town. Parking my law school decal covered VW beetle on the street, I yanked the bike rack off the bumper and locked it in the back seat for fear of it being stolen. I easily parked within a few steps of the front door of the eight-story Chromalloy building, where underpaid photo technicians printed and assembled cheap family portrait packages for Sears, Kmart and churches.

          The only white person on the cleaning crew, initially, my fellow toilet cleaners, mop pushers and waste basket emptiers viewed me with suspicion, especially since they knew I owed my position to the white foreman who came in around noon and generally left by 6 or 7, while they came in at 3:30 and worked til midnight. But Mary, the straw boss, vouched for me and told them to give the white boy law student a chance.

          Mary paired me that first night with a slender, late middle-aged black man, who, after working his good paying day job at the GM plant came in to work his second job as a janitor. His day job provided for the house and living expenses and putting his daughters through graduate school at private universities.  The janitor job provided the play money. He loved to play the ponies. That second paycheck went to Fairmont Race Track betting windows. He only talked about the winners, never the losers. Since he worked sixteen hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, we all knew the losers outnumbered the winners.

          I confess I can’t remember my newly assigned mentors name, so we’ll call him John.  Seeking to impress John with my diligence, I hurriedly pushed my cart with cleaning supplies, toilet brush, and plastic trash bags to the third-floor men’s room and began bustling about, energetically scrubbing the toilets and swinging a mop.

          “Whoa, whoa! Slow down,” he advised me. “You’ve got to pace yourself.” The rapid fire pace of banging out an eight hundred word column, to the never-ending production of legal briefs on century old cases, the consuming desire to please teachers, then supervisors, provided me with a point of view far removed from that of a night shift janitor who knows that no matter how good or how fast he performs his tasks he will never get promoted and the pay raises will only come a nickel at a time irrespective of gleaming chrome faucets and tidy toilet bowls.

          The first few nights I wore cheap chukha boots with crepe soles. Stylish perhaps, but not fit for eight hours on your feet, pulling trash bags, wiping down desks and ensuring no pubic hairs or human waste spattered the white porcelain of the multi-stalled industrial grade rest rooms. My sojurne in law school atrophied the memory of good work boots. Luckily for my aching legs and tired feet, the battered ten-inch, ten-year-old by then, Sears work boots lingered in a card board box moved from home to apartment to apartment to apartment to apartment to mobile home. Poor people don’t throw good work boots away. They cost a day’s pay and you know you’ll need them again.

          The Sears work boots are long gone now. No longer poor, but the habits engrained young linger. The Gore-tex insulated Army boots that cost a week’s soldier pay are in the basement closet awaiting the day they’re needed. Veterans, too, don’t throw good boots away. You know you’ll need them. But then that’s redundant isn’t it. Most veterans, or at least the ones I know are working class. They know the value of a good work boot.

          Half of the dozen or so janitors were women, all unmarried, all with children, all wearing cheap, flat soled shoes with no support. No wonder they moved so slowly. Their legs hurt. Their knees hurt. Their feet hurt. Maybe they didn’t know the value of good work boots. Maybe they couldn’t afford them. Maybe their fathers never told them, like mine told me, “Son buy the best shoes you can afford. They’re worth it.” That’s why I bought those day’s pay, Sears boots. They’re worth it.

          I haven’t shopped in Sears in decades now. Sears is bankrupt now. I still buy the best shoes I can afford, but they’re from Plaza Frontenac now. They get polished by a crippled old black man at a shoe shine stand now. I tip him very well. I’ve cleaned toilets for a living.

(c) William L. Enyart
www.billenyart.com
E-mail: bill@billenyart.com