Have a drink for Studs

I wrote this six years ago, after getting the chance to hang out for an evening with Studs after he talked at Northern Illinois University. He was a force of life.


DeKALB -- Cigar in hand, Studs[0] Terkel[0] ambles his way through Twins, a bar
filled with the usual Wednesday night crowd -- softball players,
construction workers, college kids, all strangers he has yet to meet.

On his way to the bathroom, after a hamburger and a martini, he stops to
talk at a table or two, including an older couple who had seen him speak
at Northern Illinois University earlier that night.

On Terkel's way back to his table, a pony-tailed, middle-aged man is
laughing, sharing a joke, as he helps the 90-year-old author maneuver
through the crowded tavern.

Terkel's friend, publicist Bill Young of Oak Park, has seen it all before,
how his buddy works a room with an avuncular charm and grace. And though
curiosity may have killed a stupid cat or two, seeing Terkel in action
shows the trait might be key to living a long, vital life.

Watching him also serves as a good lesson for all reporters, writers, even
neighbors in what it really takes to be good at any of those roles.

For Terkel has an enthusiasm and interest in meeting and talking with
people that brightens a place. He seems to treat all people as
interesting, the stories of their lives, their work, dreams, hopes,
disappointments and aspirations well worth hearing.

Terkel was in DeKalb to talk in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium with an
audience of over 700 people. Immediately afterward, he tirelessly signed
over 300 copies of his works, including Working, Hard Times, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning "The Good War" and his most recent, Will the Circle Be
Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth and a Hunger For Faith.

The books are collections of oral histories, tales told to Terkel, mostly
by "ordinary people," a term he dislikes. After all, quoting a poem by
Bertolt Brecht, Terkel told the crowd it was such people who built the
pyramids, who carried out the deeds credited to the rulers of the day.

Mouth of a preacher

Self-effacing throughout his talk -- and wearing his trademark red socks
and checkered red-and- white shirt -- Terkel began by saying he felt like
a preacher about to offer a sermon from the pulpit.

Then he went into a story of how legendary gospel singer Mahalia Jackson
once told him, "Studs, you got such a big mouth, you should have been a
preacher."

Though that never was his career path, Terkel has been a broadcaster, jazz
columnist, disc jockey, radio interviewer, author and even actor. (Later
that night, friend Young said Terkel was cast as a cabbie in a Jane Fonda
flick, The Dollmaker, despite the fact Terkel never learned to drive.)
He's also become a symbol for how Chicago likes to see itself --
hard-working, witty and down-to- earth.

As for his own beliefs, despite a healthy respect for those with religious
convictions, Terkel described himself as an agnostic.

"And you know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist," he said.

Yet, despite what he sees as a country suffering from "national
Alzheimer's disease," his words revealed an underlying optimism and faith
in humanity: a liberalism rooted in open-mindedness, the traditional
meaning of the term; a romantic populism harkening back to FDR,
encouraging of unionism; and a wariness of disciples of Ronald Reagan or
writer Ayn Rand, whose name he finds an amusing near- rhyme for Enron.

His sentiment comes through in stories he recalled from his books -- like
the one about C.P. Ellis, who went from Klansman to union organizer for a
group of janitors that was made up mostly of black women.

Of Matta Kelly, an immigrant bride who turned to a life of drug addiction,
then became a counselor for persons with AIDS. Kelly wound up helping a
transsexual named Norma Saunders die with a degree of dignity.

And in an interview with a single mother of three in a housing project who
asked Terkel to play back what she had told him, then said, "I never knew
I felt that way."

The lost interviews

Though such moments have earned him the title "poet of the tape recorder,"
Terkel laughed at the description.

He admitted to being so technologically inept he lost interviews with
choreographer Martha Graham and actor Michael Redgrave, and almost botched
one of his most famous pieces, a conversation with philosopher Bertrand
Russell.

As for the popularity of his work, Terkel recalled that a librarian wrote
him with an anecdote about how a certain reverend in her town named Jerry
Falwell complained about a title the library was stocking -- Working
Studs, by some guy named Terkel.

"That's when I knew I had a best seller," said Terkel, with a twinkle in
his eyes.

Now, in his 10th decade, Terkel is working on a "crazy, goofy book about
hope."

Energized by the unexpectedly large crowd at NIU he said, "I can't help
but feeling that deep down their is a new silent majority." Unlike
Nixon's conservative one, Terkel feels "a stirring of knowledge brewing
underneath" today.

Terkel, who is hard of hearing, took questions from the audience, too.NIU
professor Keith Gandal adroitly helped by reiterating the inquiries, which
came from quite a cross section of middle America.

As if from the pages on one of Terkel's tomes appeared an elderly women
concerned about what "the little people can do"; a middle-aged black man
wondering why other blacks don't often come to such lectures; an angry
college-aged young defender of Ayn Rand, wearing a "Vote Libertarian"
T-shirt; a writer or two looking for pointers; even a 12-year-old girl
asking about how Terkel stays focused.

Her bright smile and laughter led Terkel to say, "that's why I am
hopeful." In fact, Terkel was so taken with the night, on the way to the
bar he told Young the atmosphere reminded him of Berkeley, Calif.

Later, back at the tavern, a waitress and Notre Dame co-ed named Katie
asks for an autograph. For Terkel it brought back memories of earlier in
the evening when another young woman asked him to sign a book and made him
feel "like Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

The end of the night

The bill settled -- Terkel paying from a stack of credit cards held
together with a rubber band -- it was time for the writer to trek back to
Chicago.

Longtime buddy Young pulled his car around -- seeming a bit like sturdy,
modern day Sancho Panza to Terkel's windmill-tilting Don Quixote.

On the ride to the city, Terkel would probably tilt his seat all the way
back and sleep, Young said. Once home he would work on his new book a
bit, then get up in time to make an interview about another chronicler of
his times.

Fittingly, Terkel would be on public radio reminiscing about the recently
departed Alan Lomax, who made field recordings of indigenous music the
world over.