On most subjects, it is not possible to follow Terkel's reasoning too closely. His thoughts roll around and lean this way and that, like the deck of a sinking ocean liner. But the absence of absolute precision is more than balanced by the man's incredible drive and enthusiasm. Ideas bounce off one another and come out faster than words can convey them. And when he finally slows down for a breath, you realize the whole monologue really does hang together with a kind of peculiar but ultimately consistent logic. Like the just launched Titanic, Studs Terkel is bright, instantly recognized, and probably irreplacable. Both are one of a kind.

Radio is Terkel's 'show'

In recent years, Terkel has become something of a national elder statesman and commentator while solidifying his position as a monument in Chicago and the midwest. His taped, one-hour programs broadcast daily on WFMT at 10 a.m. (with a repeat of his better offerings on Thursdays at 10:30 p.m.) are now syndicated to more than 30 other radio stations around the country. His books: Division Street: America, published in 1967; Hard Times: an Oral History of the Depression, 1970; Working, 1974, and Talking to Myself, 1977, have been critical and financial successes. Working, in fact, was adapted into an expensive musical which opened on Broadway last summer and closed three weeks later. Terkel was not overwhelmed since the writers and producers had exercised great libert with his meticulously edited interview of dozens of people, in which he ha probed their attitudes toward their job; "It wasn't really my show," he says. Without a doubt, Terkel's "show" is his radio program, which consistently draws the highest ratings of any hour on WFMTs schedule. Sometimes he will do a dramatic reading from a classic by Mark Twain or Ring Lardner. Occasionally he will play music or put together a montage of clips commernorating a figure he admires like Dr. Martin Luther King or Woody Guthrie. But the basic staple of the show is the interview of people who interest him. Terkel's perennial popularity stems from his ability to get politicians, entertainer authors, scientists, philosophers or clergymen to reveal something of themselves, to say on the air more than they intended to. It isn't that Terkel i prying, nosey or offensive. Just the opposite. He has a folksy, down-home style that relaxes his guests. People may express themselves well on his program because he comes across as such a friendly, open, profane human being. In his presence defenses drop.

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There is, of course, a certain irony here. Terkel is often so talkative, so full of opinions and insights, that it seems he would overwhelm his subjects. In practice, it doesn't usually work that way, partly because his manner invites response and reaction, even if the interviewee has to fight to get the microphone. "There's no trick to it," says Terkel, "no trick at all."

However, there's no denying he cultivates his undisguised and legendary mechanical ineptitude. Terkel readily acknowledges that the tape recorder, the mechanical marvel which has so greatly facilitated his career, is virtually the only machine he can operate [and even now he occasionally loses a good interview by pushing the wrong button). All other activities involving a measure of coordination, such as driving a car, riding a bike, roller skating, swimming or dancing, have always been beyond his powers, he confesses without apology. There is even a glimmer of pride as he discusses his incurable and possibly terminal case of clumsiness. The easy self-deprecating humor is just the sort of thing that relaxes people and makes them feel equal or even superior to the squinting, stocky little man whose white hair and voracious interest in human nature appear equally untamable.

Seated recently in Riccardo's Restaurant (a regular gathering place for Chicago media types), Studs Terkel shared with me his spirited views on politics, economics, labor, culture and the future of humanity, as he wrestled with his salmon salad, dropping a hardboiled egg on the table in the process. "I'll tell you something," he says. "All this talk about a trend to the right in this country is a lot of bull. It's not a genuine conservative trend at all. That's what comes from shallow reportage. People never question the military budget. They never get conservative about that even though we got the power to knock each other off 100 times over, and we've had that power ever since the Cold War."

Terkel gestures with his fork and his eyes narrow as he prepares to make a telling point. "It comes down to this. When peoples' lives are dull and drab and uneventful, they figure they gotta be better than somebody else. They gotta put somebody down. Maybe it's the blacks or the welfare families or whoever. But they want to come down hard on some poor sucker."

The theme is not new, nor is it original with Terkel, but he has been refining and distilling it since Division Street, in which he probed the emptiness, humiliation and anger festering in the bosoms of nice little people. Terkel seizes on more contemporary examples to hammer home his point. "Look at the TV commercials. Now they got ordinary slobs on instead of glamorous people. It's like they're saying, 'We're slobs and we're proud of it.' And you take that guy Alex Seith. His appeal is to the slobs.

"It is an awful tragedy that in the richest country in the world millions of people are starving for the deeper things and are unaware of their poverty "

They resent Percy because he's rich and he lives in the suburbs and he's got this high falutin' way of talking. So they're gonna put him down. Yeah, I'll bet that's what ifs all about."

Terkel's 'something'

Terkel admits he's not sure why lives should be any more drab or dull in 1978 than they were in 1976, but he is certain of the overall solution to meaninglessness. "You've got to be interested in something beyond yourself," he says, "something more than boats or autos or houses. If you haven't got something deeper, you've got nothing and you're nothing."

He's not pushing anything specific: not religion or transcendental meditation or a particular political cause. His "something" can probably be best expressed in the word "culture." Terkel, as usual, prefers examples to definitions. "With the labor unions in this country, it's always been wages and hours," he says, "just basic stuff. But that's not the European tradition." He cites a story from Hard Times about how Spanish cigar workers built a platform in the midst of their dirty I factory and hired actors to read the classics aloud — Dostoevsky, Cervantes and others — while they went through the humdrum routine of rolling tobacco leaves. "And do you know what happened?" gleams Terkel. "In the process of hearing those great writers, those workers became radical. The company had to come in and tear down the platform. The workers were thinking, they were interested in something. But in the U.S., unions have no sense, no awareness. It's all wages and pork chops."

This general disinterest in great thinkers and great thoughts also explains why U.S. politics is so bland, adds Terkel. "In our country they say, 'Get out and vote.' It doesn't really make any difference for which party. They're both the same anyway. But they'd never say that in Europe. There it's, 'Vote for the Christian Democrats,' or, 'Vote for the Communists.' It's so obvious that the differences are all important."

Terkel drops his fork and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a bundle of dog-eared index cards each covered with writing. He quickly finds the one he's looking for. "This is from Akenfield,'" he says. "It's sort of an English version of Working." He reads a passage in which a young-working class man explains how his life changed completely when he started hanging around libraries and art museums, about his growing sense of fulfillment. "And here's the best part," says Terkel. "It's when he first started paying attention to classical music and he says, 'At first I believed I had no right to listen.'"

"Don't you see?" says Terkel, slamming the card on the table (narrowly missing his salad). "People actually feel guilty. They think they don't have the right to appreciate these things." It is an awful tragedy, he adds with unfeigned sadness, that in the richest country in the world millions of people are starving for the deeper things and are unaware of their poverty.

Not surprisingly, Terkel lays much of the blame for cultural and political bankruptcy on the media. "If you're conditioned to crap, crap is the norm," he says.

Several years ago, he suggested to a group of television executives that they produce an adaptation of Bronte's Wuthering Heights and show it in place of some popular soap opera. "The idea

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The death of the Chicago Daily News has convinced Terkel that a "reverse inheritance tax" should be inaugurated in Illinois to prevent "anyone as banal and dull" as Marshall Field IV from ever taking over a major metropolitan daily. The Daily News, he insists, could have continued if Field had made it a priority. Lacking that, it could have been sold to outside interests, he says, or it even could have been taken over by a coalition of concerned local journalists. "But there never was any chance of that," he says, returning to his favorite theme. "Those guys would never dream such an unthinkable thing."

When viewing the local political scene, Terkel's discontent is considerable, but here there are glimmerings of hope based to some extent on his supportive contact over the years with independent political thrusts and activist community organizations. "Now look at CAP [Citizens Action Program]," he says. "It's gone now, you know. But a lot of those people have moved on from there. It showed what a grass roots coalition could do."

Ultimately, CAP failed, Terkel believes, because its roots lacked depth -- because it wasn't founded on that elusive "something beyond yourself which lies at the center of his universe. This same flaw, he adds, has hindered uch of the otherwise excellent work begun by the late Saul Alinsky and explains why a splendidly conceived organization like the Back of the Yards Council could turn malignantly "racist" in a matter of a few years. Until populist and grass roots movements gain more strength, Terkel says restless reformers like himself will have to be satisfied with small ad hoc victories. "And we've got some," he says. "It was the American people who finally stopped that horrendous, obscene adventure in Vietnam. It was one woman, Rosa Parks, who started the whole civil rights thing. It was one black cop [Renault Robinson] who beat the city on police discrimination."

Terkel is unabashedly delighted with such victories, but he can change gears in mid-sentence and become just as animatedly indignant when the subject of the Cook County Democratic party comes up. "Can you imagine the arrogance," he exclaims, "the sheer arrogance of shoving Bennett Stewart on the blacks?" He is referring to the party's decision to slate Stewart, 21st Ward alderman and an intense party loyalist, as successor to the late Ralph Metcalfe in the U.S. House of Representatives, despite the protests of black community leaders who wanted an open selection process.

The incident only solidifies Terkel's belief that the Democratic machine is not falling apart and won't in the foreseeable future. The early predictions that Mayor Michael Bilandic would be unable to hold things together have proven false, in Terkel's view, because so many other factors are supporting the machine's continuing good health.

Among them are the party's ability to coopt talent, the unlimited and unqualified support of organized labor, the nature of voting patterns in Chicago , the sheer know-how of the old political pros at the precinct and ward levels,the reluctance of any potential pretender to the Daley throne to take aggressive action, the patronage system, and the state of abject fear pervading much of the black community.

"There's no black leadership," says Terkel. "All they've got is that actor, Jesse Jackson. So the machine is safe, How can it lose if there's no opposition? Why an orangutan could win as mayor six times in a row with that kind of situation."

No one, white or black, really benefits from the Democratic organization's1 monopoly on city government, insists Terkel. In the black community, he says

"Who does Chicago work for? It works for Arthur Rubloff, for the automobile industry and the construction companies and the banks and the hacks who oil the machine'

the symbol of that domination is the Christmas basket, a psychologically useful but altogether empty token; in the white community it's the fixed parking ticket, the little favor which has no effect on the local quality of life but is easily remembered on election day. "The big myth is that Chicago works. The white bungalow owner thinks it works for him because it keeps the blacks out. Well, he's being had. He's settling for nothing That's why things like CAP are so important. People were experiencing a moment of recognition. They could set they weren't getting the city services they were paying for.

"Who does Chicago work for? It works for Arthur Rubloff, for the automobile industry and the construction companies and the banks and the hacks who oil the machine."

The myth, he says, has been sanctified

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by the media which, with characteristic superficiality, does not separate public relations from fact. "I was on a network program with David Brinkley," says Terkel. "Now he's one of the best they've got. But he's explaining to the nation how Chicago is the city that works. Well, what the hell does David Brinkley know about it?"

The current machine regulars will grow old, but Terkel sees them being quickly replaced by fresh recruits, healthier in body but just as warped in soul. "We'll have a new machine but we'll still have the hacks and the banality and the manipulation." Terkel looks a little older and suddenly sad as he describes the bright, attractive young girl in her 20s he encountered recently at his Northside apartment. She had come on behalf of the local Democratic organization to urge his vote for the "hacks."

Terkel insists on paying the lunch tab as he rises and prepares to return to the "creative chaos" of his offices at WFMT. He is described in the station's publicity releases as its "free spirit" and he is literally free to operate as he sees fit. There are few taboos and no censorship at the station, he says. It is an opportunity for the kind of self-fulfillment and cultural growth he has come to prize so highly. But clearly, it has only fired his moral indignation about the dullness and drabness of so many other lives.

Louis Terkel, born in the Bronx, was raised in Chicago by his mother who operated a rooming house at Grand and Wells. It was there he acquired the nickname "Studs" when the book Studs Lonigan was a best-seller. He attended McKinley High School and the University of Chicago before launching a career during the Depression as a radio actor and scriptwriter. In the 1950s, Terkel was host of a folksy, low-keyed, Chicago based television show called Studs' Place, but the program eventually folded as did other Chicago originals like Kukia, Fran and Ollie. Terkel's career went into temporary exile when he was labeled a subversive, along with folksinger Win Stracke and other counterculture types, during the height of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's crusade of vilification. Terkel admits to a few bad moments during that era as he jokes about the overall experience. But more than anything else, it is likely this peculiar experience of exile in his own hometown formed the Terkel of today, the defender of the little guy.

In the 1960s, with the aid of the tape recorder, his career started moving again. Today he lives comfortably in Uptown with Ida, his wife of almost 40 years. Their only offspring, Paul, 32, works for the National Opinion Research Center and has thus far exhibited more interest in computers than tape recorders.

Born Jewish, Terkel now characterizes himself as an atheist, although theological questions are of little interest to him. His personal politics he labels "socialism with a face." Then he pauses and says, "No, socialism is such a loaded word. It stops thought. Maybe 'populism' would be a better term. I don't know."

Whatever the term, Terkel is convinced the world isn't moving his way with any great velocity. "Maybe in health care," he says, "but only because it's being pushed. Ah, it's too bad." He mentions the experience of his friend, big Bill Broonzy, the country blues singer, who was booed one night by a Northern audience as he sang about the experience of growing up in the South. Broonzy wasn't offended by the attitude of the audience. "Why should they listen to this old blues?" he told Terkel later. "You gotta live through it to feel it."

Terkel looks distressed again. "Oh God, I hope not," he says. "Do we have to experience something firsthand to understand it? Oh I hope not."

Moving back to the confines of his office, he continues a nonstop narrative on a variety of other subjects that intrigue him:

The Equal Rights Amendment: "I'd like to see a total boycott of Illinois by associations and organizations protesting our failure to ratify it. The only language people understand is the pocketbook. Can you imagine people taking a clown like Phyllis Schlafly seriously? Can you? I suppose you can. They took Ronald Reagan seriously." Mayor Bilandic: "The smartest thing he ever did was marry Heather. He's so grotesque, she's so trendy. It really gives [Mike] Royko a basis for some good columns." Public school integration: "If the law was enforced, we'd have integration. People can adjust to anything. They can even adjust to fascism. The problem is they're not serious about enforcing integration around here." The Catholic Church: "Some great things are happening in South America. The priests and nuns who come out of there are really radicalized. I've interviewed some and I'm impressed. The church has always been counted on by authority as the institution supporting the status quo. But no more."

Sorting out dreams

Studs Terkel is currently at work on yet another book. It will be a logical extension of his journey to date and is tentatively titled American Dreams: Lost and Found. The hopes and fears of a wide variety of disparate characters will be chronicled in the Terkel style, including Chicago Aldermen Vito Marzullo and Dick Simpson, anti-war activist Jane Kennedy, maverick priest Father Bill Hogan, former CAP Chairperson Mary Lou Wolff, and retired First National Bank Chairman Gaylord Freeman.

"I'm at least two years away from publication," says Terkel. "It's tough sorting out dreams, making connections, really tough."

Yet the book seems a natural for him. For all his heavy-handed putdowns and denunciations, Terkel himself is an incurable optimist, a dreamer, a searcher for simple, human answers in an age of bewildering, inhuman complexity. And that is probably why so many are attracted by his style and approach. He offers no new solutions, only the old ones we once knew but forgot. 

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