The US doesn’t have the institution used in Japan, of designating certain masters of their craft or art as Living National Treasures, but we perhaps should institute it, and Studs Terkel would be an early recipient if I have anything to do with it. Take this story:

“I’m known around the block as a writer and broadcaster,” Terkel tells me, “but also as that old guy who talks to himself. I never learnt to drive. Why should I have? The bus was there. So one day I’m on the corner alone, waiting for the 146. I’m talking to myself, finding the audience very appreciative. Then other people arrive; I talk to them too. This one couple ignore me completely. He’s wearing Gucci shoes and carrying The Wall Street Journal. She’s a looker. Neiman Marcus clothes. Vanity Fair under her arm. So I told them, ‘Tomorrow is Labor Day: the holiday to ‘ honour the unions.’ The guy gives me the kind of look Noël Coward might have given a bug on his sleeve. ‘We despise unions.’ I fix him with my glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and I ask, ‘How many hours do you work a day?’ He tells me eight. ‘How come you don’t work 18 hours a day, like your great-grandparents?’ He can’t answer that. ‘Because four men got hanged for you.’ I explain that I’m referring to the Haymarket Affair, the union dispute here in Chicago in May 1886. The bus is late. I have him pinned against the mailbox. Then I say, ‘How many days a week do you work?’ He says five.”

Terkel laughs, and takes a sip of water. “I say: ‘Five – oh, really? How come you don’t work six and a half ?’ He isn’t sure. ‘Because of the Memorial Day Massacre. These battles were fought, all for you.’ I tell him about that massacre of workers, in Chicago, in 1937. He’s never heard of these things before. She drops her Vanity Fair. I pick it up, being gallant. I am giving it to them now: the past. Because, like James Baldwin said, without the past, there is no present. The bus arrives. They leap in. I never see them again. But I’ll bet… they live in an upscale condominium that faces the bus stop. I’ll bet she looks down every morning, from the 20th floor, and he says: ‘Is that old nut still down there?’ And can you blame them?”

More good stories about him here.