In the winter of 1961, when I was still in Secondary School, I had managed to get my college admissions done with scholarships. I had passed all my Regents Exams so I had a Regents Diploma. So I thought I could just slide the second half of my Senior year. My father, not so much. He decided that I should learn what work was like, not the kind of stuff college grads did in suits and polished shoes and clean nails. But real down and dirty work.
January 1961 in New York was cold and snowy. My father got me a job, with my Headmaster approval, working for the NY Sanitation Department clearing sewer drains along the road ways. I got up at 4 AM, dressed as warmly as possible, took the bus, the first one at 4:35 that go me to the Garage at 5:30. I clocked in and met my "fellow" workers. They were a couple of years older than me, High School dropouts for the most part, many married with kids! Unlike contemporary students off to the Swiss Alps I was off to the Port Richmond garage. My peers there were not ones who could advance my career.
Every day I would be out with a team clearing sewer drains in freezing slush getting splashed by passing trucks. But one thing I did get was the use of the F word.
Now in my school one rarely if ever heard it used. It was at the time the lowest of the low words. But here I heard it used as a noun, verd, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunctive, and every possible word form. In fact there was one fellow who could, with hand and arm motions, conduct a conversation with that one word alone! After a few weeks I could understand him. I did realize that one could not have a dictionary for such speech since it did involve human facial and hand expressions!
Thus I have always associated the use of this word to Staten Island the the Sanitation Department. I could out Soprano the Sopranos. Once some dude in New York tried to intimidate a few well dressed colleagues and myself. The use of my Staten Island dialect and the F word sent him scurrying for fear of his existence! Amazing what that word could do. It transformed me n my Brooks Bros attire into a street wise guy, with possible connections that one did not want to upset. It was the lowest class language available but intimidating.
In today's world we now have "ladies" and "politicians" using it without any form of proper training. It sounds foolish and out of place. They all failed to get educated in the Garage. In fact their use is laughable! As are they.
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