5

A Good Day’s Work

MY FRIEND GARY would soon be graduating from high school and leaving for his work life. “You could take over my paper route,” he told me one day. “It’s fun, and it’s pretty good money.”

He was right. I woke at 4:30 each morning to walk a little more than a mile to pick up the papers, fold each into four parts in a square, stuff them into two bags over my shoulders, and deliver them to approximately seventy-five customers. Sometimes in good weather, I’d ride my bike and deliver papers while riding. I’d hurl the folded papers onto porches from where I was on the sidewalk. Most of the time, my aim was accurate; other times, I’d miss my target, and occasionally accidentally throw the newspaper onto the roof. When that happened, I would walk up to the house and take the folded papers out from my bag, tie two bags together, and swirl them above my head to swipe the newspaper back to the ground. There was one house where a beautiful and friendly dog, a boxer, would come running at me so that I’d place the paper directly in its mouth. He’d then run back to his master standing on the porch. After I completed my circuit by 6 a.m., I walked back home to clean up, eat breakfast, and then walk another mile to school.

On my bike set to deliver newspapers on my route in Sioux City.

Another dog on my route, a vicious-looking brown dog, possibly a cross between a German Shepherd and a bulldog, once burst out of the bushes flanking a blue house and barreled toward me, his teeth showing and his jaws working as he barked like mad. I was ready for him. I lifted one of the bags from my shoulder and began swinging it in the air, faster and faster. Before he reached me, the dog veered off his course to avoid being hit. I kept the bag swinging, and the dog trotted back into his yard, where he continued to bark at me, but with less ferocity.

Collecting a subscription payment from one of my favorite customers.

On Thursday and Friday evenings, I went to each customer’s home to collect money, using a hole-puncher to validate the weekly payment on their tickets. A few customers were delinquent in their weekly payments, so I’d keep going after them to pay up. Other customers would pay several weeks in advance, and I was careful not to overspend my weekly earnings so I could put aside the money for the following weeks. One customer—a very sweet ninety-year-old lady—always invited me into the house for a glass of milk and cookies and a short chat. Mostly, we talked about the weather and my schooling. She also showed me pictures of her family.

Every Saturday morning, I went to the newspaper office to turn in the payments, and I kept a weekly profit of about twelve dollars.

For nearly two years during high school, I also worked at a drive-in car wash two hours per day after school and on weekends when I could. It was an interesting experience, especially driving fancy cars into and out of the automated car wash and cleaning up the insides. Most of the young workers were high school dropouts, alcoholics, or drug users. Many came from broken homes, and they often showed up at work with a black eye or some other injury from fights. I got along with my car wash colleagues, though I didn’t hang around with them outside of work.

IF I MADE THIS SHOT, I’d win because we were playing to twenty-two points. I pivoted, dribbled twice to my friend Dennis’s side. then went up for the jump shot inside the foul line. It bounced off the rim, and Dennis leaped up and got the rebound. He was taller than me, so he often beat me at our one-on-one games, but I was determined to beat him this time. I reached in and grabbed the ball before he could shoot. He grinned and started to crowd me, saying something about fouls. This was a good time for a hook shot. I went for it, picturing the correct arc of the ball as it left my hand. Two points!

On our walk home, Dennis said he was thinking of joining the military. “You should,” I told him.

Where would my place be in society, in the workforce? I wondered. Not in the military probably. I didn’t think the Army allowed deaf men to serve. My mother’s magazine stories told me that I could do almost anything. My father and his deaf friends’ examples showed, in contrast, that I would most likely work with my hands.

My summer job throughout high school was working as an upholsterer with my father at Sioux City Furniture Company, housed on the ground floor of a three-story brick building with cement floors, small windows high up on the wall, and no air-conditioning. Temperatures in the factory often reached a stifling 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. I worked on an assembly line where carts piled with furniture rolled by on a conveyor belt. Every worker on the line had a specific assignment, such as putting together woodwork and springs, stuffing in cotton, and hammering nails into the coverings. We’d rotate roles so that we all were familiar with the entire furniture-making process.

During my third summer at the furniture company, they introduced a new technology: a hydraulic air gun that pushed nails into the coverings that draped over the wooden furniture frames rather than manually hammering individual nails in one by one. I had developed a trick of picking up a handful of magnetic nails and putting them in my mouth, then using the magnetic hammer to draw out a nail from my mouth and hammer it into the furniture. It took a lot of skill to do this rhythmically. One afternoon, I somehow managed to swallow a nail. I turned off the magnetic hammer, put it down, and ran to the part of the factory floor where my father was sanding wood.

“Dad!” I said. “I swallowed a nail! What should I do?”

He laughed. “Nothing. It will come out at the other end,” he told me with an air of unconcern that I felt was at odds with the severity of the situation.

I never saw it come out, but I didn’t really want to know where it went.

Another time, I accidentally cut my left forefinger with a sharp curved knife while cutting cardboard. A massive amount of blood gushed out, and my father casually told me to stick my finger in a pail of turpentine. I plunged my finger into the oil, and miraculously, the bleeding stopped immediately, but the flesh was burned off my finger. I was amazed at this sight. That experience inspired me to be more careful, as I didn’t want to experience turpentine-dunking ever again.

Wasn’t there somewhere better to work than with my father? During the summer before my senior year, I wanted a different experience. I talked with one of my parents’ close deaf friends, Dean Kruger, who was a master cabinetmaker for another company. He also had a private cabinet-making business at home. He talked with his boss, who agreed to hire me as an apprentice cabinetmaker. Like the furniture company where my father and I worked, this plant was not air-conditioned, but I enjoyed interacting with my wonderful coworkers there. One time, during a break, I declared to a coworker that I was not interested in getting married until I was thirty-five or older. “Well,” he said, smiling knowingly, “if the right girl comes along, you shouldn’t waste time though!” I laughed, thinking he was kidding. The idea of getting married young was just plain funny to me.

That Monday, my supervisor at the cabinet-making company explained that my task for the day was to sand small pieces of wood until they were completely smooth. He handed me one to start with. “Get that smooth, and then call me over, and I’ll check your work,” he told me. Following instructions, I started with the coarsest sandpaper, then worked my way down to the finer-grained paper, trying as best as I could to keep the strokes in line with the wood grain. When it was as smooth as I could get it, I brought it over to the boss to inspect. He turned it over in his hands a few times and then looked up at me with a frown. “Not yet!” he said. “Give it another try, son.” Over and over, I tried to get it smoother, brought it to the supervisor to check, and was sent back to try again.

That night, I lay in bed, marveling at how I could try my best at something—something seemingly so simple—and still not succeed. I flipped my pillow over to have the cool side against my cheek, and the flipping reminded me of flipping that small piece of wood I’d had to sand smooth. In my dreams, I sanded and sanded my car, but it stubbornly refused to become a motorcycle. When I washed my face the next morning, I noted how smooth the bar of soap was in my hands, and how the water rushing over it from the faucet would eventually melt it away to nothing, without effort.

After about three more weeks of working at Dean Kruger’s cabinet-making factory, I received a pink slip thanking me for my service and saying that I was no longer needed. However, I did get paid for my final week of forty hours. “I am good at some things and not so good at other things,” I realized. Now the idea of college took on new urgency for me.

Back then, there were only two viable jobs that a deaf person could expect to have: a Linotype operator/printer or teacher. Yes, there were other jobs available, such as upholsterer, cabinetmaker, farmer, and factory worker. But I wasn’t interested in any of those.

Some deaf people were regular peddlers, and I was friendly with them. A common choice of peddled goods was a card showing the manual alphabet in sign language, and the peddlers traveled all over the country selling them. Other peddlers would make things—knitted items, wood carvings, quilted potholders, pipes. Many paid their taxes, but the ones who peddled the ABC cards often avoided doing so. I realized later that they enjoyed selling things, and when they couldn’t get jobs as salespeople, they went into peddling. I knew that I would not be good at sales.

Being a Linotype operator or working in a printing company had its advantages. Most employees were members of the International Typographical Union (ITU, the union for Linotype printers, typesetters, and press operators), which allowed them to travel anywhere in the country and work for any newspaper or printing company that hired ITU members. It was an attractive job for many deaf people who learned the skills in high school, and they certainly made a good living. Unfortunately, the field drastically changed when computers began to emerge, and so-called “hot type” printing transformed into “cold type” digital typesetting. Many deaf people who were members of the ITU left the printing industry and moved on to computer-related jobs that no longer offered union membership.

Teaching was another viable option, but it required a college education and would mean going to Gallaudet College for teacher preparation. I did think about becoming a teacher, but my mother discouraged me from pursuing a teaching degree. When I tried to dispute her views, she decided I should meet with an elderly deaf teacher who’d graduated from Gallaudet, to hear about his teaching experience. My parents drove me to my father’s alma mater, ISD in Council Bluffs, to meet with him. “Forget it,” he told me, regarding a future in teaching. I was surprised and disappointed by his response. He explained that teaching was not a good future for deaf people because there would be no opportunities for advancement. He had remained at the same level for many years and had to first work as a houseparent in the dormitory. The conversation was enough to convince me to put teaching in the back of my mind and instead explore other careers. I thought about becoming a lawyer or even a veterinarian but was told by others that deaf people couldn’t pursue these fields since strong oral communication skills and the ability to hear were required.

My favorite uncle was Max Ellis, who was married to my father’s sister, Aunt Cranie. Max and Cranie lived in Cleveland, and we were planning a visit.

Aunt Cranie and Uncle Max Ellis.

“Maybe your Uncle Max will show you where he works,” my mother suggested. It was a good idea. Uncle Max was a deaf man with a good job, and he and Aunt Cranie seemed to have a good life. They lived in a pretty apartment in a pleasant suburb, and Uncle Max always seemed happy and relaxed. He loved to talk about his work as a draftsman for Bailey Meter, a manufacturer of industrial control systems and equipment. I doubted that he had to work in 90-degree heat with no breeze to relieve the swelter.

My guess was correct. He gave me a private tour of Bailey Meter, which also had offices in Buffalo, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. The place was clean, well lit, and air-conditioned.

“I’d like you to meet my nephew Tracy,” Uncle Max said, introducing me to his supervisor and coworkers, who all nodded and smiled and shook my hand. Uncle Max’s drafting table was large and angled and filled with fancy drawing tools. He then took me around the plant to show me where the meters were manufactured. By the time we’d seen it all and were ready to leave him to his work, I had made up my mind. I would become a draftsman like him!

A few weeks later, in my junior year of high school, Mr. Ray Obermiller, also known as Coach Obermiller, called me into his office to talk about my future. He was the guidance counselor.

“What are your plans after high school, Tracy?” he asked me.

“I want to be a draftsman,” I told him.

“Why is that?” he asked, somewhat to my surprise. I told him about Uncle Max’s work and my tour of his office and the factory.

“That does sound like a possibility,” Coach agreed, “But I think you could go to a four-year college.”

Drafting required only a few months of training in a vocational school, not four years of college, I knew.

“What kind of job are you thinking of?” I asked him.

“Have you ever thought about engineering?”

I pictured a train chugging through the prairie, big plumes of coal smoke puffing out of its chimney. “Do you mean a train engineer?” I asked.

“No, I mean engineering, a higher form of analytical and design work that requires extensive college-level coursework in mathematics and science. You’ve done well in all of your college preparatory courses—English, math, and science—so you should seriously think about going to college.”

That got me thinking. I discussed it with Uncle Max during his next visit to Sioux City to find out what he thought about my going into engineering. He was astonished and said it would require many years of study and that it would be a very difficult major. He never thought a deaf person could become an engineer since he did not know of any. He explained that as a draftsman, he worked closely with a team of engineers who gave him instructions to do his work and that engineers must work with a lot of hearing people inside and outside the company. I realized that if it was going to be a challenge, then that’s what I wanted to do.

In my later years as a professional, I worked with young deaf college students who wanted to become engineers or computer scientists. I recognized that it was crucial for younger students to be exposed to career opportunities as early as possible. I asked the dean of the engineering college at RIT how early a student should learn more about an engineering career to be better prepared for a rigorous engineering education in college. Like Mr. Obermiller, the dean said that it was important for young students to start preparing as early as seventh grade or even earlier so that they could take four years each of high school math, science, and, of course, English. He believed that with solid college preparatory courses in high school, students would be better prepared for anything—including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—in college. After that, I made it a mission in my professional life to encourage students, families, and teachers to commit to preparing young deaf and hard of hearing students for advanced education in high school and college.

Once I decided I wanted to be an engineer, I sent out requests for information from many different colleges and universities. I was appalled when I got the packets from them addressing me as Miss Tracy Hurwitz. This was in the early 1960s, and it bothered me a great deal. I complained to my mother, who told me to disregard it. I wrote back to some of the colleges and stressed that my name was Tracy Alan Hurwitz; still, I got responses from them addressing me as Miss Tracy Alan Hurwitz. I became more infuriated and responded with my name as Mr. Tracy Alan Hurwitz. The problem never got resolved so I tried my best to live with it.

With my grandparents, Ben and Rose Hurwitz, at my high school graduation in 1961.