Phil Cohen War Stories: ‘My Strangest House Call’
War Stories By Phil Cohen
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy – William Shakespeare
During the spring of 1995, ACTWU (now Workers United) scheduled a blitz of nonmembers at the unionized Cone Mills textile plant in Greensboro, North Carolina. Organizers, accompanied by an activist from one of Cone’s three union shops, would be issued house-call packets containing addresses and information regarding workers that would be visited in specified neighborhoods.
Greensboro had evolved into a hub for relocated refugees of the Vietnam War. I was assigned to focus on their community because of my experience with Asian workers at other facilities. I requested to partner with Bonnie Quick, president of the Cone local in Salisbury. We’d become close friends and her company would ease the tedious burden of repetitive house calls.
On a warm Saturday morning, we entered a rundown neighborhood of dilapidated houses and narrow alleys. I carried a .22 magnum derringer in the right pocked of my jeans, just in case. We knocked on several doors that were either unanswered or opened by someone who didn’t speak enough English for a discussion.
We made our way down a narrow passageway strewn with litter, searching for the next address. A slender young man opened the door, and understanding we wanted to discuss the union, invited us in and offered seats on an old living room couch. He pulled up a chair to face us. His English was just fluent enough to partially understand information about the union if we spoke slowly and repeated ourselves when necessary.
A few minutes into the belabored conversation, his older brother entered the room from the kitchen. He carried a full glass in each hand, placed them on a small rectangular table in front of Bonnie and me, then exited. The beverage appeared to be an emulsion with small pieces of lemon floating in a murky yellow liquid.
Welcome, the lemonade is brewing. Illustration/Patrica Ford
When visiting a Southeast Asian household, one is customarily offered refreshments. It’s considered the height of insulting rudeness to abstain, regardless of how unappealing. Bonnie and I casually wet our lips with the drink as we focused on signing our first union card of the day.
A few minutes later, the brother appeared at the living room entrance. “How do you feeeeel?” he asked in a deep, mysterious voice with a heavy accent, then departed. We paid him no mind as we continued trying to explain the benefits of union membership to someone from a country where all unions were corrupt.
We appeared to be gaining the worker’s interest when the brother interrupted us again, standing at the entrance to the room. “This Vietnamese lemonade. Make you feel good when you’re tired!” he said, before retreating back into the kitchen. Bonnie and I continued sipping just enough of the liquid to appear polite as we convinced the young man to finally sign a union card. He got up and joined his brother, leaving us alone on the couch.
“This shit really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up,” I told Bonnie, touching my glass.
“Fuck that,” she replied. “I think I’m tripping.”
I felt an intense explosion of heat in my heart that began shooting through both arms in a rhythmic series of waves. It was terrifying to have no idea what was happening in my body. After a couple of minutes, the sensation finally began to subside. Bonnie and I stumbled out the door to my car, got in and headed down a narrow maze of side streets toward the union hall. I had difficulty keeping the vehicle steady at fifteen miles per hour.
“Watch it!” Bonnie exclaimed as I veered to the left and nearly scraped a parked car. Our sense of direction was totally shot and we kept making wrong turns as we desperately sought the main avenue leading back to the hall. By dumb luck we unexpectedly reached the intersection.
“Stop, the fucking light is red!” Bonnie screamed as I hit the brakes and skid six inches into a busy four lane road. I put the car in reverse and gunned the engine but nothing happened until I realized the transmission had shifted into neutral. Fortunately, the oncoming traffic avoided us, the light changed to green, and we were soon entering the union hall. A ten minute trip had taken us more than a half hour.
The union’s North Carolina director was sitting at a desk in the lobby. We recounted our bizarre experience and handed him the hard-won card. “I guess you’re here to regroup before going back out,” he said. “Don’t take too long. We have a lot of cards to sign.”
I looked him in the eyes, mustering as much indignation as possible in my present condition. “We’re not fuckin’ going anywhere in the shape we’re in!” It really pissed me off that he cared more about signing a few more cards than our well-being.
Bonnie and I sat together in the union hall for two hours, hoping the ordeal would pass. I regained just enough equilibrium to attempt a brief excursion to my hotel where I could at least lie down, and offered Bonnie the second bed. “Thanks, but I’ve got to get back home and make dinner for my young ‘un,” she told me.
I called Bonnie at 9 p.m. to see how she was doing. She had miraculously survived her long drive but responded, “I’m still tripping. How ‘bout you?”
“I’m not doing much better. I wonder how much longer this shit is gonna last. Do you realize we only drank about a quarter inch from a full glass? Can you imagine what would have happened if we’d drunk the whole thing?”
“We’d probably be screaming Vietnamese profanities and jumping off the roof to see if to see if we could fly,” she said with a sarcastic giggle.
I pulled myself together the next morning and signed a few more union cards, but told Bonnie to stay home and rest.
Several days later, I was at the union hall and encountered a Cone Mills shop steward from the Caribbean named Velma. It was a slow morning and I decided to share my recent misadventure.
“What you drank is called a brew,” she informed me in her own distinctive accent. Every third world country has one. You take a fruit or vegetable that grows locally, bury it while it ferments, then dig it up to make your beverage. But here’s the thing: If you drink the brew in your home country, it’s just like drinking wine. I have me some brew every time I go back home to visit. But if a person drinks that same brew in another country, the atmosphere is different, and the effect is much, much stronger, like what happened to you.”
“How does the atmosphere affect the strength of the brew?” I asked.
“I don’t know that. But everyone from my island and other…how do I say…indigenous cultures, understands this is just how the stuff works.”
Phil Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU, and specialized in defeating professional union busters. He’s the author of Fighting Union Busters in a Carolina Carpet Mill and The Jackson Project: War in the American Workplace.