Life Inside a Worker's Idyl

Part stereotype, part enigma, blue collar workers are little known to the rest of the nation. To examine what shapes their moods, habits and lifestyles, Correspondent Frank Merrick spent the better part of a week in the fairly well-off working-class community of South Milwaukee, Wis. (pop. 23,286). His report:

THE grandmotherly proprietress leaned expertly over a pool table in The Corner, a barroom on the main corner of South Milwaukee's shabby business district, and sank a tricky shot. "This is a very conservative town," said Ethel Rapee. "People want things to stay the way they are. They don't like change."

Her attitude is widely and fervently shared in this almost completely blue collar city ten miles south of Milwaukee. The typical South Milwaukeean wants nothing so much as to be left alone to enjoy his material comforts. He defines the good life as owning his own home, two cars, a small boat and a color television set and enjoying the ultimate privilege of sending his children to college. Barring a serious economic slump, most families in South Milwaukee expect to reach these goals, though the effort to do so means that well over half of the wives must hold full-time jobs.

Do It Yourself. South Milwaukee's people are proud of their self-sufficiency. Residents boast that their town is the only one in Milwaukee County that has not joined the metropolitan sanitary district. When some boating enthusiasts formed the South Milwaukee Yacht Club, the members pitched in themselves to build a one-story, cinder-block clubhouse and a breakwater that juts into Lake Michigan. The members pay dues of only $36.50 a year and mostly operate small powerboats, but a few have 40-ft. yachts. "We're self-contained," explains Charles Webb, 29, a trailer mechanic. "We don't have to worry about the next guy."

The town owes much of its character to its stable ethnic mix. South Milwaukee is an enclave of Germans, Poles and Armenians, the descendants of the families that flocked to jobs in the factories built there in the 1890s. In an era when changing opportunities frequently lure the young away from home, three or four generations of the same family often live in South Milwaukee's modest but well-kept one-and two-story homes. The town has only one bowling alley and a single movie theater (recent features: Blow-Up and Count Yorga, Vampire). In the 52 barrooms, where patrons like to gulp their 35-c- shots of whisky straight or with a 15-c- beer chaser, business is slow. Television has ended the historic role of the saloon as the workingman's club. Social life now revolves around the color tube at home.

Few big-city woes afflict South Milwaukee. In the 32 years that Police Chief Henry R. Tylicki has been on the force, he says, there have been no murders at all. Although a handful of blacks work in the town's busy factories, none dare to live in South Milwaukee. Residents are not particularly sympathetic to blacks. "We made it. We got what we wanted on our own." says a middle-aged workingman as he quaffs a beer. "Why can't they do it the way we did?"

The youth revolution has hardly touched South Milwaukee--yet. Its sons are mainly interested in hopped-up "muscle" cars. Its daughters recently won the right to wear slacks to school, but none go without bras. "Most kids in school are the quiet type," says Mary Pat Nelson, 17, a blonde senior at South Milwaukee High. About half of her class will go on to technical schools or college. A few students recently have begun using hallucinogens and amphetamines, but School Superintendent Roger Schaus dismisses the drug problem as "minimal." Still, there has been one student demonstration. It occurred last June after the police raided the traditional post-graduation beer bust in Grant Park and confiscated 14 kegs of beer.

Devoted to education for their own children, South Milwaukeeans feel outraged at campus demonstrators. "They should be thankful for the opportunity to go to school and have a better life," says Mayor Chester Grobschmidt, 50. The mayor can speak from personal experience. He did not attend college, and he earns his living making plastic parts for Bucyrus-Erie Co.. the world's largest manufacturer of excavating equipment. Nearly half of South Milwaukee's labor force works in Bucyrus-Erie's clangorous plant near the center of town. The factory has been running round the clock seven days a week to turn out coal-digging machinery needed to help ease the nation's power shortages. South Milwaukee's unemployment rate remains well below the national average.

Prime Obsession. Still, the people of South Milwaukee worry deeply that hard times might reach them. The combination of inflation, unemployment and rising taxes leaves them bewildered, angry and feeling helpless. "Our paychecks are bigger, but we take home less," says Mayor Grobschmidt, articulating his town's prime obsession. "Everybody's digging at us--the Federal Government, the state, the county. Those who've got money already seem to be getting ahead. Those who haven't, and that's most of us, are falling behind."

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