b"me, I did my own job. If I had to do a stoppage, I did a stoppage. If I had to change some pipes under the sink, I changedthe pipes. Everything was at my own leisure, you know, everything was what I wanted to do. Nobody was like on me: Oh, you better hurry up and do that, you better do this or you got to do this. And I hate to boss people around becauseI don't like to get bossed around.You must have had a supervisor, but you weren't treated like that, they weren't on you?They never bothered me. The supervisors, they checked behind me a few times when they were new, they saw that I was doing what I was supposed to do, so they didn't want to bother guys doing good.Was that true at all the places you worked?Well, I ran through a lot of superintendents. Maybe in my lifetime, maybe with no exaggeration there were 20, 25supers, bosses. I went to a lot of buildings. In Straus alone, they had three or four different supers there.In terms of anyone influencing your decision to go into City service, would I be correct in saying you influenced yourself because you knew family there?Yes, I had family and I liked what I was doing.Did you have friends who also worked for the City?Well, no, I made friends as I went along. But I had family and everybody followed each other into Housing.Once you were working for the City, was there someone on the job, a co-worker or supervisor who encouragedyou in your job, a mentor? You were telling me about the older guy who did that. Tell me a little bit about him.Well, I don't remember his name, I just remember Charlie was his first name. He was an old guy, he worked in Morris Houses and he would say: Come on, Joe, let's go to a move-out. And he showed me things: Here I want you tocome over here, take this out, this is a bull cock, this is this this is how you He showed me all the parts in a toilet, thenhe showed me under the sink, he said: Come here, let me show you this, let me show you a stove, how to take apart astove. And he started showing me how to take apart a stove. So, he took his time and he used to do that every time. He used to take care of move-outs, so he was fixing the move-out apartments up. He had to do all the work in it. He used to take me with him and I used to help him. I was helping him as he was helping me.How old would you say he was? If I was 17, he had to be 57, put it like that. So, he was on his way to retirement, he was an older guy, but he kneweverything inside-out in the Project. He showed me how to tag the lines to make sure, Here's the A line; it shuts off onsix [sixth floor], so come over here and take this one [to] upper six, he showed me everything. We had book-learning. If you don't do it with your hands, you're never really going to learn. You can read books after books and then I tell you:Okay let's go let's go do this. You'd be like: Oh, I know we're supposed to do this But you can't even hold thewrenches? But I was mechanically-inclined, so it came to me naturally. I grabbed the wrenches, he said: Oh. So, I starteddoing everything and he says: You'll get it, dont worry.71 "