Chapter 13: Bring Them Up on Charges

13. Bring Them Up on Charges

                                                                               (updated 2-23-15)

Ryland Grossinger was bred in Forest Hills, NY but he was raised in Los Angeles. He was toasted when he graduated from UCLA in law but he baked too long in the Southern California sun when he tried to butter up to his boss and was fired. Rather than loaf around, he yearned to go back east and see what was cooking. He became a barista for Dante’s Coffee and found his place at the table. 

      While Ry had no trouble getting settled with the handsome allowance his well-to-do parents provided him with, he wanted to make a mark in legal world on the side of the oppressed. Being short brought His contempt for others who looked down of him. He felt he knew what it was like to be a poor, black and to have to pump a nickel wherever they forked-out salary. He was going to help the workers of the world. A working class hero was something to be. 

      He went to the IWW website and discovered there was a branch in New York City meeting on the Lower Eastside in a place called ABC No Rio. One slow Sunday afternoon, he got on the subway at Broadway-Lafayette and took the F train to Essex Street, walking over to Rivington near the Streit’s Matzo Factory. He thought he would be late, and hoped to be to make a grand entrance but the meeting, scheduled for 2pm so some members could get over their Sunday morning hangovers, hadn't started yet. Only Emerson was there to welcome Ry with Colonial Crutch from Macon, Georgia, on the throne downstairs. 

      "Is this the IWW meeting?"

      "It sure is. Are you looking for us?"

      "I thought there'd be more of you."

      "Some of them are coming late but Colonial Clutch will be right back; he's our legal expert."

      "I'm a lawyer, too; B.A. from UCLA."

      "Oh, Californian; the sunshine state,"

      "I was born in Queens; my parents moved west when I was young."

      "I didn't notice any New York accent." Just then, Eupheus Crutch's footsteps could be heard climbing the fragile stairs and walking back, entering the dilapidated room.

      "Well, what do we have here?"

      "You must be Crutch," said Ry without standing to greet him. Already Crutch was his brother in law and a sibling rivalry was brewing."

      Crutch sat down and opened his satchel removing a booklet with the IWW Constitution and another booklet called One Big Union. "Here you are; read these when you get a chance. Y'all living in New York now?"   

      "Yes, I live on East 12th near Tompkins Square Park." Ry had been living in the ground floor studio since arriving six months earlier.

      Just then, footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs, two sets of footsteps, both heavy, like the footstep of working men. Two male voices were talking loudly as they came through and slammed the open door. 

      "Oh so sorry," said Adonis, “I didn't realize there was anyone here." 

      "Oh he did that on purpose," Mack reached out a hand. Hi, you must be that fella from California. GHQ said you might be coming in. My name is Maynard, I'm a carpenter. Call me May."

      "Yeah, some carpenter. He's a fuckin' boss, I tell you," shouted Adonis as he threw his bag to the floor and roughly took a broken seat to sit on. "He still owes me two hundred bucks."

      "Now be polite, "Adonis," said May."You'll scare Ry away. Ry it is, isn't it?"

      "It's Ryland but my friends call me Ry, Ry Grossinger."

      "You know you're famous in New York."

      "Yeah, someone told me there was a Jewish bread company with my name."

      "It's okay. The Industrial Workers of the World have no racist tendencies."

      "I'm not Jewish. My parents are Jewish."

      "Well, doesn't that make you Jewish?" said Crutch. "I read somewhere that the religion follows the mother's side in your culture."

      "I'm losing my religion," said Ry angrily.

      Just then, another member slinked into the room from the second door to the back, the one that led into a little storage area and then the kitchen. 

      "Come in Jack; don't be shy," said May. "Ry, this is our fifth member present."

      "Y'all sit down now, here? We have a quorum. Let's get started we're an hour and a half late already."

      "I can't stay past 4pm; I have an important meeting with a fellow barista."

      "Barista? What, do you work in a coffee shop?"

      "Dante’s," said Ry with distain. "We are trying to start a union there."

      "That's great, Ry," exclaimed May. "How can we help?"

      "Help? You're a fucking boss is all! You can't even help your own crew," chimed in Adonis.

      Emerson saw that Ryland was looking in disbelief at this motley crew he had just joined. H e knew he was thinking the same thing Emerson thought when he joined his first IWW meeting: "This is a union?" 

      Ry Grossinger was on the way to becoming a working class star buck. His grind would be Dante’s Coffee, a franchise chain that had thousands of locations across the United States and around the world.

      Colonial Eupheus Crutch, the gentleman Wobbly who headed straight to New York City from Macon, Georgia, was the cosmonaut Bolshevik to Ry’s Astro Boy persona; he was in a catch-up race to the moon of Industrial Worker union stardom. All the underhanded insults Eupheus endured from miniscule Ryland would have made him a sympathetic cult hero down south, but there in New York, he was fair game for every yokel joke cosmopolitan sophistication could dish out. He held his head high throughout the confederate-baiting northerners’ rants. Did he not suggest the Stars and Bars were to be proud of as his state flag? So what if Clutch was? Clutch was ready to show that “tiny organizer with the big mouth” what organizing was all about. The south would rise again in New York City.

      He went looking for workers to be organized by him. The firebrand who got him moving was William Stacks, Willy the Glove. Willy, who bore a resemblance to Popeye, had that California look of sun-glassed indifference to what anyone but he had to say. He knew Ryland Grossinger’s kind; he’d dealt with them before, the bosses from the other side. Now, in his 50’s, unmarried, getting wrinkled, a drifter with a cowboy hat, Willy had more tricks than sleeves to hide. He wore a right-handed gray felt construction worker’s glove with railroad stripe wrist band like the Phantom of the Opera wore his mask; he never took it off except, maybe, to sleep.

Willy Stacks, who claimed to be Cesar Chavez’s gloved left hand in the struggle of the California grape growers United Farm Workers at Delano, was raring for a fight to bring back the glory. Colonial Crutch had his wishes fulfilled. Emerson, as the treasurer of the New York City branch had the task of raising funds depleted by the Dante Barista Union (as Ryland called his offshoot) and holding down the fort for Wobblies with other pet struggles to finance. Emerson went out with Willy and Crutch on hunches. He was Crutch’s hum-dinger; the cat’s meow. He was the only man more macho than Crutch.

      Willy the Glove had an insider’s tip that there were some workers in a processing plant in Long Island City that were pissed off about their low wages and heavy work schedule. Willy himself had worked there for a while driving a refrigerated delivery truck. The company, Farm Freshness, had a two hundred thousand square-foot warehouse with hundreds of employees, mostly immigrant workers and ex-cons that collected and boxed shopping lists of groceries for deliveries to customers. They were like a supermarket on wheels.

      “Hundreds of workers who are ready to organize; I feel it in my bones. Enough shit from their supervisors,” said Willy pointing his glove finger in the direction of the plant, three miles uptown across the East River from the IWW meeting place off Essex Street. “They’re ready to pop!” 

      “They need to meet with us somehow without letting their supervisors see,” said Crutch, the canon wheels turning. “We must let them, know we can steer them right; they can trust us.” Crutch stood, arms folded across his chest, mustache drooping down his seriously red face.

      “How many copies do you want?” questioned Emerson picking up a thread from earlier in the meeting, before Ryland and four other baristas came to make their motion and move on to their own meeting place. “You said they have how many workers?”

      “We need bilingual flyers; Spanish on one side, English on the other.”

      “Ask Ernie in Bushwich if he could do it.” Ernie Pancho was the Wobbly who worked with a Latino group from the barrio there in an organization called “Allanar El Camino,” Pave the Way.

      “Let’s get, I don’t know, two hundred printed,” said Willy, matter-of-factly.

      “That many? Okay, on thin paper. They’re going to throw them away.”

      “No. They must be top quality! Don’t let them think we’re a cheap organization.” Crutch shook his head slowly in agreement, his eyes shut under raised brows, lips enclosing down-pointed whiskers.

      “But we are cheap; we only have four hundred dollars left in the treasury,” said Emerson pleadingly.

      “We may need more,” said Willy, tapping the rim of his Mexican Stetson an inch from the left uncovered hand of the arm leaning on the radiator. “Can’t tell; the lady workers on the line have boyfriends.” Billy went on,” They need some confidence, too. We can give it to them. You know, ex-cons need a push; they’re a little shy about losing this job, one of the only places that’ll hire them.”

      In the weeks before, Willy and his de facto spokesman, Crutch, had unleashed their organizing abilities on the fine workers of Farm Freshness. They’d made a motion and had gotten three hundred dollars from the branch to reserve breakfast in a little luncheonette outside the plant; no refund. The breakfast would be “chin-wag,” as the Colonial called it, “a chinwag for the scissor-bills.” Before Crutch and Willy the Glove had set their sights on the Farm Freshness workers, he had Emerson and another Wob named Fergie visiting junk yards in Greenpoint. The barking dogs at each job site in and around painfully drab and weed wild corrugated metal fences were omens. On the dead end summer streets of industrial Greenpoint, there was no sense trying to get passed the gates, but that didn’t deter Willy the Glove or Colonial Crutch who followed close by at Willy’s new Red Wing construction-booted heels. Emerson and Fergie shied the other way. Beyond the crumpled gates backed into by trucks too many times stood two or three men in short-sleeved shirts and jeans, looking outward and scratching their heads at the four men milling around in the usually vacant street.

      Willy bravely took a chance. The other Wobblies looked as he strutted past the gate, black chained pit bulls barking madly, to speak with the workers awaiting him. No, they weren’t workers. The workers, he was told, were on their break and he’d better stay away and not bother them.

      “Yes sir, just asking,” said Willy looking skyward under his Ray-Bans, the dog pulling at its chain.

      “”They’re supervisors,” he nonchalantly said passing the other three Wobblies out of sight up the broken blazing street. “How was I to know?” said the veteran of many a California grape grower strike.

      “Let’s get out of here; this is stupid,” said Emerson, stating the obvious. “Holy shit,” chimed in Fergie. “If this wasn’t the biggest waste of time! Willy? There are no workers here to organize!”
      “I say there are!” said Willy emphatically.

      “He said there are then there most certainly are,” added Crutch confidently. “Where y’all going to now, Willy?”

      “Back to the Chinese warehouse in Bushwick.”

“Damn if I’m going there I’d rather be in bed with a bitch,” said Fergie. ”I’m heading home to Brooklyn. Where’s the ‘L’ Train?” Fergie was off and so was Emerson. They’d had enough organizing for the day. It seemed pretty disorganized to them. Who was this Willy the Glove, anyway? How did he show up at the IWW meeting and who let him in?

“Let’s go see if Ernie is at Allanar El Camino; it’s just ten minutes from here,” said Willy as he walked down the street to his battered Land Rover with Crutch and drove off dropping off Emerson and Fergie at the subway station a few blocks away.

      “They’ll need some Red Cards for sure, I do believe,” said Crutch.

      “I want to make a deal with you.”

      “He wants to make a deal with us.”

      “Bring our union up to date.” Eupheus Crutch had requested at the previous monthly meeting, and over the internet, that members rendezvous with him at Ft. Green Park, it was decided as most of the members lived in Brooklyn, on a Saturday next, one o’clock, to hear a very important proposal he had been working on for months, had even sent in to general headquarters for their approval, to no avail. He felt that the weight of a New York City General Membership endorsement would open up some eyes when it was published in the G.O.B., the General Office Bulletin for the Industrial Workers of the World.

      “I’ve been thinking, and sure working hard. Tell me how y’all feel. I’m glad y’all come here today. If Eugene comes it’s five, and we’ll have a quorum; we can vote on it and make branch policy. Thank you for listening. Cigarette Emerson? Oh yes, that’s right. You’ve quit. How’s that going, by the way? Uh-huh; didn’t mean to tempt you. What’s that; sure Fellow Worker Fergie. You are more than welcome to one. Well, well well. Lookie who’s comin up yonder hill, and only an hour late. I’m sure he has a good reason; he always does. Why Fellow Worker Portobello, you do us honor with your presence. Why sure we’ll be finished soon; I wouldn’t want to keep you from your Dante Workers meeting. I, too, have an important meeting in the City at five o’clock. I’m so glad you could attend. And, congratulations; you are the fifth member here in good standing. You are in good standing, aren’t you? Well that’s just fine and dandy.

      Without further ado, I have here in my satchel all the documentation y’all will need to make a proper informed decision. We have a chance to make history here, fellow workers, and sister worker Sadie. Fergie, Emerson, Pete. What you now have in your hands is the re-worked Wheel of Industrial Organization.  

      Compare it, if you would all be so kind, to Figure ‘B,’ Father Haggerty’s wheel. The good father, bless his Wobbly soul, besides leaving the pulpit for some more worthwhile and constructive vocation, for the welfare of all working folk, designed this well nigh about a century ago at a time when certain industries were still immature or hadn’t even been born yet. For example, there were no franchise restaurants with prepared foods back then so he classified retail workers in the food industry instead of assigning them an industrial union number of their own; he put them with butchers and greengrocers instead of listing them as sales clerks. What’s that Pete? Yes, I know y’all make cappuccino and latte, but, bear with me a moment, I shall answer all your questions in due course. That is why I.U. 640 is no longer reasonable and another number should be assigned service workers. Now look, if you will, at the new wheel I invented; a separate I.U. 660 has been created to identify all workers in the fast food industry. What’s that, Emerson? Why of course. I’ll just run my mouth a little while you find yourself a place to relieve yourself. I shall go no further until you return. Why yes, sister worker Sarah; I would love a candy.”

       Eupheus Crutch went on for another hour using all the time allotted to him. His fellow workers were tired and wanted to go.

      “I know it’s late but I call for a vote on endorsing the new wheel of Industrial Organization I put together. Now who seconds the motion?” No one raised their hand. “Now come on y’all. How about you Emerson; second the motion, won’t you?”

      “I don’t think we should be wasting our time reinventing the wheel when there are more important things to do.”

      “But I have explained the necessity there is for new industry…”

      “I have to go Crutch; another time,” said Pete as he stood up from the lawn to leave.”

      “Fellow workers: let us strike while the iron’s hot; now sit down for a moment won’t you fellow worker?”

      “Okay, I second the motion, and vote ‘no’ for changing the wheel.”

      “But we’re not voting on changing the wheel; we’re only voting for an endorsement from our branch for the acceptance by the general committee to bring it up for a union-wide vote.

      The other three Wobblies all raised their hands to vote ‘no.’

      “The vote is four to one, fellow worker Eupheus. That’s that.”

      “Well if y’all are going to vote not to endorse the proposal then I retract the proposal.”

      “You can’t do that; it’s underhanded,” said sister worker Sadie.

      “Call it what you will sister worker; I retract my proposal.”

      “Too late,” Pete said as he stood and walled a few steps down the grassy knoll. “The vote’s been taken. We do not endorse your stupid wheel. Bye?”

      “Well, I never!”

      The result of the vote for the NYC GMB rejection of Colonial Crutch’s wheel was printed in the monthly Wobbly City newsletter.

      Ah yes; The Wobbly City; Emerson had taken on the responsibility for organizing a monthly newsletter for the branch. No one requested that he do it, and no one offered to help; he just thought it was the right thing to do and he felt like volunteering to do it. He promised the general membership branch that he would send each member attending the monthly meeting a first draft of the newsletter for their approval before he printed it up and would spend no branch funds. It was an offer no one could refuse, so they voted to make Emerson the editor of the Wobbly City, a name he himself had come up with. For three years, every month, Emerson culled news stories from the branch members, sometimes tweaking minutes from meeting or pulling arms to get some copy. Usually he had to write copy himself, under three different pseudonyms.

      Sometimes it got a little dicey about what he could print. Eupheus Crutch claimed all names should be anonymous so the authorities couldn’t pin anything on anyone and cautioned Emerson to remember that sabotage was disavowed by the union so don’t print anything about it. Ry Grossinger took exception to a truthful article about his nascent Dante Barista Union because it didn’t reflect the image he wanted to have presented to the public. They almost came to blows over propaganda versus truth. Ry would write the articles about him by himself. Emerson had to edit the newsletter to let him do so, and he had the votes of the general membership, padded that week with baristas to make sure his veto held up.

      When one fellow worker threw his hat into the ring to be editor, every barista there, and the few members who weren’t baristas, agreed to let the new guy have a chance since Emerson had been doing it for three years. Tom Hood became the new editor saying he would work with Emerson on the transition. He decided it was better to use the internet technology top put the Wobbly City on-line and save paper. One issue on the internet came out. After that, Tom Hood was too busy with other more important projects to continue; and he didn’t realize how much work he would have to put into it. The newsletter languished never to see the light of day again. By the time Ry Grossinger had taken over the branch behind the curtain and nominated Emerson back as the editor of the Wobbly City, Emerson had already quit the branch.

      It was nine years later that the Labor Board said fired the Dante’s Barista should get his job back. Emerson was glad Bruno was vindicated, after all this time. He'd always been a hero to him. Bruno Ascus was not a union organizer; he was told he was one by Ryland whose dirty work he did. Emerson remembered Bruno feeling his oats after Ryland dared him to stand up to the manager. Then, after he was fired, while Ryland kept his job, Ryland used Bruno as a test law case with some connections he had. Bruno didn’t even know what NLRB stood for when Ryland filed the petition on his behalf; all Bruno did was sign the paper.

In the nine years since federal authorities decided he should get his case back, Bruno washed dishes in delicatessens, took care of elderly homebound clients for an agency, and washed floors in a rehab center. “It’s disgusting,” Emerson thought, “that after all this time, his jobs were so bad that he still wanted his Dante’s Coffee Shop job back!”

 Emerson thought of calling up Bruno. He couldn’t muster the courage. To Bruno, Ryland was a hero though he lost Bruno the best job he ever had, literally. Emerson recalls how Ryland and two other Wobbly baristas wore the IWW button at work, too, but carefully didn’t say anything to management that would be considered grounds for firing; he wasn’t ready to play that card, yet. Bruno wasn’t that discreet. 

Bruno Ascus had already moved on, married and had kids when Ryland, seeing another opportunity for union fame, brought charges on his behalf to the NLRB accusing Dante’s of unfairly abusing him for union activism. The board ruled against the coffee chain. Dante’s took its case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals the court gave the case back to the NLRB after deciding that Bruno didn’t curse the manager in front of customers; just in front of other baristas.

Two years later, the NLRB had a new decision: Bruno’s firing was illegal no matter what because Bruno’s union activism contributed to the decision to get rid of him. The NLRB pointed out that Dante’ didn’t punish other employees for cursing—including the manager—and that a memo about Bruno’s dismissal specifically said it was because Bruno supported the IWW union.

When Emerson Davinsky started feeling the need for anti-Alzheimer’s medication, he put the pen down and stopped writing his memoirs. Through all the past e-mails and flame wars, he couldn’t put on his pants without pulling up a memory.

When he saw the news on-line about Bruno Ascus, he got that feeling again. Bruno was vindicated after nine years after he was fired from Dante’s Coffee Shop in the early days of the Ry Grossinger organizing there; Grossinger had an idea, for IWW solidarity, for workers to wear buttons during work time, even though only five of the twelve workers were in the union.

Ryland had contacted the NLRB to schedule an election. Emerson and the other Wobblies in the branch felt it showed their hand without a solid majority, it got Bruno, naive as he was, into an argument with the manager and eventually fired. Before a vote could be taken to join the union, it was postponed because they knew they would lose, since Dante management packed the location with anti-union stalwarts.

The only person who benefitted from the organizing was Ry Grossinger; the corporate news it generated made him slightly famous, enough to be invited to write a preface to an old IWW anthology, get hangers-on, and make use of his law credentials.

He never asked permission from the IWW GMB to start the union drive and, finally, depleted the GMB of funds by stuffing votes; only Dante workers went to vote. Ry never shared funds raised by the Dante baristas with the GMB or GHQ. He even started his own website and list-serve without approval. With the tide against Emerson and no support from friends like Jack Covert who quit the branch, he never brought Ry up on charges; he left the branch in disgust.

It was the first shot in a volley of union organizing that the New York City General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World tried to accomplish. All the organizing had ended before it took hold, like moving a broken chair before the glue had dried or trying to sit on the chair after it had been removed, so eager were Emerson’s fellow workers to outdo each other. Workers who lost their jobs because of the impatience of the advising organizers would eventually win some of their cases in court after guilt and pro bono defense helped them get through. Colonel Crutch even donated a sum of his own money to ease his conscience and get workers their jobs back. Emerson was long gone from the branch by the time mop-up began.

Colonial Crutch moved on as Ryland moved away with his own version of the IWW. Emerson stayed true to the General Membership Branch and tried to safeguard meetings and funds for all members, not just Ryland’s gang or the Clutch-Willy faction.

In Brooklyn Crutch and Willy were joined by Fergie and Emerson and a few others at four shops that had let them help organize unions for them. Emerson was especially helpful with his Mandarin ability by ad-libbing chants outside the Chinese run businesses. For their services, all workers in two of the shops had been fired and management demanded to see proof of legal immigrant status as a way of scaring the un-fired workers into behaving.

Emerson proudly participated in the union pushes at the shops in Bushwick. One day in particular stands out in his mind as exemplary. The day began at 5:30am in front of Great City Produce. A few workers arriving heard whistles and home-made drums. A supervisor kept the door closed an hour until the Latino manager arrived; he could speak with his own people, the Chinese bosses knew. Next, Emerson and the other Wobblies walked to the nearby Americana Market. It was there the previous year that four workers were fired for organizing. A few stayed on because they were discreet and not openly involved with the union, so the management thought.

After stopping off for breakfast, Emerson took his fellow workers in his car a few miles away to Dawn Plus Corp., formally called Rosy Supply Corp. Rosy Supply was the company that fired all its workers involved with the IWW. Wobblies from out of town in New York City at the time joined the demonstration to get the workers their back pay.

The final stop of that perfect union day was at Hung-Easy, the foodstuffs distributor that Willy the Glove and Colonial Crutch went to after one worker complained about them at Allanar El Camino. The warehouse was locked up for the holiday. Despite that, the solidarity party continued until the police came to send them away. Emerson drove his fellow workers back to the subway station and headed home fulfilled.

Willy the Glove expressed himself satisfied with the day’s events in every way. Everyone let him believe it was his party. Emerson resented him and the way the branch was strictly divided along selfish lines of heroism by Crutch and Ryland. Despite all the hard effort, almost everyone who was being helped organizing lost their jobs. Baristas usually didn’t go to Bushwich actions and Bushwich organizers weren’t welcome at barista meetings. Only Emerson and a few other Wobblies stayed on to participate in both. Emerson knew there had to be a better way. The NYC GMB was ruining more people’s lives than they helped. Only Ryland came out smelling like Bread & Roses.  

“Tell us about the time Ryland Grossinger and Tumor Israeli made the motion to get stocking hats for all the New York City Dante baristas,” the historian sent by The Labor Studies Center in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan adjusted the microphone in front of Emerson and checked the recorder on the table to make sure it was running. It was five years earlier that the Wobbly City newspaper was cited for progressive journalism and added to the university archives. Gerald Rubin came to New York to meet and interview its editor, Emerson Davinsky, who wasn’t the editor any more or even active in the New York City General Membership Branch, but it would be a good story.

      “There were enough baristas there for a quorum; five members minimum. They all voted ‘yes’ and the motion passed; that’s all. It was that simple.”

      “Did they say they would pay the branch back for them?”

      “Yes, that’s what Ry and Tumor said.”

      “Ry?” Mr. Rubin looked amused.

      “Yeah. They said they would, at the wholesale price, of course, but none of them ever did.”

      “Where did you buy the stocking hats from?”

      “GHQ; Secretary-Treasurer Lexus in Philadelphia had them made for the outreach store there. I asked her to send them up pronto because the Dante’s Workers were planning a job action at the Union Square store and wanted to have them; it would be cold out there on the picket line.”

      “It must have been upsetting,” the historian commented.

      “It wasn’t at first. I got a thrill going to the picket line with the box full of stocking hats. All the baristas greeted me like I was a hero coming to hold the fort down. Before I had a chance to collect payment they grabbed the hats from the box. Some put them on their heads, others stashed them somewhere; some took two, wore one and stashed the other. Some friends of the baristas took one, too, and I never saw them again.”

      “Did you at least get one?”

      “No, they were all gone, all twenty of them.”

“They hijacked the General Membership Branch and looted the funds,” said Emerson somewhat distraught at the regression of the branch. “Ry just smeared his own jelly over it and made it his own with Tumor and the other barista friends of his.”

      “What did the other non-affiliated members do?”

      “Well, that drunkard, Fergie, wagging his tail in excitement, went along with the schmoozing Rye Bread spread over him. He was Ryland’s peer; the same age. Not like me; I was an old fart to them. Colonial Crutch had his head up his ass with his Bushwick project. His only regret was that he couldn’t loot the GMB funds first. There was no money left in the treasury when he came to the next monthly meeting and made a motion for outreach funds.”

      “What about Jack Covert?”

      “After they wouldn’t listen to his advice at the meeting, he slinked further into the shadows of the branch. Then he wrote that e-mail on our list-serve: ‘You’re all a bunch of assholes,’ he wrote, including me too, I guess.” Emerson and Gerald laughed at the notion of the branch creep calling the others ‘assholes.’

      “No one had the time or energy to fight these schmucks and bringing them up on charges would have been a waste of time.”

      “Why.”

      “Why? Because Ry and the baristas were the only members coming to meetings; they wouldn’t have voted for the charges if there had been anyone to second the motion in the first place, which there wasn’t.”  

      “Look at them now. They have their own website, their own column in the Industrial Worker. The ‘bored from within’ and took over a void left when real Wobblies, sick with disgust, walked away,” Emerson said shaking his head.

      “I didn’t give up though,” he went on. “After a year of boycotting the branch activities and meetings, I finally took Fergie’s advice and went back.

      “Did you go back to editing the Wobbly City?”

      “No, I didn’t. Ry chose Tom Hood to be the editor and voted him in when I left the branch. The shithead wrote one hard copy edition and one half-hearted electronic edition on the internet, and then stopped doing it all together. Later another Dante barista, this sister worker named Dyin’, was given the paper but she had bigger plans; the I.W. was her goal and there she is printing out the crap Ryland and the new-fangled Wobblies approve of, the fakirs they are.”

      “They wouldn’t even vote to make me secretary when I called the ace and put in my candidacy.” Emerson took a long gulp on the water bottle he’d been holding. He’d been talking with the reporter for half an hour and his mouth was getting high as his temperature rose. “Ry Bread nominated a guy, actually a nice guy, but he had only been in the branch a few months. His qualification, according to that louse, was that he was new and should be given a chance to demonstrate and learn leadership skills, in other words, he could be Ry Grossinger’s puppet.”

      “I left the branch for good after that. Well, actually I did go back a while later on when this folksinger from France was in town wanted to do a fund-raiser for the IWW at this bar in Williamsburg. I helped organized the show, went to the bar and all to get permission, advertised it on Indymedia, and we had a pretty good turn-out. I only did it because Fergie said the funds would be GMB funds; not Dante funds. I stood at the door and asked patrons to donate a suggested five dollars and we raised over three hundred dollars. But Fergie didn’t like that I was asking people to donate funds, would you believe that?” The reporter from The Labor Studies Center in Ann Arbor shook his head in disbelief.

      “Like I was a class enemy; I wasn’t supposed to ask people to donate five dollars or whatever they could afford. Fergie treated me like shit and said he was going to tell Ryland Grossinger what I was doing like he was a principal or something. Schmuck!”

A young woman walked into the library, a friend of Gerald Rubin, and sat down at the table introducing herself to Emerson. “We’re almost done, Flo.”

“Oh that’s okay,” she said, “Take your time.”

“Wow, what time is it? I have to get ready to go anyway,” Emerson said looking at his watch. “Anyway, let me conclude: I left the branch for good after that and the new secretary, the one that Ryland nominated, would send me an e-mail from time to time asking me to reconsider coming back to the branch. He persuaded me and I told him I would, but he kept asking me and calling me on the phone like I didn’t answer. I called him back and left a message and said I was coming to the next meeting whenever that would be but he never called me back; it’s like there was a glitch in the e-mails in the computer, but I have the proof; I have the e-mails he sent me and my responses that didn’t seem to get through. Maybe someone was deleting them on purpose and he never saw them. I don’t know. He kept writing asking me why I wouldn’t respond and then said I was no longer in good standing and would not contact me again.”

Emerson, Gerald, and Flo stood and put on their winter coats and headed out into the streets of Greenwich Village. Emerson was told his account would be put into the file the labor studies department had on the IWW NYC GMB. Perhaps they were spies satisfied that, with the losers in the branch and the dishonest ego trippers they were, the F.B.I. had nothing to worry about.

 Those monthly Wobbly City newsletters Emerson edited (and mostly wrote himself with no help) are great works, he felt. He would have kept doing them if the Wobblies at the NYC GMB, spearheaded by Ryland, hadn't taken the editorship away from him and given it to Tom Hood who wrote one belated edition and lost interest. Later, after Ry Grossinger took over the branch, he had the nerve to make a motion that Emerson to resume editorship after refusing to second his nomination for chapter secretary. Emerson declined and left the branch. Emerson was glad he kept color copies of all the editions.

If everything had worked out as Emerson hoped, the IWW would again be the spirit that animated the labor movement as it was a century ago. This rag-tag organization with two thousand members in good standing* worldwide (*dues paid up to date) would have had a lecture circuit like the businessman, author and investor, Robert Kiyosaki who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad, not for entrepreneuring weasels but for hard-working victims oppressed by that shitty top-down attitude. Ayn Rand would have become a cartoon character villain in a ‘truth and justice’ comic book about the un-American way a super hero of the working class would be, realistically, and she would suffer her dog-eat-dog ways with monster dogs eating her putrid flesh, literally. 

All Emerson ever wished for, and all his Pop ever expected him to be successful at was raising a family and being true to them, alive and after he was gone. It just wasn’t working out that way. Even in the progressive movement, there were under-achievers who tried to get over on others to prove their worth to themselves and attract dumb-ass woman holding out for anti-heroes such as themselves.

Chapter 14: Rehearsals for Retirement

14: Rehearsals for Retirement

                                                                          (Updated 2-23-15)

A comrade is hard to find, Emerson thought. It's like a partner in crime; you almost have to be criminals together to be comrades, even if the only crime is going against the system. Each person has his own way of doing it. Emerson discovered that there was no correct way. A comrade was like a lover, never a friend. A friend didn't care what you thought; he would always be there with you; A lover could get AIDS or a baby from you. Funny as it is, by being a friend, you try to get closer and understand each other, certainly not make the other dislike you by using privileged information against him. Emerson never considered Mr. Jack Covert a friend, though he tried and tried to be one to him. 

      When Emerson was placed in an Inquiry Team with Jack, Mrs. Lasso, and Mrs. Italano, the assistant principal, Ms. Nachos, had no knowledge of the animosity between Jack Covert and Emerson; they had been good friends when she first took over the department. She knew Mr. Covert from her last school before it was closed; Jack was transferred to Emerson’s school while Nachos got an office job. She sympathized with Jack Covert’s stance on many issues, as she did with Emerson, but she didn't understand how rivalries form out of jealousy; she was above that. Emerson was above that, too; he accepted Mr. Covert despite quirks in his personality that kept others at distance from him. Mr. Covert was under the influence of a drug called ‘insecurity’; it could never be flushed from your system.

      The modus operandi of Jack Covert's was his proficiency on the internet, his computer skills. He allowed others to see him in that light. He was good at it because he had to be. There was too much at stake if one of his firewalls was let down. As an anarchist and possible pedophile, it was essential to have such skills. It was the only way he could carry on in the light of day and conservative haziness. He kept to himself, Emerson had thought, because he was doing something great, something secret for the revolution. Jack didn’t mind Emerson’s lack of social graces believing that. Jack didn’t know that wasn’t all Emerson suspected him of; Emerson tried to believe, never knowing the truth. Integrity and privacy were the most precious prerequisites of Jack’s creed. People mistook it for his exalting intelligence. Emerson knew him better. 

      After Mr. Covert sabotaged Emerson's standing with the Chinese students in the school, after he played the “traitor” card with the Chinese students’ brainwashed hatred for any support of Taiwan, Emerson knew Jack was incapable of being his friend, forever. "I have to stay away from that fool; he's closing every door on me."

      It was a number of years before Emerson dreamed of retirement, the year after Jack left the Bread & Roses Club, that he went to the Chinese Club for his 'professional assignment.' Every teacher had to have a ‘professional assignment;’ calling the homes of truant students, organizing a book room, or tutoring failing students. Every teacher, by contract, had to have one. Teachers were given a list of assignments they could apply for and, like tenure, they had retention rights if they had the assignment the year before. Mr. Covert joined Emerson in starting the Bread & Roses Club since, of all the professional assignments, it was one that didn't seem like clerical work or tutoring. Covert left the Bread & Roses Club after a disagreement with Emerson but he didn't want to have a ‘professional assignment’ doing clerical work. That's when he asked Mr. Lao if he could help him at the Chinese Club. 

 Lao Yo-Tiao was Emerson's friend and colleague from the beginning. They had things in common. Mr. Lao had lived in Taiwan most of his life and Emerson lived there for seven years, married from there, spoke Mandarin and understood Taiwanese people. In the beginning, he thought Mr. Lao was Taiwanese, too. He was, after all from Taiwan. 

      "I was a principal of a middle school. They gave me the position after I left the military. In the military, I was an officer. They made me an officer but I didn't want to be one. When they told me to bring my troop out for target practice, I had them fire their weapons into the ocean just to unload."

Emerson realized nothing about Mr. Lao at first because he had no index to understand how a man could become an officer and a principal unless he really wanted and worked hard to be one. Then, one day, Phoenix explained it to him:

      "Mr. Lao's father was an important officer in the Kuomintang. Then, they fled to Taiwan in 1947. He was very rich in his position of power. Lao was his oldest son; that meant he was the prime benefactor of the power and wealth his father could bestow upon him from his position of privilege. That's how he became an officer in the army. That's how he became a principal of a school," said Phoenix, a native Taiwanese, with resentment.

       "In 1979, when Carter pulled out recognition of The Republic of China in Taiwan and gave it to The Peoples' Republic of China, Mr. Lao, as hundreds of wealthy privileged mainlanders in Taiwan did, panicked and escaped, with his money, to other countries, mostly America. That's why he left Taiwan; to protect his money. His sister was in Brooklyn from Hong Kong. He came here."

 Mr. Lao never talked about that with Emerson; he didn't want Emerson to know. He didn't want anyone to know. He wanted Emerson to think he was just a country bumpkin from Taiwan who got lucky, maybe had some land from sugarcane plantations or banana groves that were bought by some developer and made him rich overnight.

Emerson felt it was strange though that Mr. Lao knew Cantonese though he was ‘from Taiwan.’ Cantonese was the language of his father, and he was a little boy when he flew from China to Taiwan with his family on that clear-out date in 1947. “His first language was Cantonese. As a boy he learned Taiwanese by growing up in Taiwan, talking to kids and going to market, but he was a mainlander with all the privileges of being a mainlander; free housing, 50% off education,18% interest on bank account savings, land appropriated from Taiwanese peasant, etc.," Phoenix explained. “He probably used his credentials, money, and connections to get a job as a Chinese teacher in your school just as he did in Taiwan." 

      By his own admission, Mr. Lao was a very poor teacher, and, like everything else in his life, he didn't like doing it. His great pleasure, smoking, acting like a gentry, sex with prostitutes, and playing may jong needed a cover from nine to five; but he hated teaching, spending most of the class time schmoozing and laughing with students. The students loved him because he passed them without their having to do any work. They asked him to run the Chinese Club, an extracurricular affair, so they could run over him. Based on foreign nationality, not interest or skill, when Mr. Kao, the dedicated leader of the club, was foxed out of the school in a power play with the principal, Lao reluctantly took over the club and did exactly the same nothing he did with the students in his class. In fact, students would go to the club to exchange and copy homework with other Chinese students.

      One fateful day, Lao was given word that there would be a cutting of language classes at the school because of the budget; the Chinese classes would be cut and his position would be phased out. Lao was urged to become a guidance councilor if he wanted to stay at the school. "But I know nothing about counseling students," he pleaded to the Assistant Principal of Student Affairs who had a policy of keeping dirty water instead of finding clean water, so long as the dirty water was still wet. All Lao had to do was take a few in-service classes and, voila, he could become a guidance counselor for the Chinese immigrant students.

How much money was paid off and to whom it was given, Emerson didn't know, but it couldn't have been that Lao was needed; the AP student affairs was Eurocentric and had no feeling at all for anyone from the Far East, especially a schlep like Mr. Lao. "Just give the Chinese kids a Chinese person to get them out of the way," is what she thought. "I don't want to bother with those Chinese. I have better things to do."  And so Mr. Lao became their inept guidance counselor and well as an inept faculty advisor of the Chinese Club. At least he wasn't an inept Chinese teacher any more, Emerson thought, though he loved his friend for being on the stoop of the school, sharing cigarettes and jokes, but being a student in his class, a private in his army battalion, or to go to him for guidance was another story. Mr. Lao was nice to chat, with in-between classes, and he knew about Taiwan even if Emerson didn't know about Mr. Lao.

      Emerson introduced Mr. Covert to Mr. Lao on the stoop of the school, smoking cigarettes, acting aloof from the staff, separate, special, laughing at the ‘schmucks’ inside who ran the school and the union. Emerson was apologetic to Lao for Covert who never opened up to anyone and always acted like he had something up his sleeve, always like he knew something no one else did. Emerson put up with Mr. Covert because at least, he seemed to be a revolutionary, even a radical, and they were both Industrial Workers of the World. Emerson made excuses for Mr. Covert and Mr. Lao bought them; Jack didn't upset his apple cart and the two were the only friends he had at school who he could open up and talk with, frankly. That's why when Jack asked if he could sit in on the Chinese Club meetings with him, Mr. Lao said it was okay. Together, the two men did nothing that one of them couldn't do alone. The students went nowhere, did nothing except chat, eat snacks, and copy each others' homework. A faculty advisor, Emerson thought, could have been weaning them from Chinese ethnocentrism and brainwashed superiority, but why bother; too much work and planning to undo that. Mr. Jack Covert and Mr. Lao let the students keep all the baggage they'd brought with them from China, and little English did they learn.

      The time came when Mr. Lao reached his retirement age. At the time, Mr. Kao had been excessed from the new school he had been banished by the  principal years ago and, thanks to some ear-bending by an old colleague, was able to get back into his old school. Hard-working Mr. Kao, a qualified teacher, not shy about speculation on the reasons why he left China, directly, not via Taiwan asked Lao to return him to the Chinese Club. In the interim, Lao was friendlier with Mr. Covert and Covert would have nothing to do with Mr. Kao, a qualified person, much more qualified then himself. He didn’t want to lose the cushy non- administrative position as a faculty advisor for a club; there was no other club that he could hide out in and do nothing with, plus he liked the mystique of the orient. Though Kao was close to the students in his classes, taking them on day-trips, actually teaching them and giving them tests, he couldn't get near the Chinese Club; Covert was cold to him and Lao was ignoring it all, not liking Kao for being responsible, something Lao never was. 

      One day, Lao Yo-Tiao's father died. It was remarkable that the old Kuomintang General, who shared the spoils of his colleagues who pillaged China, then fled China to pillage Taiwan, then fled Taiwan to pillage America, lasted into his 90's. The hundred guests at his formal Christian funeral were a testament to something, probably nothing to do with the admiration, a quality he didn't care to cultivate, but the power, influence, and under-the-table corruption he had lived his life by, the Chinese way of networking through illegal means. 

      Emerson went to the funeral, not for the father, but for his friend's sake. Dropping in along with Emerson went the staff of the foreign language department, but most importantly, Emerson, Covert and Folly, Lao’s smoking buddies. They talked quietly as Mr. Lao sat in the first row, welcoming visitors who paid their respects. Emerson chatted with Mr. Covert and Ms. Folly, the inside story of who Mr. Lao's father really was and why he deserved no respect, in Emerson’s opinion, except fort Lao's sake. Emerson spoke of the graft, the insider-trading, the special privileges that made Chinese in Taiwan richer and Taiwanese in Taiwan poorer. "He was a real piece of shit, he was." Emerson wasn’t certain then about Mr. Covert; he found out later. It was Jack’s ammunition to destroy Emerson's place among his colleagues and Chinese students. Instead of educating the immigrant students about their misplaced patriotism towards the Chinese government, he encouraged discouraging words about Taiwan, and confirmed how Emerson thought Taiwan was independent and wasn’t a province of China.

Ms. Dottie Folly had nothing against Emerson, besides his not wanting to date her, but she liked to play both sides at work. It was no skin off her nose if colleagues disliked each other over what she said confidentially; it could only raise her status in the workplace. She was the ‘go-to’ person for rumors in Norman Thomas High School. It was what she told Lao Yo-Tiao about what Emerson said that Lao would not forgive Emerson; bad-mouthing his father at his father’s funeral. What a sacrilege! 

     Emerson was learning the truth had its price. The biggest cost was the loss of friends, friends who couldn't stand the truth, the loss of friends who never were friends, and the loss of radical friends who never were radical; only secretive for their own purposes.

      A few months after the funeral, it was time for the teachers’ in-service training. Everyone had to go somewhere; Emerson had a choice. He chose.

      The museum was newly opened but the exhibits had been collecting dust for almost a century. There they were, some colored yellowing paper, the evidence, relics of racism, there for any patron to see.

      Already the museum was a high tower, self-centered in a phrase worn so thin: ivory tower. Emerson flinched when he entered the shiny glass doors in a building reclaimed from tenements and warehouses that still surrounded it. The Lower Eastside Tenement Museum it was not; it didn’t bring out the past, it covered it over like cheap wallpaper.

      Emerson had known prejudice through years of schooling, ostracism; how the color of a skin can doom or bless you no matter what level of education you reached. If you frequented the places where skin color ruled, you’d be on top if it was your color, whether you earned it or not. In Asia, your doomed to hell if you’re not Asian skinned. In America and Europe and in place their imperialism superseded local skin color. Emerson was lucky to have a European shade of skin. He doubled over with laughter in the hilarity of the salad bowl city of New York, not only how all the vegetables would never blend but never become the holding bowl, however transparent.

      The Museum of Chinese-American History had collected enough artifacts to damn the European oppressors, Emerson could plainly see as he strolled around the exhibits of old newspapers and movie posters of Charlie Chan. No one in this neighborhood the city fathers called “Chinatown,” only a “Germantown” to compete, paralleled in audacity; no locals entered. It was up to the educators to bring their classes of children to the museum as Emerson’s Assistant Principal had brought her staff of pioneers on this crisp autumn day of in-service training, a day with the noble intention of making teachers better by opening their eyes to places they could take their students on day-trips from school. Some teachers chose to go to another place, or call in sick that day. Emerson was excited about going as he had lived seven years in Taiwan and minored in Asian-American history in San Francisco State University. Then there were the honorary Asia-loving teachers, filled with the mysticism of the Far East or appreciation of the art and culture, teachers like Mr. Trek Pony, Mr. Covert, and Lulu Brady, all a-love with traces of Asia.

      But for the ex-pat Chinese teachers, never moving back, it was the safety of sterility that these Western offenses were in the deep dark past; no one could get away with blatantly or even sub-consciously racism, though their own ideas of ‘deep dark’ translated to others’ skin anyway. They thought they were, blessedly, almost as white as the best. Emerson heard the crude comments of their allegiance to the lighter race.

      Perhaps they could chuckle, as Mr. “Thomas” Du De-Fai did, about how this inferior European race would get its comeuppance soon with the standing tallness of the new China. China, Thomas, inferred and implied, with every wink and chide, would have the last laugh and he was here in New York, teaching collateral of Snakeheads, nothing bad back home.

      “It is amazing to me what they did,” said Thomas to Emerson sitting next to him at the hands-on workshop table, the “they” a fossil that Emerson evolved from.

      “Yes, they did that to us, too,” Emerson replied nonchalantly. Thomas didn’t realize how much Emerson was exposing his Jewish heritage, only being marginally European white, allowed to get close enough to the gate to look inside before being turned away if he didn’t comply.

      “You? What do you mean?” Thomas’ face turned slowly, squinted a bit, and slid a disbelieving sneer at Emerson into his slightly-parted lips. “Of course you are white!”

      “You can’t imagine all the racial slurs and caricatures drawn about the Jewish people in American history!”

      “No; you’re a Jew?” Thomas said sincerely surprised. “Well but you are the richest and smartest Americans. You must be proud. You control the entertainment industry and Wall Street.”

      “Do you really believe that?” He really believed that.

      “I’ve heard that said before,” said Emerson without adding ‘…by racist people.’ But look at me; I’m not rich; I’m a poor teacher like you. Look at me. Look at my clothes. Look at my mannerisms. Do I look rich, and intelligent, and powerful to you?” Thomas sat chilled that he might have insulted one he was trying to compliment. He meant well, after all. This brought another Chi nese ex-pat teacher into the conversation somehow, sitting across from Mr. Emerson and Mr. Du De-Fai; she sensed that her compatriot needed support.

      You are a great people,” said Ms. Hu Fai-Hua, Chinese language instructor, gleefully, raising her arm to reveal a right thumb up. She went on to say how she had read books about how to become like the Jew, and most flatteringly to her own creed, how much the Jew resembled Chinese in their value of education. Jack Covert sat by pretending not to hear, chuckling to himself.

      “You see, even you admit how one is looked up to because his Western leaning; being white is admired in China, much more than being dark-skinned. Even your rice is bleached white.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Rice is naturally brown. All the nutrients are washed away with the brownness for the sake of having rice white.”

      “Mr. Du De-Fai and Ms. Hu Fai-Hua, looked at each other, shook their heads slowly, lips tightly closed, at the audacity of this outcast teacher, so out of line.

      “Are you sure about that?” But of course; Thomas knew Emerson was wrong, very wrong about that. The Chinese didn’t really admire Jews or White Europeans; they just said that to be polite. They knew which people were really the greatest. Thomas excused himself, stood to leave. Fei-Hua joined another innocuous conversation at the table. Emerson was left for damaged goods. He felt like a Jew again.

      How did it feel seeing heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets south of Chinatown? Emerson knew how long the government had been waiting for this opportunity. Perhaps, he thought, they didn’t want it to come this hard and fast, but on that Thursday after September 11, 2001, they blamed Bin Laden and said his Muslim buddies would be coming back to inflict some more pain on New Yorkers. The pain, Emerson felt.

      Teacher training veterans let Emerson know that it was all over, for good. They had won. The diametrical opposite of a progressive group meeting in Alphabet City a few long years before had arrived.

      Between the light drizzle on the presidential motorcade coming down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., the line of helmeted S.W.A.T. team members moved in a line, alongside the limousines, quickly, up the street. The new president, non-elected Bush, pushed upon the American people, said boldly, “Go ahead. Make our day, damned demonstrators,” as they engaged the crowd in crowd control techniques they’d been perfecting. They used it on him, instead of the enemy, thought Emerson. Perhaps they were the real enemy to them.

All that Emerson and the other protesters could do was run away. They turned over a few newspaper machine to obligingly slow the S.W.A.T. team down, threw a few trash cans (before the D.C. fathers learned to bolt them down to the sidewalk) and one or two through Starbucks windows. All the demonstrators could do, protesting being violently prevented from protesting peaceably, including the Black Block, was top run away, try to head up another street back to the quick, black, parade of limousines, live to fight another day, but the message Emerson and many others got that day was this: There would be no other “other days.” The days for that had passed into American history. You could run away, not to fight another day, but to avoid the pain you would get that day feeling trapped and surrounded and then caught and abused.

      Now, in Chinatown, a mile from the site of the World Trade Center, on the Corner of Canal Street and Broadway, the first thing you saw coming out of the subway was not a fruit stand but armed soldiers, protecting the fruit? New blue wooden N.Y.P.D. barricades running east and west cut the city; “No, you cannot cross the street, sir. Move on!” Despite the visor, he gestured his machine gun cradled on his chest; his helmet must have been miked.  

      Emerson sat, a few years after the mini-Armageddon, in a classroom at school; the students had left for the day. He sat, stunned, holding the can of cola in his unmoving hand, thinking of that day, that week, that last hour of that last year of American history. He sat, with seven colleagues, daydreaming as someone had gone to bring the attendance sheet for the teachers to sign. He daydreamed.

 In his daydream he saw a bright blue sky of clear light on the top of a hill.   

The clear blue sky with a puffy cloud or two drifting by, like something an elementary student would draw, on the top of a hill, topping a broad four-lane boulevard clogged with traffic. There was traffic because the boulevard squeezed into four narrower lanes, and then a two-lane avenue, going gradually higher, pedestrians walking uphill, and then the thoroughfare became a one lane road, with shoulders, going ever higher straight up the hill to the sunny blue sky, then it became a simple pebbled road edged with some soil and tufts of grass. The art deco skyscrapers down the road had surrendered to modern high-risers which further up became tenements with store fronts, even six trees along the curbs. Two-story colonial homes as the grit and iron became bucolic.

Emerson kept on dreaming, elbows on the desk, cheeks in hands, ignoring an itchy nose. The hill he was looking up, like a view on a Google map, was climbed. Emerson’s eyes closed, almost squinted, dreaming. Street poles, obelisks, had changed from traffic lights into stop signs, and then into trees and greenery, candy-coated bushes, no asphalt, only soil and grass up the hill to the bluest of skies, up yonder, finally, where a country road, falling off the edge of the world as we knew it, into where the utopia, called retirement, began. That was what Emerson was daydreaming about; retirement, early retirement; not a resignation. His misery would end seven years shorter than he thought it would. Bliss! Thanks to that philandering Governor Spitzer, who signed the teacher buy-out few months after he had been sworn in and few months before he resigned in disgrace; perfect timing for Emerson!   

      If Emerson minded his own business and kept out of trouble, just as Principal Marone promised, he just shut up and stayed out of union business, and didn’t report what he saw, he could leave the damned school, damned city, damned country and go back to the place he wish he hadn’t left twenty years earlier, twenty years ago when there some hope left.

      Before he could leave, he had to make it through the last three years, three years of sitting with colleagues who wished they were him. He couldn’t even tell them he was leaving; they became hostile. If they could have torn it from him and taken it for themselves, they would have.

      Emerson knew some colleagues wondered why he had become so quiet; he used to be a big-mouth trouble-maker. Some wondered why he wasn’t stuffing position papers into their mailboxes any longer or sparing with local union chapter rivals.

      The Pakistani students hiding out in the Bread & Roses Club may have wondered why Mr. Davinsky wasn’t busting their halal chops about no coming to meetings and participating anymore. When Mohammed Shrek showed up late to do his guilty Bally-wood routine about showing up late because he was busy in the computer room helping his classmate who was also not coming that day;  Emerson let him go, absolved, with a happy “okay.” He just couldn’t care anymore; the students came only for snacks and to be social, not to protest child labor of which they’d become.

      The last danger zone, the last hot-spot in school, where meek animals called sheep, acting like teachers, could be made to agree to anything curriculum developers from smart board computer consultants said, with a smile, could be made to “baa-baa-baa” in fear of alarms ringing in their heads at “Inquiry Team” meetings. Not a punishment, mind you, but a development for this failing school. Emerson had to endure the weekly Friday Inquiry Team meeting, what he referred to as the “Inquisition Team” meeting where the local loyalty got to see how loyal their other local collaborators were. It was at those meetings that penned-in, not evil teachers, could pretend to be ram, bully each other, show off their know-how, and their Natural Selection survival skills. Emerson knew those docile monsters, unable, as he was, to retire as soon as possible, as he was, to get their pension, too. They would use this pretentious time of student-inquiry and assistance planning. Emerson begged secretly. The ‘blue sky’ of early retirement lie just over the hill in his daydream. Those long sixty minutes of endurance he fought off protecting his head from the debris the food fight he was caught in the crosshairs of, tossed his way.

      The last class Emerson taught was during summer school. He had spent the past twenty summers in this extra assignment, not because he liked giving up his summer free time but because, by teaching every summer, he kept retention rights to the extra pay the summer classes would bring him in his pension. The administration was aware of this. They changed his assignment location, sometimes making him teach hours away from his home in hopes he would accept a non-union job locally and lose his retention rights. They did all that they could to shake Emerson and other teachers from their union right and thus reduce the amount the average salary would garnish them in pension.

      For the past twenty years, he had hesitated in classes to teach all he knew for if he had seriously pushed toward his desire he would have been led astray from his stated purpose of living his life like it was the only one he had; to the fullest of possibilities. It couldn’t be done until he was through with the obstruction of New York public school forever. The outcome of possibly leading and entertaining the students could have led to his dismissal or even worse; a purgatory in the rubber room with unwanted teaching staff. Somehow, by his own approval he had to live his life right.

      Noting that the folly of purpose would lead him dangerously through the longest period of his life, he vowed to have the fortitude to emerge on the other side of his career as a poor man making a living with some resources to enjoy his retirement, Emerson slugged on through wasted policy, inept administrators, obstructionist union caucuses, and disinterested students. He would linger no further with the sentence of standing in front of a room filled with the scent of an odious flower that had gone beyond rot. Not by his own action or lack thereof did he leave his profession but by contract and honorable discharge.

      Emerson took a long deep breath and entered the classroom on the last day of summer school. Like a bloated cadaver ready to burst, he tolerated the last ninety minutes when the last of his classes to the end came with the last two clueless teenagers assured by their guidance counselors that merely being there was enough to pass the class at hand. The Chinese immigrants, adapted to their American cohorts, one a female, sat with smart phone, slyly hidden, placed strategically placed on the desk before her in a handbag opened facing her, or the male student at her side with earphones plugged only on the side he thought out of Emerson’s sight not caring too much for the repercussions on this the last day. They faced each other, Emerson and them, across a teachers’ desk, one forever never to be in the building again and two waiting the few weeks between the end of summer school and Labor Day when the fall term would commence to return to an unremarkable classroom on another floor to serve another year in the sentence called New York City Department of Education public school. Before the bell rang, class was over.

      “Go away!” Emerson blurted out, the last bell in his life moments away and no further reason to hold his tongue. He bounded to his feet, erased the last chalky words scratched across a modern green imitation slate and, before his two charges could turn off their electrical devices, like a pole-vaulter over the top, walked the long hallway to the time clock, got to the line first before his colleagues, and punched his card out not a minute too late. His career was mercifully over.