b"Why did you decide to go to work for the city, or for the Housing Authority in particular?You want the truth? At 17 years old, I had an altercation with the police department. I hit a policeman. I went in frontof a judge eventually and the judge said, Young man, I don't usually give people options.This was during the VietnamWar, when the Vietnam War was very hot. [The judge said] You go into the army, you get a job, or you're gonna go to jail.Which one would you like? I said: I'm on the list for the Housing Authority. He told his clerk to check me out, that wasin September of 1960. In April of '61, I was hired by the Housing Authority.What made you decide you wanted to work for the Housing Authority?My father was a preacher. Not a real preacher, but a home preacher. [He said] Get a city job, get a city job, get a cityjob. You need security, you need security, you need security. So, I took the test to stop him from bothering me, andbefore you know it, I was in the civil service.Did your father work for the city?Yes, he was just starting out in the city. My father originally was a cab driver working seven days a week to survive.He had a family and he was telling me, You don't have to make money for the city, you just have to work. No matterwhere you go, you have to earn money for your boss. If he doesn't earn, you're out. There's no out in the civil service.So, I took his words of wisdom.When he started working for the city, where did he work?Well, being my father was a chauffeur, he worked for the Borough President of Manhattan. He was his chauffeur.His name was Hulen Jack, and Hulen Jack used to do his business Monday through Friday. He used to call my father,Scotty. Scotty, I need the car for Monday morning. So, we had a Cadillac at my house. True story.[My dad said]: I can'tput too much miles on it, but where do you want to go? [I said]: I want to go to the movies dad. [He said]: Alright.And, not many people had Cadillacs in those days. Hulen Jack loved my father so much, but Hulen Jack got in trouble forsome kind of graft, which turned out to be nothing, but he was still fired. So, he told my father: Get out of this. The nextguy ain't gonna be like me. Next guys gonna use you like, Go pick up my daughter, go pick up my son, go get my drycleaners. Hulen Jack wasn't that kind of guy. So, my father went to the sewer department. And then he became a bigsupervisor in the sewer department. He ran all of Manhattan.Did other members of your family work for the city?My two brothers-in-laws worked for the city. My sister worked for the Board of Education.Did you have a mentor on the job? Oh absolutely. I had a bunch of mentors. They're all passed on by now, but I was a young kid and I tried to become amaintenance man. As a caretaker, you could always work your way into doing a little other than caretaker work. They tookme along to the maintenance shop and gave me all the work you didn't need much to know to do, such as sand downtabletops, work like that. Before you know it, I was as good as anybody else. Then, they would take me on different jobs,show me how to repair a lock, show me how to put a pane of glass in, things like that. So, when I was a trainee, I was 39 "