_An anonymous tip today told our labor reporter that serious trouble
looms in the canned music industry. R. C. Jones, czar of Local 77,
AFL, has issued orders to individually guard each machine serviced by
his union. Jones had the classic "no comment" for publication, but it
is an open secret that intra-union friction is high in the
Harper-Gratiot area. Jones inferred that deliberate sabotage is
responsible for the wholesale short-circuiting of jukeboxes and
television sets. He named no names, but in an off-the-record statement
threatened to fight fire with fire. "We're not," he snapped, "going to
stand by and watch while goons ruin our livelihood. We will...._"
Now I was in a fix. They had to make a living. I'd forgotten that. A
union man myself, who was I to break another's rice bowl? I could see
no point in writing to this R. C. Jones. He'd think I was as crazy as
they come. And the newspapers--I could imagine the reactions of a
tough city editor. So, wrapped up in my own thoughts, I stepped off
the curb a little ahead of the green, and I jumped just in time. I
swore at the truck that almost got me, and it happened so quickly I
wasn't prepared to hear or to see the motor of the truck throw a
piston right through the rusted hood. White as a sheet the driver got
out of his cab, and I crossed the street against the red light and
lost myself in the crowd. This curve I was putting on the ball, it
came to me then, wasn't limited to jukeboxes and noisy radios and
burnt-out bearings. I had to watch my temper, or I was going to get
someone in trouble. I was in trouble myself, and I had to get out of
it.
By the time I got home I'd thought it over quite well. This--this
power whatever it might be, was the McCoy. Why should I waste it when
an honest dollar might be turned? A factory job in Detroit is just a
factory job, and I might keep mine for the next forty years if I lived
long enough through the noise and the dirt and the uncertainty and the
model changeover layoffs every Christmas. The Olsens' radio disturbed
my thinking and it took only a second. Either they were going to get
tired of putting new tubes into that gadget, or play it softer, or
move. I didn't care which.
So I used my wife's portable to type out a letter to Naval Ordnance in
Aberdeen where my brother-in-law used to be stationed, telling them
what I'd done, what I thought I might be able to do, and asking them
for an opportunity to give them a demonstration. In return, I asked
for a steady government job in a warm climate. Until I could arrange a
certain demonstration, I went on, I could understand they might think
me a crank, so I wouldn't at present sign my name. I suggested they
pay close attention through the week of the fifth through the twelfth
to the various press association dispatches, and I would arrange
later, in my next letter, for a more personal show if they wanted to
take it any further.
* * * * *
The fifth fell on a Saturday. Bright and early I was up to ride the
bus downtown, changing to the Woodward line, ending up at Ferndale,
all the time concentrating furiously and holding my breath as much as
I dared. On the way back home I tried to work it a little differently.
Probably no one else on the streetcar beside myself noticed there
wasn't a single passenger car, truck or bus that passed us. Every car,
as we sailed by, stalled and every traffic light we passed either
turned three colors or blinked out completely. Most of the moving cars
made it to the curb on their momentum. The others stayed where they
were. When I got off in front of the City Hall, filthy old hulk that
it is, the streetcar stayed immobile at the safety zone, it was a new
PCC car, and the insulation poured smoke from under the wheels.
Naturally there wasn't any moving traffic in back of it, or in front.
I saw to that. Then I just strolled around Cadillac Square, bollixing
up everything that occurred to me, from trucks to busses to traffic
lights. You never saw such a verminous tangled mess in all your life.
When the patrol wagons began to scream into the Square loaded with
reinforcements for the helpless purple single cop at the Michigan
intersection I let them get as far as the center of the street before
I pinned them down. Even when I saw it later in the newsreels I
couldn't believe it. Even Mack Sennett could have done no better.
I had to walk all the way out Gratiot to St. Antoine before I could
find transportation home that wasn't walled off by screaming horns and
haggard foot-patrolmen, and when I got off at my corner all Gratiot
and Harper behind me was as clogged as Woodward. I even knocked out
every red neon sign within two blocks of a traffic light. That one
might keep a few pedestrians alive a little longer.
Helen was over at her mother's helping her hang drapes when I got
home. The icebox gave me a cold Jumbo bottle and I turned on our
little portable set. On every station the spot broadcast crews were
hoarse. I spun the dials and finally concentrated on one
announcer--you know who I mean--with the raspiest, most grating voice
this side of a vixen file. Unfortunately, the housewives seem to like
him, including Helen, and it's the housewives who have the radio on
all day. I knew he was broadcasting from the roof studios of one of
our highest buildings, and I took an enormous and perverted pleasure
in holding my breath and thinking about the elevator system there. On
second thought, I held my breath again and the station left the air in
the middle of a word. I hope he liked the walk downstairs.
The newspapers next day couldn't make things add, as was natural. They
published silly interviews with all the top engineers in the city and
a good many all over the world, including the Chairman of the Board of
the company where I worked, and his answer was just as asinine as the
rest. All in all, it had been a good show, and I put in another letter
to Naval Ordnance. I knew I had gone much further than I had intended,
and I suggested they get in touch with me, if they wanted, through the
personal columns of one of the Detroit newspapers. I didn't want to
get into trouble with the city police. I didn't sign my name to the
second letter either. And that was a mistake.
* * * * *
Early in the morning of the tenth I felt good. I'd been sleeping well
lately, now that I was rid of the Olsens' radio, not to mention the
Werners', and the Smiths'. I rolled over and squinted at the luminous
hands of the' clock. Beer cheese in the icebox. Half a Dutch apple pie
left over from dinner. Milk. Helen didn't wake as I eased out of bed
and groped for my slippers, and the rustling and shuffling I heard as
I tiptoed down the back stairs I attributed to an overbrave mouse. One
of these days, I thought, I was going to have to get some traps and
catch me a mouse. When I turned on the kitchen light the mouse was
holding a howitzer nine inches away from my head.
"All right, you," the mouse snarled. "Reach!"