E. Doctorow - Loon Lake

endowments of the Western miners’ Black Lung Research Facility,

Denver, Colorado. The Gymnasium of Miss Morris’ School,

Briarcliff Manor NY, the Mexican Silver Workers’ Church of the

Holy St. Clare, Popxacetl Mexico, The Bennett Library on the

grounds of Jordan College, Rhinebeck NY, the Bennett

Engineering Institute, Albany NY, plus numerous ongoing

benefactions of worthy charities and researches plus innumerable

acts of charity to individuals never publicized.

I attribute to F. W. Bennett in his death a last will and

testament of such public generosity as to receive acknowledgment

on the front page of the New York Times data available

upon request.

—

Generally speaking a view of the available economic systems

that have been tested historically must acknowledge the immense

power of capitalism to generate living standards food housing

education the amenities to a degree unprecedented in human

civilization. The benefits of such a system while occasionally

random and unpredictable with periods of undeniable stress

1and misery depression starvation and degradation are

inevitably distributed to a greater and greater percentage

of the population. The periods of economic stability also

ensure a greater degree of popular political freedom

and among the industrial Western democracies today despite

occasional suppression of free speech quashing of dissent

corruption of public officials and despite the tendency of

legislation to serve the interests of the ruling business

oligarchy the poisoning of the air water the chemical adulteration

of food the obscene development of hideous weaponry the

increased costs of simple survival the waste of human resources

the ruin of cities the servitude of backward foreign populations

the standards of life under capitalism by any criterion are

far greater than under state socialism in whatever forms

it is found British Swedish Cuban Soviet or Chinese. Thus

the good that fierce advocacy of personal wealth accomplishes

in the historical run of things outweighs the bad. And while

we may not admire always the personal motives of our business

leaders we can appreciate the inevitable percolation of the

good life as it comes down through our native American soil.

You cannot observe the bounteous beauty of our country nor take

pleasure in its most ordinary institutions in peace and safety

without acknowledging the extraordinary achievement of

American civilization. There are no Japanese bandits lying

in wait on the Tokaidoways after all. Drive down the

turnpike past the pretty painted pipes of the oil refineries

and no one will hurt you.

—

No claim for the perfection of F. W. Bennett, only that like

all men he was of his generation and reflected his times in

his person. We know that by the nineteen-fifties at an advanced

age he had come finally to see unions as partners in

enterprise and to cooperate fully on a first-name basis with

major labor leaders playing golf of course at that age he

only drove a ball twenty or thirty yards but they called him

Mr. Frank and with humor admired his sportif outfits the

beige-yellow slacks the brown-and-white shoes with the tassels

the Hawaiian shirt with his breasts showing. Note is made here

too that this man had a boyhood, after all, woke

in the astonishment of a bedsheet of sap suffered acne

had feelings which frightened him and he tried to suppress

was cruelly motivated by unthinking adults perhaps rebuffed

or humiliated by a teacher these experiences are not the

sole prerogative of the poor poverty is not a moral

endowment and a man who has the strength to help himself

can help others. I cite too the ordinary fears of

mortality the inspection of a fast-growing mole on the side

of the nose blood in the stool a painful injury or the

mournful witness of the slow death of a parent all this is

given to all men as well as the starting awake in the

nether hours of the night from such glutinous nightmare

that one’s self name relationships nationality place in life

all data of specificity wipe out amnesiatically asiatically you

don’t even know the idea human it is such a low hour of the

night and he shares that with all of us. I therefore declare

F. W. Bennett to embody the fullness of the perplexity of

living, as they say.

I cite here his voice which people who knew him only in his

later years believed to be ridden and cracked with his age

but in fact his voice had always been rather high reedy

with a gravelly consistency around its edges and some people

found this menacing but others thought it avuncular

especially after his operation for cataracts when they wear

those goggle glasses. But it was one of those voices of such

individual character that people who never heard it can

imagine it just by the mention of his name and those standing

in the great crush of honors at his funeral could believe

themselves likely to hear it for many years afterward as if a

man of this strong presence could not release his hold on

life except very very slowly and, buried or not, manifest

a half life, probably, of twenty-five thousand years.

I was on headlights. First I attached with four screws two metal frames the screws lay in a bin the frames met at the convergence of two small belts the left frame from the left belt the right down the line. Sometimes the pieces didn’t match, sometimes the wrong piece came down the wrong side and sometimes, the thread not being true, I had to hammer the screws in, everybody did.

Next I affixed the crossed pieces to the inside of a curl of tin shaped like a flowerpot. I then inserted through a hole in the pot about four feet of insulated wire that came to hand dangling from a big spool overhead. I snipped the wire with a pair of shears, knotted the wire so it wouldn’t slip and put the whole thing back on the line for the next man, who did the electrical connections, slapped on the chrome and sent it on to the main line for mounting on a fender.

That was the operation it’s what I did.

High above my head the windows of the great shed hung open like bins and the sun came through the meshed glass already broken down, each element of light attached to its own atom of dust and there was no light except on the dust and between was black space, like the night around stars. Mr. Autobody Bennett was a big man who could do that to light, make the universe punch in like the rest of us.

And all around me the noise of running machines, conveyor belts, the creaking of pulleys, screeching of worked metal, shouts, the great gongs of autobodies on the line, the blast of acetylene riveting, the rattling of moving treads, the cries of mistakes and mysterious intentions.

And then continuously multiplied the same sounds repeated compounded by echoes. An interesting philosophical problem: I didn’t know at any moment what I heard was what was happening or what had already happened.

It was enough to make me think of my father. The man was a fucking hero.

Then they speed things up and I’m going too slow I drop one of the tin pots on the wrong side of the belt the guy there is throwing tires on wheel rims and giving the tubes a pump or two of air he ignores my shouts he can’t take the time. And then the foreman is coming down the line to pay me a call I can’t hear him but I don’t have to — a red bulging neck of rage.

And then they stop coddling us and throw the throttle to full and this is how I handle it: I am Fred Astaire in top hat and tails tossing up the screws into the holes, bouncing the frames on the floor and catching them in my top hat of tin. I twirl the headlight kick it on the belt with a backward flip of my heel. I never stop moving and when the belt is too slow for me I jump up and stomp it along faster, my arms outstretched. Soon everyone in the plant has picked up on my routine — everyone is dancing! The foreman comes pirouetting along, putting stars next to each name on his clipboard. And descending from the steel rafter by insulated wire to dance backward on the moving parade of car bodies, Mr. Bennett himself in white tie and tails. He’s singing with a smile, he’s flinging money from his hands like Stardust.