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then just a singer, you know, coming down with dark glasses, breaking in. A lot of people. I have the list at home of who appeared. George Hall, Irwin Corey, they're performing gratis as guests. They come as an extra added attraction. We're packing them in, and I'm going crazy. On Saturday, I come in in the morning for a staff meeting at 9:00, and I have to leave at 11:30, prepare f or the kiddie program, and then I have to work with the committee setting up the tables, and you're there until you get home like 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. We have a child, and we're living in a garden apartment in Flushing. During the week, I come home around 11:00, 11:30, and I come home on Saturday at 3:00, 4:00 o'clock, and I have to sleep on Sunday, and I'm groggy on Sunday, and then start again. So it was awful for about two, three years. But it was very -- you know, you were serving the cause of humanity.

You felt that?

It was such excitement. But you see, from 9:00 to 11:30, when I would miss part of the staff meeting, that was the terrible thing, because those staff meetings, Arthur Osman was the president of the district, of Local 65, and he was an organizational genius. He was crazy, but he was a genius. The first time I came there and I had to make a report for the council, the stewards, he made me rewrite it like ten times, and he was really playing with me. It was to no avail, I had to keep writing, and change this, change that. I'd keep coming back to him, and he'd say, “That's good, but change this.” He was like making me jump through hoops to show who was in charge here. Okay. But David Livingston was under him. You have very, very top, able people. You just sit there and just breathe, and you imbibe a lot of stuff of how you can run a democratic union, or how you can run a union.

Why do you make that distinction?

Well, it's democratic to a degree, you know. It's tightly controlled, although they would go out elections and to make sure that members -- you couldn't be elected unless you had more than fifty percent of the workers voting for you.

That was a by-law?

Yes. And organizing, you know, the union was a very, very exciting place to be, and I'm living in a small apartment at the time, writing articles for the paper about this at the same time, and living that kind of life. There comes a time after a while where there's a split inside 65.