What Hard Work Is

A university professor who watched his father sell hot dogs and dodge bowling pins disputes the notion that academics have it hard

by Anonymous

Several years ago, I participated in an academic retreat with about two dozen of my faculty colleagues. The first night after dinner, our group leader asked each of us to explain briefly what motivated us to become college professors and to describe our greatest sources of satisfaction and frustration. To my amazement the dominant theme centered around being overworked and lacking discretionary time. When the spotlight was on me, I began by describing myself as the “accidental academic” — I had expected to pursue a career in public service, but a one-year appointment to a faculty position had led to a full professorship and tenure. I then gently chastised my colleagues, suggesting that doing what you love to do and which brings so much fulfillment can never be considered “hard work.”

Many in academe may look at my schedule, which includes serving as director of an applied research/training center and a two-thirds teaching load as well as several pro bono positions, and conclude that I work hard. I would vehemently disagree; it is difficult to think how I could have more enjoyably spent my professional life.

To me, work is what you have to do to survive and it implicitly carries a negative connotation. Work is what my father did and no one worked harder. For more than 25 years he got up before dawn in our Bronx tenement, walked well over half a mile to the Grand Concourse, and boarded the D train to Brooklyn where he was a berthing clerk at the Navy Yard. His job, in effect, was to keep track of where the ships were parked. As a low level civilian he served under both Navy and civilian supervisors who often were at odds with one another and my father would be caught in the middle.

My father’s daily routine had him out of the house at least 12 hours a day, eight hours of work and four of traveling; leave the house by 6:30 a.m. and be home around 6:30 p.m., assuming all was well with New York City public transit that day. Sometimes he would arrive home before my mother, who worked as a Wall Street bookkeeper, and he would begin cooking dinner. 

But often his work day was not finished by 6:30. In the early 1950s, after a quick meal, he was off to Schram’s Bowling Alley on Webster Avenue to work as a “pin boy,” about as dangerous and degrading a job you could find. Before bowling alleys were automated, the only way for the pins to be reset was by men in the “hole” who dodged flying pins and bowling balls to quickly set up the pins before the bowler reloaded. If memory serves me correctly, pin boys generally were responsible for two alleys at a time (a ridiculous situation akin to Lucy and Ethel frantically trying to keep pace with the candy on the conveyer belt). My father luckily escaped serious injury but bruised and swollen fingers were routine. For each night’s work he was paid a few dollars by the bowling alley, and maybe another dollar or so in tips.

Tips, or as they were called at the ballpark, ’subways,” played an important part in another of my father’s extra jobs, a counter vendor at both Yankee Stadium, and, until the baseball Giants moved to San Francisco, the Polo Grounds. During the long baseball season it was not uncommon for him to work entire weekends, including double headers, selling hot dogs, beer, soda and other fine ballpark delights. Often the lines to the counter were four and five deep. In a hurry to get back to his seat before the next inning, a customer in the back of the line would sometimes yell “Subway!” which meant he was offering a tip, usually the equivalent of a subway token, which in 1955 was about 15 cents. As if by magic, the generous customer’s order was the next to be filled.

I accompanied my father to many of those weekend games in the late 1950s, arriving at the ball park about 8 a.m. While he and the other men — and it was only men — stocked their counters and prepared for the day’s sales, I would read a stack of comic books, primarily Super Man, Bat Man and Captain Marvel. When the game began, I would look for the best open seat available and when I got hungry or thirsty I could count on being served quickly without ever having to shout "subway." Despite always working hard, my father would try to find time for family activities and local trips with my mother, brother and me. A gifted athlete and former Golden Glover, he taught us to play ball and showed us how to defend ourselves on the streets of Arthur Avenue.

My father later held other part-time jobs in addition to his full-time position at the Navy Yard, most notably as a plumber’s helper with my uncles, my mother’s brothers. Although he was always willing, he had no technical skill whatsoever but his brothers-in-law were good natured and appreciated his good intentions. When the Brooklyn Navy Yard was closed, my father left government service and worked for several years as a bank drive-in teller in the South Bronx. He survived several unsuccessful robbery attempts, and thankfully was able to enjoy 15 years of retirement with my mother before she passed away and he followed several years later. 

When I tell my academic colleagues that I am ’semi-retiring” next year since I will take on a full-time teaching load in exchange for giving up my more time-consuming research center responsibilities, they feel insulted. As a member of their “club,” how can I not fully appreciate what professors do? But I respond by asking whether there are any other full-time positions that require your presence only three or four days a week eight months of the year. How much preparation is there when you have been teaching the same medieval history or Renaissance poetry course for decades? How often does any tenured faculty member leave to take a position outside academe? Where else except in academe are employees happy to stay on long past the usual retirement age?

Maybe I am being unfair to my academic colleagues when I scoff at their breathless claims of feeling overworked. But somehow teaching students, writing scholarly papers, and even attending incalculably boring committee meetings doesn’t begin to compare with dodging flying bowling balls and pins late at night when your day began at dawn with a long trip to the far away land of Brooklyn. That was hard work. My life isn’t.

The writer is a professor at a private university.