America Works

This is AFC staff folklorist Nancy Groce and this America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview with Joyce Godbout, a dairy farm manager or herdsperson for the Vincent Farm in Burke, New York. She was interviewed for the Library by folklorist Jill Breit as part of the Library’s Occupational Folklife Project documenting “Dairy Farm Workers in New York’s North Country.”

This is AFC staff folklorist Nancy Groce and this America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview with grocery store cashier Luann Miller, who over the past three decades has worked just about every job there is in the grocery business – from shelf re-stocker, to cashier to bagger. When interviewed by folklorist Deborah Fant for the Washington State Workers project, Miller was working at Thriftway, a locally-owned unionized grocery store in West Seattle, Washington.

This America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview Tina Moore Braimah, a Certified Nurse Midwife and the founder of Sankofa Birth & Women’s Care in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was interviewed by folklorists Josephine McRobbie and Joseph O’Connell as part of their Occupational Folklife Project on “Midwives, Doulas, and Birth Workers,” which documented the training, daily routines, experiences, rewards and challenges of birth workers in diverse communities and occupational settings throughout North Carolina.

This America Works episode features excerpts from a longer interview with cement plant worker Jude Bejarano, who was interviewed by historian Vyta Pivo as part of a project documenting the occupational culture of Cement Workers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The Lehigh Valley is considered “the birthplace of the American cement industry.” Its enormous cement plants, like the one in Evansville where Mr. Bejarano works, are filled with huge, noisy machines. He told us how he started with “basic shoveling”–because as he said, “you always start at the bottom in a cement plant,” and how he worked his way up to a job in management.

West African immigrant Komla Ewu tells oral historian John McKerley about how he left a prestigious but unprofitable teaching career in his native Togo to pursue the American dream. He talks about how he raised the funds needed to pay his way to the U.S., how he found work on the “picnic line” in a giant Midwestern meatpacking plant – (one of America’s most grueling jobs)—and how grateful he is to be an American worker.

West African immigrant Komla Ewu tells oral historian John McKerley about how he left a prestigious but unprofitable teaching career in his native Togo to pursue the American dream. He talks about how he raised the funds needed to pay his way to the U.S., how he found work on the “picnic line” in a giant Midwestern meatpacking plant – (one of America’s most grueling jobs)—and how grateful he is to be an American worker.

Bill Hatch, a farmer, winery work and the owner of Zephaniah Farm Vineyard in Leesburg, Virginia, explains to folklorist Kim Stryker how he transformed his multi-generational family milk and beef farm into a successful winery – and why he loves being part of the wine industry. “Nobody ever asked me about milk and what vintage it was and how did you make it? Nobody ever said: ‘I love your milk!’ but in the wine business, people say: ‘I love your wine!’”

Thomas Sink, who is better known to his many fans as “Popcorn the Circus Comic,” is interviewed by oral historians Tanya Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn as part of their AFC-sponsored Archie Green Fellowship to document traveling circus workers who for decades have “wintered over” and settled in and around Hugo, Oklahoma. Popcorn talks about how, for more than thirty years, he entertained people, young and old, throughout the Midwest. He speaks about his love of his profession, the rush he would get when audiences applauded his routines, and how his pride of being part of the circus community was balanced by the hardships and challenges of being constantly the road.