ng of the daily papers
found my tiny item buried back of the stock reports, with the labor
news. I read it three times.

JUKEBOX WAR SUSPECTED.

_An anonymous tip today told our labor reporter that serious trouble
looms in the canned music industry. R. C. Jones, czar of Local 77,
AFL, has issued orders to individually guard each machine serviced by
his union. Jones had the classic "no comment" for publication, but it
is an open secret that intra-union friction is high in the
Harper-Gratiot area. Jones inferred that deliberate sabotage is
responsible for the wholesale short-circuiting of jukeboxes and
television sets. He named no names, but in an off-the-record statement
threatened to fight fire with fire. "We're not," he snapped, "going to
stand by and watch while goons ruin our livelihood. We will...._"

Now I was in a fix. They had to make a living. I'd forgotten that. A
union man myself, who was I to break another's rice bowl? I could see
no point in writing to this R. C. Jones. He'd think I was as crazy as
they come. And the newspapers--I could imagine the reactions of a
tough city editor. So, wrapped up in my own thoughts, I stepped off
the curb a little ahead of the green, and I jumped just in time. I
swore at the truck that almost got me, and it happened so quickly I
wasn't prepared to hear or to see the motor of the truck throw a
piston right through the rusted hood. White as a sheet the driver got
out of his cab, and I crossed the street against the red light and
lost myself in the crowd. This curve I was putting on the ball, it
came to me then, wasn't limited to jukeboxes and noisy radios and
burnt-out bearings. I had to watch my temper, or I was going to get
someone in trouble. I was in trouble myself, and I had to get out of
it.

By the time I got home I'd thought it over quite well. This--this
power whatever it might be, was the McCoy. Why should I waste it when
an honest dollar might be turned? A factory job in Detroit is just a
factory job, and I might keep mine for the next forty years if I lived
long enough through the noise and the dirt and the uncertainty and the
model changeover layoffs every Christmas. The Olsens' radio disturbed
my thinking and it took only a second. Either they were going to get
tired of putting new tubes into that gadget, or play it softer, or
move. I didn't care which.

So I used my wife's portable to type out a letter to Naval Ordnance in
Aberdeen where my brother-in-law