1
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1
2
3
4
5
6 INTERVIEW
7 OF
8 ALBERT MARINO
9
sand pit worker for Colonial
10
11 re: Generoso Pope Sr. 1910-50
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
2
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: Would this be a good
3 time or could I call you later today?
4 MR. MARINO: No, it is alright now.
5 MR. ZULLO: Your name is Albert Marino?
6 MR. MARINO: Right.
7 MR. ZULLO: Okay. When did you work
8 for Colonial?
9 MR. MARINO I started
in the sand pits
10 in 1936.
11 MR. ZULLO: 1936?
12 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
13 MR. ZULLO: A long time ago.
14 MR. MARINO: You are talking to an old
15 man.
16 MR. ZULLO: Well, you sound terrific.
17 What was it like back then?
18 MR. MARINO: Well, if you know how the
19 coal mines were, we were just as bad.
20 MR. ZULLO: Really?
21 MR. MARINO: 1936. We organized in
22 1938.
23 MR. ZULLO: What was it like before you
24 organized, what was it like? What were the
25 conditions?
3
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: Terrible.
2 MR. ZULLO: In what way?
3 MR. MARINO: Well, there was no safety.
4
Nobody, I mean, you got forty-five cents an
5
hour working and the conditions were very
6 very bad.
7 MR. ZULLO: What did you do there?
8 MR. MARINO: I was operating engineer.
9
I started when I was twenty and I was a
10 fireman on a derrick for two or
three months
11 and then I run the machine in late 1936.
12 MR. ZULLO: What kind of a machine,
13 what would it do?
14 MR. MARINO: A crane.
15 MR. ZULLO: I see.
16 MR. MARINO: I would run that, well,
17
later in the years I run the drag line,
18
shovel, deep shovel. All those
kinds of -
19
operating engineer, you know, producing sand
20 and gravel.
21 MR. ZULLO How many
men would be in a
22
pit at any one time?
23 MR. MARINO: Well, in 1936 there was
24
about, don't forget now, we had four pits,
25
there were four different companies and
4
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
altogether we had about seven hundred men
2 working there.
3 MR. ZULLO: Would
the men be working
4 for a specific company?
5 MR. MARINO: No, I was working with the
6 largest one. There were smaller plants. Oh,
7
I don't know, 1936, might have been two or
8
three hundred working for the company that I
9 worked for, Colonial.
10 MR. ZULLO: You worked for Colonial?
11 MR. MARINO: Well, it wasn't Colonial
12
when I first started, it was Goodwin and
13
Gallagher.
14 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
15 MR. MARINO: And then Colonial came in,
16
I forgot what year. I think
Colonial came
17 in, in the late thirties.
18 MR. ZULLO: So after you had organized,
19
the workers had organized and Colonial came in.
20
Did the conditions improve?
21 MR. MARINO: Oh, tremendously. You
22
see, Generoso Pope had, he had a trucking
23
business in
24 organized. I guess his lawyers, he really
25
organized with the operating engineers and
5
REPORTER:
ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1
they thought highly of him and when we
2 organized he accepted it.
3 Actually he told us, he said, “It is
4
about time you guys organized.”
That is true,
5
you know, because he was already organized
6
and he was with the operating engineers and
7
he probably got a lot of favors too because
8
he was the one that really started the union.
9
He was one of the first ones to sign with the
10 union and once he signed then
the other
11
people, the other contractors just followed
12 suit, you know.
13 MR. ZULLO: Yeah. Did you ever meet
14 Generoso?
15 MR. MARINO: Generoso, yes.
16 MR. ZULLO: You met him?
17 MR. MARINO: Yes, I met him in his
18 office.
19 MR. ZULLO: Really, under what
20 circumstances?
21 MR. MARINO: I was an officer of the
22 union, you know, I was just a conductor, but
23 I went when we first organized and I met him
24 in his office and he said, “It is about time
25 you people got here.” He was a very nice man.
6
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: What was he like?
2 MR. MARINO: Well, he come from the
3
bottom, let's put it that way.
Actually, if
4
you want to hear a good story, my father
5
worked in a sand bank and he was running it
6
and then Generoso Pope was about sixteen
7
years old he asked for a job and my father
8
gave him a job and that was a long, long time
9 ago.
10 MR. ZULLO: What did your dad say about
11 Generoso back in those days?
12 MR. MARINO: My father would say, “He
13
never gave up.” My father and my
uncle was
14
also in that and he bothered them so much
15 that they gave him a job.
16 MR. ZULLO: You mean, he kept badgering
17 them for a job?
18 MR. MARINO: Yeah, yeah.
Finally he
19
got in that. And then actually he
went to
20
school too. He was quite a fighter. He had
21
a job and he went to night school and he got
22 a little bit of an education and he finally
23 moved back to
24
he got into the contracting business himself.
25
He started from the bottom and there was no
7
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1 silver spoon in his mouth. He was a man that
2
had come from
3 himself up to quite a big man.
4 MR. ZULLO: Back then when Generoso
5 first started in the sand pits, what were
6 conditions like, can you describe --
7 MR. MARINO: You mean before?
8 MR. ZULLO: Yeah. I am talking about
9 way back, you know, we are talking a year --
10 MR. MARINO: Actually the company - we
11 had - they would even get men from the New
12
13
two or three months and fired them and got
14 new people. It was a terrible condition.
15 MR. ZULLO: What would they be doing?
16 Would they actually just be shoveling
17 themselves or --
18 MR. MARINO: Well, it is, like I said,
19 because they had many different
20 qualifications. They had many different
21 kinds, they had laborers and engineers, you
22 know, all different kinds that worked there.
23 MR. ZULLO: Were they mostly Italians;
24 Italian immigrants?
25 MR. MARINO: When I started in 1936 we
8
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
had what you call a league of nations there.
2
A lot of Germans. We had a lot of
Germans in
3
the machine shop. We had Italians
doing a
4
lot of labor work. It is all
according to
5 what nationality you were. We had the
6 shipyard where there were mostly Norwegian or
7 Swedish people.
8 MR. ZULLO: Right.
9 MR. MARINO: So everybody had their own
10 trade.
11 MR. ZULLO: Let's go back further than
12 that. How did your dad get a
13 job there, was he an Italian immigrant?
14 MR. MARINO: Well, he came here in
15 1894.
16 MR. ZULLO: In 1894, I see.
17 MR. MARINO: When he came in, and I
18 have two brothers and two sisters older than
19 me and they were all born here and I am the
20 youngest and I was born in
21 MR. ZULLO: Huh.
22 MR. MARINO: They - 1914 they went for
23 a two year vacation and I was born in 1914,
24 and then early 1916 they came back.
25 MR. ZULLO: And that is when he got a
9
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 job working --
2 MR. MARINO: Oh, no, he was working
3 before that.
4 MR. ZULLO: In the sand pits?
5 MR. MARINO: In the sand pits. Then
6 you say, it is
quite a story. My uncle came
7
here before my father and he got into the
8
sand bank business and then
when my father
9
came he eventually got into that business
10 too. When my father owned the sand bank for
11
a while and they had a, like in the old days
12 they had a grocery store and a bar.
13 And my uncle had the same thing
just a
14 different sand pit. If one of those men -
15
see, my uncle and my father never got a long,
16 that was the biggest problem.
17 MR. ZULLO: Right.
18 MR. MARINO: If one of those guys was
19
seen at the bar he was fired the next day.
20 MR. ZULLO: Wow.
21 MR. MARINO: Those were the kinds of
22 conditions that we had. Like in the old
23 west. You know, the old stories of the old
24
west and how they treated people, well, that
25 is what it was.
10
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: What was your father's
2 name?
3 MR. MARINO: Joseph.
4 MR. ZULLO: Joseph Marino.
5 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
6 MR. ZULLO: So in 1916, what was his
7 job exactly?
8 MR. MARINO: Well --
9 MR. ZULLO: I am sorry, let me rephrase
10 that.
When Generoso Pope came for a job,
11
asking for a job, what was your dad doing
12 exactly?
13 MR. MARINO: He was the owner of the
14 plant. He didn't own the property, but he
15 was running the whole thing, you know.
16 MR. ZULLO: He was like the foreman or
17 the --
18 MR. MARINO: Well, he was a little more
19 than the foreman.
20 MR. ZULLO: Superintendent or the --
21 MR. MARINO: Well, he never owned the
22 property.
23 MR. ZULLO: The general manager maybe
24 or --
25 MR. MARINO: Probably in that position.
11
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: And what was the name of
2 the company? Was it Colonial?
3 MR. MARINO: No, I don't know what kind
4 of names they had. I have no idea. I never
5 thought about what kind of company.
6 No, Colonial didn't come in until the
7 '30s running the sand banks. You see,
8 Colonial had business in
9 in a contract and then that is when he - let
10 me get this straightened out, but Colonial
11
didn't come in until I think it was 1933 or
12 1934 or something like that.
13 MR. ZULLO: That is when they took over
14 the sand pit that you were working in?
15 MR. MARINO Yes. That was during the
16
depression and things were
tough. We were
17 working like one day a week. And when
18 Colonial came in and it really picked up.
19 MR. ZULLO: So the sand pits then,
20 going back to those early days, this would
21 have been, let's see, Generoso --
22 MR. MARINO: Well, he started in the
23 sand banks as a worker when my father gave
24 him job. He was in the --
25 MR. ZULLO: This would have been like
12
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 1906?
2 MR. MARINO: 1906, no, no, no, wait a
3 minute.
4 MR. ZULLO: You see, Generoso came over
5 in 1906 at the age of 15.
6 MR. MARINO: You probably have better
7 information than I have.
8 MR. ZULLO: So if your dad gave him a
9 job at the age of 16, that would have been
10 like in 1907?
11 MR. MARINO: Yeah, that is possible,
12 now you are, yeah. You see, my father took
13 the vacation in 1913 and that was already all
14 done, you are right.
15 MR. ZULLO: Okay. So in 1907 your dad
16 was a general manager of a, you are calling
17 it a sand bank?
18 MR. MARINO: Sand bank, yeah. Sand
19 pit, yeah, but we called them sand banks.
20 MR. ZULLO: Any idea how big the sand
21 pit was?
22 MR. MARINO: You see, there was three
23
or four different sand pits.
24 MR. ZULLO: These were all near Port
25
13
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: That was, my father and my
2 uncle had, they were - what name they went
3 under, I don't know.
4 MR. ZULLO: Okay. Can you tell me
5 anything else that your dad said about
6
Generoso when he first came and asked for a
7 job, your dad turned him down,
is that it?
8 MR. MARINO: My father, yeah, didn't
9
give him the job, right away, but Pope kept
10
insisting on a job, you know, kept bothering
11 him, so my father gave him a job. I don't
12
know how long he worked there, but then when
13
he went to school and I guess he knew what it
14 was all about, he went to, back in
15
City and that is when he really started his
16 contract work.
17 MR. ZULLO: Right.
18 MR. MARINO: In other words he would, I
19 don't know how he started or anything, but I
20 know that he did good work there, he had a
21 lot of men working, a lot of trucks.
22 MR. ZULLO: Right. But when Generoso
23 first started there, did your dad tell you
24 anything about what kind of a job he gave
25
him, was he just --
14
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: Yes, at that time when
2
they loaded barges, they loaded with horse
3 and wagon.
4 MR. ZULLO: Right.
5 MR. MARINO: They would go on a dock
6
and get the sand on the barges
and then they
7
were towed to
8
kind of work he had. I think that
he was
9 running the horse and cart.
10 MR. ZULLO: I see.
Now did they have
11 housing for the workers there?
12 MR. MARINO: Yes.
13 MR. ZULLO: What was that like?
14 MR. MARINO: They always had workers,
15 they had a camp like.
16 MR. ZULLO: A camp?
17 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
18 MR. ZULLO: Can you describe the
19 buildings or what they slept in or where they
20 slept?
21 MR. MARINO: Well, what I know now, you
22 see, I have to go back around the early 1920s
23 that I remember, you know. My father had a
24
quite a few men living there and they would
25 pay him like two dollars a month rent and
15
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 they had carts that they would - you know,
2
they had to go to work at like six in the
3 morning. It isn't like today, they had to
4
work eleven, twelve hours a day.
It was
5
convenient for them to sleep right there and
6
go to work early and come back and my father
7
had a grocery store and he had a bar, so the
8 conveniences were there.
9 MR. ZULLO: I see, so these were like
10 company stores and company --
11 MR. MARINO: Absolutely, yeah.
12 MR. ZULLO: Bar and all that.
13 MR. MARINO: - coal mines, you know,
14 what is that
15 MR. ZULLO: Sixteen tons and what do
16 you get, another day older and deeper in
17 debt.
18 MR. MARINO: That is right. And there
19
was an awful lot of them that saved money and
20
they eventually brought their family here,
21
especially the Italians, you know.
They
22
would save a few dollars and then get their
23 family over here.
24 MR. ZULLO: So back in 1906 and 1907,
25 around then, how much money do you think that
16
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 the workers were getting?
2 MR. MARINO: I know that they were
3
getting, I know that my father's wages were
4
when he first started in the sand bank, it
5 was a little over ten cents an hour.
6 MR. ZULLO: Amazing.
7 MR. MARINO: The big pay was a dollar
8 and ten cents a day.
9 MR. ZULLO: Geez.
10 MR. MARINO: It doesn't sound possible
11
but that is what it is. I know
the wages
12
around that time there was around ten, eleven
13 cents an hour. I know that my father worked,
14 he says, he got a dollar ten cents a day.
15 MR. ZULLO: Wow.
16 MR. MARINO: I am confused between hour
17 and day, because when I say a dollar ten
18 cents a day, that is terrible.
19 MR. ZULLO: Would they work in the
20 summer and the winter?
21 MR. MARINO: Well, it was all according
22 to the weather, the winters, you know, in
23 those days the winters were so bad --
24 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
25 MR. MARINO: Even when I worked there,
17
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
the zero, you know meant nothing.
But a lot
2
of times they would have to close down, the
3 harbor would freeze and it was
all according
4 to the weather, you know.
5 MR. ZULLO: So what would the workers
6
do in the wintertime?
7 MR. MARINO: They would do nothing,
8
there was nothing, that is why you had the
9 company store. They would get themselves in
10 debt, but it worked out, it was
terrible
11 conditions. There was hardly ever work in
12
the wintertime, because, you see nowadays
13
when I was there, we worked in the wintertime
14
because it never got that cold like it did in
15 the teens and the twenties and the
thirties.
16 The thirties were terrible cold.
17 MR. ZULLO: I see. In the summertime,
18
how hot would it get in the pits?
19 MR. MARINO: Oh, we had days that we
20
had men pass out. I had men pass
out in
21
front of me that, it would just go ninety,
22 ninety five degrees and you know, when
you
23 work in the sand pits, the sand
gets hot
24 itself.
25 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
18
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: So you fool around with
2
hundred and ten degrees and a lot of fellows
3
would pass out. The next day they
were
4
alright again, I don't know. It
was a tough,
5
you see, you have to go a little bit before
6
my time too and I started in 1936 and it was
7 rough then.
8 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
9 MR. MARINO: I used to hear stories,
10
and you know, stories of how many people got
11
hurt and you see, I lived right next to the
12
sand pits.
13 MR. ZULLO: Right.
14 MR. MARINO: When we heard the whistle
15 blow, we knew somebody got
killed or got
16 hurt. Every time, so often we used to hear
17 the whistle.
You see, everything was steamed
18
then, you know, steamed locomotives, steam
19
shovels, and then when somebody got hurt they
20 would blow the whistle.
21 MR. ZULLO: Why would they do that?
22 MR. MARINO: Well, to get help, you
23 know, that somebody got hurt.
24 MR. ZULLO: I see.
25 MR. MARINO: I used to hear that and I
19
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
used to run up there to see what is happened,
2
and you will see a guy whose leg was cut off
3
or his arm was off or something, terrible
4 conditions.
5 MR. ZULLO: Would people get buried?
6 MR. MARINO: Oh, yeah.
I have a
7 brother-in-law, uncle, cousin,
all got killed
8
in the sand bank, and most of them got buried
9
in the sand pits, they were what you called
10 cavers. The bank was so high that they had
11
to have men up there to try to get the bank
12 to cave down to get the shovel to pick
it up.
13 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
14 MR. MARINO: Well, sometimes it would
15
get fooled because sometimes it would come
16
down larger than they expected and they would
17
get buried and they would get killed right
18 there.
19 MR. ZULLO: You mean, they would be on
20 the top of the --
21 MR. MARINO: No, in the middle of the
22 bank.
23 MR. ZULLO: In the middle of the bank
24
and they are trying to knock it down --
25 MR. MARINO: Right, that is it. An in
20
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 other words, if the thing didn't cave,
they
2 would undermine it so it would cave.
3 MR. ZULLO: Right.
4 MR. MARINO: But sometimes the cave was
5
more than they expected and the guys can't
6 get out of the way and they get buried.
7 MR. ZULLO Did you
ever see or were
8
you a part of any rescue of digging down and
9 pulling people out?
10 MR. MARINO: No, actually, this mostly
11
happened before my time. In 1936
they had
12 other things to get the bank down.
13 MR. ZULLO: The whistle would blow
14 often?
15 MR. MARINO: Terrible.
There wasn't a
16
week that went by that we didn't hear a
17
whistle. A lot of people got hurt
in the
18
sand pits. Like I was telling
you, I had a
19 brother-in-law that got buried
there. I have
20
an uncle and, you know, a cousin and there
21
was an awful lot of people, and you see, the
22
conditions were so terrible until finally the
23 state come in there and
straighten a lot of
24
things out when the union got in we got a lot
25 of safety, there was a lot of precautions,
21
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 there was, getting hurt was a lot less.
2 You see, when I left the conditions
3 were pretty good compared to when I first
4 started.
5 MR. ZULLO: Well, if your dad gave
6
Generoso his first job there, what kind of a
7 job - you said that he working
with a horse?
8 MR. MARINO: Well, the way that I
9
understand it, he was driving the horse and
10
cart, they have what you call a side dump,
11 you fill that up with sand and then when
they
12
go on the dock they would tip it over and the
13 sand would fall on the barges, that was the
14 job that he had.
15 MR. ZULLO: I see.
16 MR. MARINO: Now how long, I don't
17 quite know how long he worked
there. But I
18
know that he went to night school to better
19
himself, you know. I guess he figured, this
20
is not for me, you know, I better do
21 something. I know he went to school.
22 MR. ZULLO: Did your dad say what it
23
was about Generoso that made your dad finally
24
relent and give him a job?
25 MR. MARINO: He wouldn't give up. You
22
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
know what I mean, if you want to get
2
something done, you have to keep bothering
3 the guy, I guess, and say, well, I might as
4 well give him a job or else he'll be
5 bothering me.
6 In other words, he was insistent that
7
he had to have that job and so my father
8
finally gave him the job. He was
never sorry
9 for it because he was a good worker.
10 MR. ZULLO: Was
there a reason why your
11
dad didn't want to give him the job in the
12
first place?
13 MR. MARINO: Well, you don't need
14 anybody, you could have a
hundred men or you
15
could have two hundred men, I don't know.
16
Maybe my father didn't need
anybody at that
17 time. Maybe a little later on a couple of
18
weeks later maybe he needed him or something,
19 I don't know.
20 MR. ZULLO: How young could workers be?
21 MR. MARINO: There was no, there was no
22
law then how long or how old you got to be.
23 I know that he was around sixteen.
24 MR. ZULLO: Right.
25 MR. MARINO: I don't know.
23
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: There could have been
2 people, could your dad not want him because
3 he was too young or sixteen was considered,
4 that is fine?
5 MR. MARINO: No, he never mentioned
6 that he was too
young or not. I never knew
7
of anybody younger than that working in the
8
sand pits because it was a tough job, there
9 was nothing easy in the sand pit.
10 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
11 MR. MARINO: A kid could never do it.
12 MR. ZULLO: Was there, were there a lot
13 of fights or anything among the workers?
14 MR. MARINO Well,
there was a lot of,
15
you know, between the Polish and the Italians
16
and the Germans and Swedish, I guess there
17
was a little friction there. But
I know when
18
I started there, it was, after we got the
19 union everything was that we
worked together
20 sort of.
21 MR. ZULLO: Now, you call them the sand
22 pits, what exactly are we talking about?
23 What kind of material? Is it just typical
24 sand or is it --
25 MR. MARINO: No, you see, the sand, we
24
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
delivered the sand to
2
to
3 be processed and has to be washed.
4 You see, where the sand pits are, you
5
can't have sand pits like say in
6
there is no such thing. But over
there the
7
sand had to be washed, they had to take the
8
clay, had to take the roots out and then they
9
would have gravel, it was three-quarter inch
10
stone, or quarter inch stone, but you know,
11
that would be all mixed in for cement, you
12
see, everything went to
13 MR. ZULLO: What was the actual
14 material that you were digging?
15 MR. MARINO: Whatever was in the bank
16
there, that was all sand a gravel, that is
17
why they call it a sand and gravel pit.
The
18 bank is consisting of sand and gravel.
19 MR. ZULLO: Right.
20 MR. MARINO: Stones and rocks or
21 whatever. And then they had crushers, in
22
other words, if the stone is too big the
23 crusher used to crush it down to
three
24
quarter size so that the contractors can use
25 it, you see, a lot of cement has got stone in
25
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 it.
2 MR. ZULLO: I see.
3 MR. MARINO: That is why they call it a
4 sand and gravel pit, that is what it is,
5 sand. It has to be special sand. You know,
6 you like go on the beach and you see a lot of
7 sand --
8 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
9 MR. MARINO: You can't use that because
10
that is what we called dead sand, it had no
11 life in it. And the concrete, if you mix
12
that with cement, it would just completely
13 fall apart.
14 MR. ZULLO: I see.
15 MR. MARINO: So you have to have sand
16
that, I always called it, you see, on the
17 beach we always called it dead
sand. And the
18
sand that you get in the pit that is a
19 different kind of sand altogether. That is
20
the kind of cement that holds with the cement
21
and hardens. Better the sand the
better the
22 concrete.
23 MR. ZULLO: So in the summertime when
24 people would be working in the pits, did they
25 wear anything around their heads or --
26
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: Well, there was no laws
2 then, later on in years they had to wear a
3 hard hat, but nobody pushed it.
4 MR. ZULLO: So everybody stripped down
5 to the waist?
6 MR. MARINO: Well, if it was too hot
7 here. In those days we had everything with
8
steam and not only was it the hot weather but
9
it was the steam and people couldn't take
10
their shirts off, it was too hot.
They would
11 wear overalls and a big hat from the sun, but
12 they had no, what you call a safety hat or
13 anything like that.
14 MR. ZULLO: What kind of hats did they
15 wear?
16 MR. MARINO: Like the regular, try to
17 keep the sun out of their face, I guess.
18 MR. ZULLO: But would they be wearing
19 more like baseball cap type hats or a straw
20 hat or --
21 MR. MARINO: There was a mixture. They
22
wouldn't wear a straw hat because it wasn't a
23 desert, but they wore mostly, I don't
know if
24
you have seen the train engineer, it is
25 like a cap, you know, what did you just say?
27
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: Like a baseball cap?
2 MR. MARINO: Baseball cap, something
3 like that.
4 MR. ZULLO: Was it blinding, when that
5 sun would beat down, was it hard to see in
6 the pits?
7 MR. MARINO: No, I don't think that we
8 had any problem.
9 MR. ZULLO: The sun didn't bounce off
10 or reflect off the sand?
11 MR. MARINO: Well, no because, I don't
12 believe that - I know that in the pit it was
13 a lot hotter than when we were on the water,
14 you see, I was on the water a lot and the
15 pits were a lot hotter than the water. I
16 guess it must be from the sand.
17 MR. ZULLO: Right.
18 MR. MARINO: It had to have gotten
19 awful hot.
20 MR. ZULLO: Sure. What about on windy
21
days, did that sand whip around?
22 MR. MARINO: Oh, yeah.
Well, it is not
23
as bad a desert, but when you had sand hit
24
your face it would sting you boy, that would
25 hurt.
28
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO Would the
workers wear
2 bandanas around their face or
handkerchiefs?
3 MR. MARINO: I have seen with some, the
4 red handkerchief that they would
put around
5
their face, you know. Some would
do it, some
6 not. When it got too bad, I guess they
7 couldn't do much in the sand pit, but I don't
8 remember anybody stopped working on account
9 of a sandblast or anything.
10 MR. ZULLO: I imagine that really did a
11 number on their skin?
12 MR. MARINO: Oh, yeah.
13 MR. ZULLO: I suppose that you could
14 tell somebody who worked in the sand pits
15 just by the way they --
16 MR. MARINO: Well, the skin got a
17
little tough, you know. You could
take the
18
weather, when we had zero weather that we
19
thought nothing of it. We got so
used to
20 that cold weather, you know.
21 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
22 MR. MARINO: Now down there they don't
23 have the cold weather like we used to have
24 years ago, I remember.
25 MR. ZULLO: Were there any Italian
29
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 expressions or anything that the workers used
2 or said concerning work?
3 MR. MARINO: I don't know, I can't
4 think of any.
5 MR. ZULLO: Okay. So now, the other
6 thing, with the houses, the housing that they
7 had, how many workers would live in one of
8 these? Were these like shacks?
9 MR. MARINO: Well, some of them were
10 shacks. And then eventually they built some
11 little homes for families. You see, these
12 shacks were just men only.
13 MR. ZULLO: Right.
14 MR. MARINO: And then the company, in
15 fact, the company even had a
school there. I
16
went to that company's school. It
went as
17 far as the third grade. They had the school
18 there for many many
years. Even my older
19 sister went to that school.
20 You see, the company tried to be on the
21
good side of the town, I guess.
They built a
22
school for the - you know, we had a lot of
23 children in there around the sand pits. When
24
they built a home there were a lot of
25 children so the company built a school for
30
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 them.
2 MR. ZULLO These
homes were real small
3 homes?
4 MR. MARINO: Yeah, a single family
5 home. No apartments or anything like that.
6
But the shacks were maybe long shacks, maybe
7 thirty, forty men living in there.
8 MR. ZULLO: What were the bathroom
9 facilities like?
10 MR. MARINO: I don't get you.
11 MR. ZULLO: Restrooms, did they have -
12 what did the workers do, did they --
13 MR. MARINO: Outhouses.
14 MR. ZULLO: They had outhouses
15
scattered throughout the sand pits?
16 MR. MARINO: No, no, nothing in the
17
sand pits. Sand pits, you just
pull your
18 pants down, that is it.
19 MR. ZULLO: Oh, really.
20 MR. MARINO: But the shacks, they all
21
had outhouses and you could go outside.
22 MR. ZULLO: And these were made of
23 wood?
24 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
25 MR. ZULLO: Shingled roofs or tin roofs
31
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 or --
2 MR. MARINO: Oh, gosh, I don't know
3 that.
4 MR. ZULLO: So these would be the same
5 kinds of things that you would see on a ranch
6 kind of like for the farm hands?
7 MR. MARINO: Yeah, yeah, but I think
8 that this was worse.
9 MR. ZULLO: A lot worse, I see. For
10 light, what did they have, lanterns?
11 MR. MARINO: No, as far as I remember,
12 we all had electricity. But if you go back
13 to 1906 or 1910, I don't know. I was born in
14 1914 so I remember things in the early
15 twenties and we had lights then. They all
16 had electricity.
17 MR. ZULLO: It’s hard to believe you were born in 1914.
18 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
19 MR. ZULLO: Man, you sound so much
20 younger.
21 MR. MARINO: That is working in the
22 sand pits. Had forty-three years. I retired
23 in 1979 and I started in '36.
24 MR. ZULLO: That is incredible.
25 So you were telling me that when you
32
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 joined you thought, you said you started in
2 1936?
3 MR. MARINO: 1936 and we organized in
4 1938.
5 MR. ZULLO In '38,
so how did
6
conditions improve when you --
7 MR. MARINO: Improved 100 percent.
8 MR. ZULLO: In what way?
9 MR. MARINO: Better wages.
10 MR. ZULLO: What were the wages, what
11 did they go from --
12 MR. MARINO: Take for instance myself
13
as an operating engineer, I was working for
14
forty-five cents an hour, not even that, it
15
was forty-four and nine tenths. You got four
16
dollars for ten hours work, nine hours work.
17 So the, when we organized we went
from
18 forty-five cents to a dollar ten an hour.
19 MR. ZULLO: Holy smokes.
20 MR. MARINO: That
is how bad,
21
forty-five cents, my god, it was terrible.
22
And, but there wasn't much competition, all
23
the sand pits were all about the same.
You
24
would think that another sand pit would give
25
you fifty cents an hour and everybody would
33
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
go there, but there were so many men around,
2
that if they were short a man they would go
3
to
4 you know.
5 MR. ZULLO: I see.
6 MR. MARINO: In the beginning we had a
7 low class of people and then after --
8 (Thereupon, Side A ended and Side B
9 began.)
10 MR. MARINO: -- they all had to have a
11 trade.
12 MR. ZULLO: Right. So now, so in 1938
13 you and a bunch of other workers went in to
14 see Generoso Senior?
15 MR. MARINO: Yeah, that was in 1938.
16 MR. ZULLO: Where was the office, where
17 did you go?
18 MR. MARINO: I don't remember, in fact,
19 I just followed the delegate around, he was
20
an older man, he knew just where - I didn't
21
realize where we were and I know we were in
22 his office.
23 MR. ZULLO: You were or were not?
24 MR. MARINO: What?
25 MR. ZULLO: You were in his office?
34
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
2 MR. ZULLO: Was this in the City or --
3 MR. MARINO: In the City, yeah. But I
4
know he was in the City, the only thing that
5
I remember him saying is that it is about
6 time you people got here.
7 He says to us, “I come to this
country
8
broke, and if I have to, I will go back
9
broke, but I have to treat the men right.”
10
that is what he told us.
11 So he was kind of glad that we
12
organized. In other words, if a
company is
13
paying forty-five cents an hour and he, they
14 come in and he brings it up to a dollar an
15 hour, he probably from the contract, he
would
16
be condemned.
17 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
18 MR. MARINO: It was all done through
19
the union, you see. Him and the union got
20 along real good. He was the first one to
21 sign with the operating engineers. And from
22
then on it was easy for the union to organize
23
different people but you had to have a
24 beginning.
25 MR. ZULLO: Right.
35
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: And he was the beginning.
2 MR. ZULLO: Was there much
3 negotiations?
4 MR. MARINO: No, no. But we signed for
5 one year and then, you know, we would sign
6 for three years. We only had that one
7 strike, we had one strike in the sand
pits,
8
it wasn't the company's strike, it was more
9 of a union strike.
10 MR. ZULLO: When was that?
11 MR. MARINO: Let's see. Well, after
12 the first year, it must be in 1939 then.
13 Somewhere around that.
14 MR. ZULLO: Why would the union strike
15 when G --
16 MR. MARINO: We got, we were
17 independent, let's put it that way. Let me
18
see how I can explain that. We were supposed
19
to be the lowest people on the earth working
20
in the sand pit. We didn't have no brains,
21
you know, that is what the people would say.
22
MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
23 MR. MARINO: No unions would even come
24 down and organize us.
25 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
36
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO So when I
got in at 1936,
2
we talked around it and finally we decided to
3
organize, but we couldn't get no union to
4
come in, so we got, we were independent.
We
5
got the steam electrical mechanical engineers
6
from
7 you see.
8 MR. ZULLO: Okay.
9 MR. MARINO: So we signed up with them,
10
see. And we signed up for one
year. After
11
the year was up and the other companies, the
12
big companies operating engineers and all
13
them, they figured that if we went on strike,
14
we could almost control
15 didn't get the sand a
gravel,
16 couldn't work.
17 MR. ZULLO: Right.
18 MR. MARINO: So
they didn't want a
19
little independent company to turn around and
20
have control over them, so they tried to
21
organize us, see. That is when we
had the
22
big strike because they were powerful and we
23
were trying to hold them off and we held them
24
off for about nine weeks but then it got too
25 bad so we had to join them.
37
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 So we joined the operating
engineers
2
which was a good thing, in other words, we
3
were stubborn, everybody was stubborn and we
4
figured, well, they didn't organize us then,
5 why should they organize us now. But they
6
realized that if they didn't grab ahold of
7
us, we would be too powerful, we could
8
paralyze the whole
9 why they wanted it. That is how they got us
10 and that was the best move we made, see.
11 MR. ZULLO: So in
1939 there was a
12
strike. How long did the strike
last?
13 MR. MARINO: Nine weeks.
14 MR. ZULLO: Nine weeks?
15 MR. MARINO: Yeah. Hold on a second.
16 MR. ZULLO: Okay. So there was this
17 nine week strike in 1939. What did Generoso
18 have to say about all this?
19 MR. MARINO: Well, see, he had to,
20 well, now let me get it straight here now.
21 See Generoso
come in there in 1933 and they
22
had a five year contract and so I think that
23
he was out. I think he was out at
that
24 particular time. You see, they took over the
25 sand pits for five years and they built it
38
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 up, you know.
2 MR. ZULLO: Who is they, who took it
3 over?
4 MR. MARINO: Colonial.
5 MR. ZULLO: But he owned Colonial?
6 MR. MARINO: Yeah, but you see, wait a
7 minute now, let me get it straight. They
8 came in 1930 - this was during the depression
9
things were so bad, the company couldn't keep
10 up and so Colonial come in.
11 MR. ZULLO: Right.
12 MR. MARINO: So they took a five year
13 contract from 1933 to 1938.
14 MR. ZULLO: Okay.
15 MR. MARINO: That is when we organized
16
in '38 with Colonial, but then Colonial had
17 to go out because the five years was up.
18 MR. ZULLO: So Colonial --
19 MR. MARINO That is
when Metropolitan
20 Sand and Gravel came in.
21 MR. ZULLO: Who did?
22 MR. MARINO: Metropolitan Sand and
23 Gravel.
24 MR. ZULLO: So they owned the pit. In
25 other words, Colonial did not own the pit --
39
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: No, no, they were running
2 it.
3 MR. ZULLO: They were just running it.
4 I see.
5 MR. MARINO: You see, there were no
6 sand pits - no company owned any of the sand
7 pits. That property belonged to private
8
people, you see. Say for
instance, they pay
9
maybe ten to fifty cents a yard, every yard
10
they dig up, the owners would get that money.
11 You see, they never owned
it. They
12 never owned the property.
13 MR. ZULLO: They just got the rights to
14 mine the property?
15 MR. MARINO: That is it.
You got the
16 rights, you never owned the property.
17 MR. ZULLO: I see. So when the strike
18 hit, Colonial was not a part of that --
19 MR. MARINO: No. The strike was more
20 of a union strike.
21 MR. ZULLO: Right.
22 MR. MARINO: The operating engineers
23 wanted us and we didn't want them because we
24 thought that they were unfair. But after
25 nine weeks they won out.
40
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: Right.
2 MR. MARINO: Now I don't know just
3 exactly when, but years later Colonial come
4 back in again. You see, in other words,
5 Colonial ran the place. Now I can't think of
6 what year that was. This was later on. I
7 don't know what year, but they came in and
8 they run the place, they took over in other
9 words.
10 MR. ZULLO: Right.
11 MR. MARINO: I don't know. I have to
12 try and remember now. We were on the, we
13 were not under Colonial when we -- When we
14 organized we were under Colonial, but
15 Colonial had to get out in late 1938.
16 MR. ZULLO: Okay.
17 MR. MARINO: See, then our contract was
18 finished so the union decided that they
19 wanted the sand pits, they wanted to organize
20 us.
21 MR. ZULLO: Gotcha.
22 MR. MARINO: You see, we already were
23 organized, but they were too powerful. I
24 mean, it was to our advantage to join them,
25 you know, as far as pensions and stuff like
41
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 that, it was the best thing that we ever did.
2 MR. ZULLO: Now did you ever meet
3 Generoso again other than that time when you
4 organized?
5 MR. MARINO: Now I had dealings with
6 his son, because he died, you know. I forgot
7 what year he died. He was only fifty eight
8 years old.
9 MR. ZULLO: But you had dealings with
10 Gene Pope or did you have dealings with
11 Fortune or --
12 MR. MARINO: With Fortune and Anthony.
13 MR. ZULLO: And with Anthony.
14 MR. MARINO: Now Gene was the youngest
15 guy.
16 MR. ZULLO: Right. He is the one who
17 ended up founding the National Enquirer.
18 MR. MARINO: Well, he don't own that
19 now I don't think.
20 MR. ZULLO: Well, he died in 1988.
21 MR. MARINO: He did?
22 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
23 MR. MARINO: I didn't even know that.
24 MR. ZULLO: Yeah, he died at the --
25 MR. MARINO: I know that he was running
42
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 the Enquirer but we had, Anthony was the main
2 guy, you see, in other words, Anthony was the
3 brains behind the whole thing after his
4 father died, you know.
5 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
6 MR. MARINO: And Fortune was - I guess
7 he had a different other department, I don't
8 know how they worked it. But I know that I
9 talked many a times with Anthony.
10 MR. ZULLO: Did Generoso come out and
11
visit the pits at all?
12 MR. MARINO: Oh, yes.
Yes.
13 MR. ZULLO: He would?
14 MR. MARINO: Oh, a lot of times. And
15
we had a steam train with a special car and
16
he would be with his party and they would
17
ride around the whole pit, you know, we had a
18
big pit, there was a lot of territory and he
19
would ride around, you know, and that is the
20 time that he was running the Progresso.
21 MR. ZULLO: Yeah, Il Progresso, uh-huh.
22 MR. MARINO: And we had one Italian
23 fellow, he was running the
train, but he
24
couldn't read or write, but he would buy the
25
Progresso and he would put it in his pocket
43
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
so that Generoso Pope could see it. We
2 always laughed about that.
3 MR. ZULLO: What was the special car,
4
what did it look like?
5 MR. MARINO: It was a flat car with
6
seats on it, you know. And
instead of
7
walking around the pit they would go on the
8
tracks, you know --
9 MR. ZULLO: It was open air?
10 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
11 MR. ZULLO: How would Generoso be
12
dressed?
13 MR. MARINO: Oh, he had the regular
14 suit on, the regular business suit.
15 MR. ZULLO: Was he always dressed up?
16 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
17 MR. ZULLO: Would he wave to the
18
workers or --
19 MR. MARINO: Yeah, yeah, the workers
20
liked him.
21 MR. ZULLO: Uh-huh.
22 MR. MARINO: They knew that the bread
23
and butter was buttered as long as we -
24
because we knew that he was on the other side
25
of the contracts when he could use the sand
44
REPORTER:
ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1
and he would get our sand and so we were a
2 little busy when Pope come in.
3 MR. ZULLO: Would he be wearing a hat
4 or anything? Did he wear --
5 MR. MARINO: I don't --
6 MR. ZULLO: You wouldn't know. Would
7 he, how would people recognize him? I mean,
8 the sand pits are so big, they knew that it
9 was him?
10 MR. MARINO: Well, we knew a couple of
11
days ahead of time. Everything
would be
12
cleaned up and prepared for him, you know.
13
It was not like he was coming over there to
14
spy on anybody,
we all knew that he was
15 coming.
16 MR. ZULLO: I see. When you were
17
negotiating or when you were in the office
18
with Generoso, when he spoke, did he have an
19 accent?
20 MR. MARINO: Very, very very
little, it
21
was hard to tell. He was pretty well
22
educated. Actually I didn't
notice any of
23 the accent.
24 MR. ZULLO: Was he soft spoken, was he
25
gruff or was he loud?
45
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO: No, just normal.
2 guy.
3 MR. ZULLO: Did he smoke a cigar or
4 cigarette or anything?
5 MR. MARINO: I didn't see him do that,
6 no.
7 MR. ZULLO: Okay. What was the office
8 like? Was it very well appointed? Was it
9 basic? Was it --
10 MR. MARINO It was a
nice office. He
11 had pictures there and different things. I
12 don't remember too much about --
13 MR. ZULLO: I understand and you have
14 done a terrific job so far. I am really
15 impressed with what you have been able to
16 remember.
17 Do you remember ever seeing Gene come
18 out to the pits at all?
19 MR. MARINO: Actually I don't believe
20 that I have ever seen Gene. He was the
21 youngest and I don't know if, I don't
22 remember ever seeing him. The only ones that
23 I had seen was Anthony and Fortune and then
24 Anthony's son used to come around later in
25 the years.
46
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. ZULLO: What was his son's name; do
2 you remember? Was it Anthony Junior?
3 MR. MARINO: I think that it was, I am
4 not sure now. I think that it was Anthony
5 Junior. Yeah, it was because we had a little
6 tugboat named after him and the tugboat was
7 Anthony Junior.
8 MR. ZULLO: What other things do you
9 recall about Generoso Senior?
10 MR. MARINO: Well, the only thing that
11 I could say was that I never had too much
12 dealings with him, but it was always good
13 words, good things were said about him. The
14 point was that we knew that we worked with
15 Colonial and we knew that what he had in his
16 mind that he should treat the men right and I
17 think that he did.
18 MR. ZULLO: Right.
19 MR. MARINO: And as far as we are
20 concerned he was a good man. You know, a
21 good boss and like he said, he meant it, I
22 believe when he said that I come to this
23 country broke and if I have to I will go back
24 broke. He was a good man. There was no
25 question about that. And I liked his sons
47
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 too, they were good. And they wouldn't be
2 hiding. If they see ya, he had a big hello
3 for you, Anthony did. Anthony did more than
4 Fortune.
5 MR. ZULLO: Uh-huh.
6 MR. MARINO: We knew Anthony better
7 than Fortune.
8 MR. ZULLO: I see. Did you follow
9 Generoso's career in terms of his work with,
10 you know, in politics and the fact that he
11 was the advisor to the Presidents, FDR and to
12 Truman?
13 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
14 MR. ZULLO: Were you aware of that?
15 MR. MARINO: Well, I know that he was
16 quite - I knew that as far as the unions were
17
concerned they thought a lot of him.
Now as
18
far as him with politics, I know that he was
19
into everything, he was, to me what I admired
20
about him was that he was not a big educated
21 man and that he came from the
bottom and he
22
got up there and like you say, he advised a
23 lot of the people.
24 MR. ZULLO: Right.
25 MR. MARINO: A lot of times I know that
48
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
he went against his own
lawyer. You know,
2
the lawyer would say, no, you are not
3
supposed to - do not get mixed up with the
4
operating engineers, you know.
But Gene for
5
some reason, Generoso went against their
6 lawyers and he joined up with the operating
7 engineers and that was the best thing
that he
8
ever did. They got a lot of
respect for him
9
and he got to be quite powerful in
10
City and he got to be quite a big man.
He
11
owned a lot of trucks. I think
that at one
12 time he had nine hundred trucks
running
13 around.
MR. ZULLO: Were the workers, organized
17 representation, just the --
18 MR. MARINO: Oh, no. We had our own
19 delegate. We had our own officers.
20 MR. ZULLO: And you represented all the
21 workers in the sand pit or just --
22 MR. MARINO: No, all the workers.
23 MR. ZULLO: All the workers?
24 MR. MARINO: Yeah. And they say, when
25
we joined the operating engineers they had to
49
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
get a special charter for us because we had
2 so many different workers.
3 We had shipyard workers,
mechanics,
4
operators, you know, instead of having
5
sixteen different unions in there, we had
6 one.
7 MR. ZULLO: Right.
8 MR. MARINO: And I was one of the
9 officers.
10 MR. ZULLO: Gotcha.
11 MR. MARINO: And we ran our own
12 business. In other words, nobody dictated to
13 us. As long as we were doing the right
14 thing, you know. So we had no problem and
15 after that we never had another strike from
16 1939 until I retired there in 1979, we never
17 had another strike. It worked out for the
18 good and then, you know, we made a good
19 living in the sand pits.
20 MR. ZULLO: Did Generoso have to deal
21 with organized crime figures who might
22 have --
23 MR. MARINO: That I have no idea.
24 MR. ZULLO: To pressure the unions?
25 MR. MARINO: I have no idea. That was
50
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 way above us.
2 MR. ZULLO: Did the unions have to pay
3 protection money and things?
4 MR. MARINO: No, no, we had nothing.
5 There was none of that going on. No, we had
6 our own delegate and we had our own executive
7 board, we had local autonomy and that, in
8 other words, nobody dictated to us and we
9 never even reported to them. As long as we
10 were doing all right and they were doing all
11 right, they just left us alone.
12 Until, what happened was that the sand
13 pits started to peter out, you know, you can
14 only dig so many sand in so many years and
15 that was there for over a hundred years and
16 it finally petered out and we had pension, so
17 instead of having five or six hundred men, we
18 were down to ninety men working and the
19 pension was going down.
20 So we joined the operating engineers on
21 the pension which was the greatest thing in
22 the world, although we had a million dollars
23 in our pension, well, that wouldn't last
24 long. So we joined with the operating
25 engineers. Like I am getting a pension now
51
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 from
2 see.
3 MR. ZULLO: Great.
4 MR. MARINO: That was a great thing and
5 you see, we couldn't keep our head above
6 water because without the operating engineers
7 we would flop. We wouldn't have no more
8 pension and no more welfare, no more nothing.
9 So they took us in and we had a million
10 dollars and we gave it to them, which a
11 million dollars on a pension don't mean
12 nothing, you know, but it worked out alright.
13 MR. ZULLO: Can you give me an idea how
14 big a sand pit, a typical sand pit would get?
15 MR. MARINO: What do you mean by big?
16 MR. ZULLO: Are we talking, you know, a
17 mile wide or five hundred yards?
18 MR. MARINO: Well, the sand pit that I
19
worked in had two hundred and thirty some odd
20 acres. Somewhere around that.
21 MR. ZULLO: And how deep would it be?
22 MR. MARINO: Some places were a hundred
23
and fifty feet high; that is why we had
24 people get killed, you see.
25 MR. ZULLO: Yeah.
52
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 MR. MARINO A little
higher too in
2
some places. Until later on in
years,
3
instead of steam shovels we got draglines so
4 nobody got hurt after that. You know,
5
everything improves as the years go by.
That
6
was normal.
We got a set of steam shovels
7
and we got draglines, electric draglines, you
8
know, and if the bank came down it didn't
9
mean nothing, there was nobody there to get
10 hurt.
11 MR. ZULLO: Did the workers say or do
12 anything when they found out that Generoso
13
had died in 1950?
14 MR. MARINO: We had, there were many,
15
many people that went over to the funeral
16 parlor.
17 MR. ZULLO: Really?
18 MR. MARINO: Yeah, there were so many
19
people that I remember even Mrs. Pope, I met
20
her, and she says, you know, the sons wanted
21 her to go home and rest. And she turned
22
around and told it, I was right there, she
23 said, Look, all the big
shots come over to
24
see him. Now I am going to wait
for the
25 workers and I want to meet them too.
53
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 So you can see it was the wife also
2 that had feelings for the workers. She would
3
stay there until the funeral parlor closed
4
because a lot of workers went at nighttime,
5
you know, and she was there day and night.
6
She met an awful lot of men that went to the
7 funeral parlor, it was great.
8 MR. ZULLO: Did the workers do
9 anything; write a letter, a joint letter or
10 anything?
11 MR. MARINO: Not that I know of.
12 MR. ZULLO: How did you find out about
13 his death?
14 MR. MARINO: I have no idea how I found
15 out, I don't remember.
16 MR. ZULLO: Do you know of any other
17 sand pit workers who are still alive from
18 back in that era?
19 MR. MARINO: Oh, gosh, no. You see, I
20 have been down here in
21 I don't even know, if any of those people are
22 alive or dead now. When I went in the sand
23 bank I was one of the youngest. When I left
24 I was one of the oldest.
25 There was an awful lot of people that
54
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 died. All of the people that I knew, most of
2 them, they are all dead now.
3 MR. ZULLO: Do you have any photos or
4 anything from that time involving the sand
5 pits?
6 MR. MARINO: I think that the library
7 has a -- I gave a lot of the library in Port
8
9 I gave them a lot of letters, I even gave
10 them my mother's picture. I have some
11 somewheres, I don't know. I know that they
12 put out a magazine of all about the sand
13 pits.
14 How did you get my name?
15 MR. ZULLO: I got it through the Port
16
17 MR. MARINO: Shodell (phonetic).
18 MR. ZULLO: Elly Shodell.
19 MR. MARINO: We got along pretty good.
20 MR. ZULLO: She said that you were
21 really nice and very cooperative and she was
22 right.
23 MR. MARINO: Yeah.
24 The only thing that we didn't have was
25
the Chinese, we didn't have no Chinese.
We
55
REPORTER: ZULLO
INTVEE: MARINO
1
had to Jewish people. Of course,
they were
2 all Italians, Polish, Yugoslavians. I mean,
3
the Czechs and Swedish, but we had like a
4 league of nations, we all got along.
5 MR. ZULLO: How did you overcome the
6 language barrier?
7 MR. MARINO: That was, you would be
8
surprised how some of them learned English
9 right away. You could tell that, you know,
10
it was pretty hard but we understood each
11 other.
12 MR. ZULLO: Did some of the veteran
13 workers ever pull jokes on the newcomers?
14 MR. MARINO: Oh, yeah. We always, that
15 is a normal thing.
16 MR. ZULLO: What would you do?
17 MR. MARINO:
Well, I don't know. You
18
would make fun of them for a while and then,
19
they all got, they all seemed to understand
20
what was going on. It wasn't that
there was
21 fights or anything like that. We got along
22 good.
23 MR. ZULLO: Alright. Thank you again,
24 Mr. Marino, I appreciate it so much.
25 MR. MARINO: Well, if you want more
56
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 information you can call me up.
2 MR. ZULLO: I appreciate that, sir.
3 MR. MARINO: Okay.
4 MR. ZULLO: Thank you.
5 MR. MARINO: Bye.
6 MR. ZULLO: Bye.
7 (Thereupon, the interview ended.)
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REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 CERTIFICATE OF OATH
2
STATE OF
3 ) SS.
4
5
6 I, the undersigned authority, certify
7 that ALBERT MARINO'S interview was personally
8 transcribed by me.
9
10
11
12 WITNESS my hand and official seal this
13 16TH day of APRIL, 2001.
14
15
16 __________________________
Marni Chris Tice.
17 Notary Public.
State of
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
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58
REPORTER: ZULLO INTVEE: MARINO
1 CERTIFICATE
2 STATE OF
) SS.
3
4
I, MARNI CHRIS TICE, A COURT REPORTER,
5 DO HEREBY CERTIFY THAT PURSUANT TO NOTICE OF
TRANSCRIBING THE AUDIO-TAPED INTERVIEW, THAT
6 I WAS AUTHORIZED TO AND DID STENOGRAPHICALLY
REPORT THE FOREGOING INTERVIEW AS HEREINABOVE
7 SHOWN, AND THE TESTIMONY OF SAID WITNESS WAS
REDUCED TO COMPUTER TRANSCRIPTION UNDER MY
8 PERSONAL SUPERVISION.
9
I FURTHER CERTIFY THAT THE SAID
10 INTERVIEW WAS TAKEN AT THE TIME AND PLACE
SPECIFIED HEREINABOVE, AND THAT I AM NEITHER
11 COUNSEL NOT SOLICITOR TO EITHER OF THE
PARTIES IN SAID SUIT NOR INTERESTED IN THE
12 EVENT OF THE CAUSE.
13
I FURTHER CERTIFY THAT I HAVE DELIVERED
14 THE ORIGINAL COPY OF SAID INTERVIEW TO POPE
ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, TO BE RETAINED BY THEM
15 PENDING FURTHER ORDER OF THE COURT.
16
WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL IN
17 THE CITY OF
BROWARD, STATE OF
19
20
21 _______________________
MARNI CHRIS TICE
22 COURT REPORTER
CN: CC677414
23 EXP:
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25