Memories of Working Class Life.

From Google images: Original source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED
9-13-26

I was thinking the other day about some of the experiences I had on the job and in the community in which I lived and worked.

 

I worked for a water district, mostly fixing leaks in the streets. We also installed new water services—sometimes larger ones for commercial properties, sometimes standard services for houses—and occasionally hydrant runs.

 

I started as a utility laborer in 1976. In other words, you did whatever they wanted you to do. After about a year, I got a transfer closer to home, to the main Oakland Yard, along with a promotion to pipeline laborer and a small raise.

 

For a couple of years I worked as a pipeline laborer and then as a journeyman plumber. It wasn't the same as being a finished plumber in the building trades, but it was our version of it. Eventually, I got a position as a backhoe operator, which was easier on me in some ways. Better than being in the ditch, as we used to say. During all this time I became very involved in my local union, Afscme Local 444.

 

I remember one job on the Oakland-Berkeley border, somewhere around 60th and Sacramento. I think we were putting in a hydrant, but I'm not completely sure. That part isn't really the point.

 

The guys were down in the ditch working, and I had finished digging for the moment. I got off the backhoe and was just standing around looking at what was going on. It was an intersection with a liquor store on one corner.

 

Across the street, I noticed a young woman talking with two young men. From what I could see, she appeared to be working as a prostitute, and I assumed the two men were her pimps, although I could have been wrong about that. She was thin and looked worn down. The three of them seemed to know each other.

 

I watched for a minute or two, and then one of the men suddenly punched her in the face.

 

She dropped instantly, like a sack of potatoes.

 

It was horrible to see, especially in broad daylight.

 

It sickened me. I wanted to do something, but we were sitting ducks out there. We worked in some rough areas, and we'd seen things happen. Sometimes things even happened to our own crews.

 

One of the guys on the job said quietly to me, “Don't say anything, Richard. Don't do anything. We're sitting ducks.”

 

He was right.

 

The two young men walked right past me on the sidewalk. I remember feeling a surge of hatred toward them. But there was nothing I could do without putting myself and the rest of the crew at risk.

 

After they left, the woman got up. I think she went into the liquor store. I walked over there myself and told the people inside that they needed to call the police. I believe they did, although I don't remember whether the police arrived before we left.

 

What I do remember is the fear—the real fear—of being seen reporting something like that. I didn't want to draw attention to our crews.

 

As a public utility crew, we were exposed. That's one reason it always bothered us when we heard that police sometimes used fake utility trucks to watch drug dealers or police a poor community in general. . We already worked in some dangerous places, and having people believe that a utility truck might actually be a police vehicle could make our jobs even more dangerous.

 

I was also reminded of another incident involving an AC Transit bus driver who was shot right outside Neldhams Danish Bakery, at the bus stop across the street. Someone pulled over, got out carrying what looked like a semiautomatic rifle, and killed him.

 

I went to his funeral at the union hall, ATU Local 192. He apparently had nothing to do with whatever had happened. As I remember it, a bus had cut off someone's girlfriend, and the shooter took revenge on the first driver he saw.

 

That's how dangerous some parts of the US can be.

 

After the incident with the young woman, I was furious. I even had fantasies of coming back and doing a drive-by on those two men. It was anger talking, not something I was actually going to do. But that's how upset I was.

 

Eventually, though, I had to remind myself: this is the community.

 

It was a depressed and struggling community. It's expensive now, but back then it was hard, violent and worn down. I lived in an area like that myself. I knew the kids on the corner. Some of them used to play Dungeons & Dragons in my house when they were little.

 

Not all of them became involved in the violence around them, of course. But some did. And some of those kids eventually grew into the same violence they had been exposed to while growing up.

 

I remember one of those kids in particular.

 

He had grown older, and one day I was walking up to the corner store and saw him standing there with some of the others. I said hello, using his real name, the name I'd known him by for most of his life.

 

When I came out of the store, he approached me.

 

He asked me not to call him by his real name anymore. He wanted me to use his new street name.

 

I had no problem with that at all. I apologized and told him I understood.

 

That kid is dead now.

 

I think about that sometimes.

 

We can look at people who commit terrible acts and see only the person standing in front of us. We see the violence, and it's easy to forget that they were once children too. Before the street name, before the violence, before whatever choices they eventually made, they were kids. 

Some of them had played Dungeons & Dragons in my house.

I couldn't help of thinking of that young woman standing in the street getting punched in the face; she must have been held in a mother's arms at some point in her life; it's sad.