Faces in a Line
The line reached from the counter to the door, a distance of maybe 30 feet, a snake-like column of people that twisted around a stand in the center of the room and then back again.
There was no pushing or grumbling, only an orderly movement toward the counter itself and a low murmur of mixed conversations.
The only sound that broke the surface of the murmur was the occasional shout of a child slicing upward through the subdued tones and then back again in a shower of delight.
It was a Thursday and I was in the West San Fernando Valley branch of the state employment office, although some call it the unemployment office, depending on one’s point of view. It’s officially the State Employment Development Department.
I went to three offices that day, the one in the Valley, one downtown and one on the Westside, asking those in line if they thought the election of Bill Clinton was going to change anything for them.
I wondered if they felt at all good about it, but I should’ve known better than to expect anyone to be singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” in a bread line.
That’s what an unemployment line is in a way, you know, a bread line, because they’re looking for a way to feed themselves and their families.
You rarely get cosmic views in a place like that, because it’s hard to stand back and consider the big picture when your stomach’s growling and your future’s in doubt.
I’d gone there in the first place after talking to a friend, Don Day, who’d just been laid off by Teledyne.
They let him go after 15 years without even a handshake, as friends looked the other way in either embarrassment or fear, like wildebeests in lion country, nervously wondering who was going to be next.
Things have been pretty strange at Teledyne anyhow. The company just paid a $17.5-million criminal fine for falsifying tests on electronic switches.
When they bounced Don they said business was bad, and I can believe that. Who’d want to do business with an outfit that’s just committed fraud?
Anyhow, Don is 61 and a mechanical engineer who was getting it all together for future retirement when the ax fell.
A few days earlier, he’d taken out a big mortgage on his home to build a new house next door. The idea was to live there and rent out the old place to pay for itself and provide a little income.
Now he’s wondering what’ll happen if he runs out of money before the plan comes together. He’ll get about $400 a month pension from Teledyne, but that just won’t hack it.
If the company had waited until he was 62 to lay him off he’d have gotten more, but they didn’t and now he’s stuck.
Maybe he’ll have to go looking for work again, Don says, but when he’s asked what kind of work might be out there for a guy of 61, he just shrugs and shakes his head.
There are a lot of people like Don who made good money and suddenly, when the economy crashed, ended up in a . . . well . . . bread line.
I found them waiting along with everyone else to sign up for unemployment money or to look over help-wanted lists, their expressions betraying the uncertainty burning inside.
Men who’d been mid-level executives stood in back of construction workers. Women looking for work as domestics stood behind them.
Secretaries, custodians, teachers, parking lot attendants, salesmen . . . You begin to realize how hard times are when you’re standing there talking to the statistics face to face.
Blacks waited with Latinos and Anglos with Asians. Despair is a great equalizer.
I remember seeing my stepfather in a line like that when I was a kid. He was a guy with more pride and rage than anyone needs, suddenly reduced to begging for handouts.
He tried to look proud among the impoverished. His chin was tilted slightly upward and his back was as straight as steel, but fear, lurking just behind his eyes, ate through pride like acid and left him as raw and vulnerable as everyone else.
Even his rage had been reduced to humiliation.
I spoke to maybe a dozen people last Thursday asking about their hopes under Clinton, but unemployment offices are inward-looking places, devoid of sweeping altruism.
A man named Jeff Torres summed it up for all of them. I found him eating a $2.98 chow mein lunch at a place called Embee’s across the street from the downtown office.
“The world’s going to get better,” he said, “when some son of a bitch finds me a job. And I don’t care who he is.”
I saw him later at a corner on South Broadway. He was just standing there staring, his suit newly pressed and his tie neatly tied. All dressed up with no place to go.
