The Incident

The Incident

I had never been unemployed.  From age twelve until I left for college at age sixteen, I had worked as a paperboy six days a week and from fifteen to sixteen, I worked seven days a week, delivering papers every afternoon and working at a retail poultry store weekends from seven to seven.  So it came as a shock to me, two days into my summer job as a card-carrying laborer when the foreman told us that due to a concrete strike, there would be no work until further notice.

We were told to head down to the unemployment office to register for our benefit.  The foreman told us we had earned unemployment and to take it until the strike was over and we were called back to work.  I went to the office with a very bitter taste in my mouth. The thought of taking money for not working just didn’t sit with the way I had been brought up and I was dreading having to stand in line to get registered.  When I got to the front of the line the clerk asked a few questions, ones that I had heard her ask the three folks ahead of me.

“Have you ever filed for unemployment before?”

“Are you a member of a union?”

“Are you willing to work?”

No, Yes, and Yes were my replies.  She looked up at me with a great deal of surprise and said I really didn’t have to work; I could collect unemployment until the strike was over.  I said I would rather work.  She asked me to wait a moment and then came back and said there was a maintenance job available starting tomorrow evening at a large factory on route seven. It involved cleaning the factory, no heavy lifting and no tools required. It paid minimum wage, which at the time was $1.50 and I needed to provide my own transportation.  I accepted.

The next morning I was at Perkin Elmers, an optical engineering firm, at seven am. They had closed various parts of their cavernous work areas so that we could clean sections at a time.  The head of the cleaning crew was a hulk of a man, 6’4, 260 and dumb as a brick. I knew him from the carpenter’s union, where my dad was president.  His name was John and he had a big mouth, was a complete bigot, antagonizing everyone on the work sites. He hated my dad ,who was president of the union and who had made sure this guy never worked in the union again.  I kept my head down and my mouth shut and was given a pail of ammonia water, three rags and a step latter and told to take the 48” fluoresce light tubes from the lighting system and wash and dry them and reinstall.  Not rocket science but for minimum wage not too difficult.

Things went rather well for the first few hours until John came around to confirm everyone’s name and make sure they were all working.  Things did not go well after that.

“Hey kid, says here your name is Byxbee, that right?”

“Yes”

“You’re Bill Byxbee’s kid aren’t you?”

“Yes”

“Well that nigger loving dad of yours got me thrown out of the union.  He’s a piece of shit and like father like son!”

My father had been a boxer in the Navy during World War II. He was only 5’8” in shoes and built like a fireplug and from what I read in the clips he had in the scrapbook, he was pretty good. He tried to teach me how to box but I was not a fighter.  I had always been able to talk my way out of a showdown and my mother had taught me to turn the other cheek and not to seek confrontation.  So, I simply smiled and said, “Yes, I try to be like my father in every way.”  I had hoped that this would defuse the situation but it only enraged this animal.

He started to call into question my paternity, questioned parts of my anatomy and then began to say very unpleasant things about my parents.  It was at this point when I realized that perhaps I was not going to be able to talk my way out of this so I simply smashed him over the head with the 48” light tube I had in my hand, which got his attention- so that when he looked up he could see the stream of ammonia water heading towards his eyes and open mouth. Seeking to take advantage of the situation, I hurled all 165 pounds of me from the top of the ladder onto him, allowing gravity to give me a bit of an advantage. We rolled around in the glass and ammonia water for a few seconds before he bellowed and started to come to his feet. His face was purple, veins popping and fists the size of bricks ready to strike.  His advance was thwarted a bit by the water and glass and just as I thought my life as a scar less baby-faced kid was about to end, three rather large black guys, who had been on the crew but whom I had never met, grabbed John and dragged him away from me until security intervened.

John was still bellowing but as it turns out, the three guys who had subdued him had heard him calling my dad a nigger lover, and it appears they didn’t like the use of that word one bit. The other thing that saved me was the fact that the security guy was a moonlighting policeman on the Norwalk force. He asked us to identify ourselves and when I said Bill Byxbee, he asked if I was related to Dick Byxbee who was also a cop.  I told him he was my uncle, my dad’s little brother, and with that information any chance that I was going to be charged with assault vanished.  He told me to clean up and go home, right away. I did not have to be told twice. 

I was shaking so hard by the time I got to the car that I thought I wouldn’t be able to drive, but drive I did. I stopped in the high school parking lot to calm down and clean up as best I could.  During dinner that night I didn’t say anything about anything.  The phone rang and I was sure the police had changed their minds but instead when my dad hung up he said that the labor boss wanted to see me in the union hall tomorrow morning at seven. He asked if I knew why and I said no, perhaps the strike is over, not remembering in time that if the strike were over my dad would be the first to know. He said nothing.

Next morning at seven I was at the hall not knowing what was going to happen but fearing the worst.  The labor boss was named Tony and he looked like he had worked outside all of his life.  He brought me into his office and said,

“Didn’t I tell you to file for unemployment like everyone else?”.  

“Yes sir, you did”.

“So why didn’t ya?”

“I wanted to work for my pay”

“Unemployment ain’t free money, you paid into that account for sitawaysions like what we have now!”

“I guess I made a mistake.”

“I think you made a lotta mistakes yesterday”

“Yes sir, I guess I did.”

“It took a lot of balls to stand up to that piece of crap, your old man should be proud”.

“He doesn’t know anything about it”

“Whatta youse from the moon? Everybody knows about it”

“Can I still stay in the union?”

“Kid, you could be president of the union today!  Here’s what we do, you report here every day at seven. You clean the hall, mop the floors and get coffee and donuts, and run the numbers for the guys in the hall. You’ll be on the payroll at full hourly pay until the strike is settled and we send you out on a job. Until then,no fighting”.  At which point he hits my arm and laughs like crazy.

Nothing else was ever said about the incident, except once, a year later, when my dad asked me to change a light bulb in the house. “Think you can do it without starting a fight?”