The Master Freight Agreement - 1976

Sex, Guts, and Freight Yards

I cut last period, “High School Driver’s Education” with Mr. Burns. Burns wouldn’t understand that the revolution was not going to wait for his stop-signal exam.

I grabbed the RTD bus down to South Central and showed up at Gateway Freight yard right before the start of swing shift, as promised.

I changed my clothes too— I looked like a Teamster girl in tight flares and a t-shirt, standing in those mile-high platforms.

Stan pulled into the parking lot in his Valiant. Temma told me he’d dodged the draft in Canada, married and divorced, and lived underground for five years before he popped up and started running the Seattle branch of our little insurgence.

He handed me a pile of flyers and told me to go to one end of the employee’s parking lot while he took the other. “Yes, I’ve done this before.” He was as brusque at Mr. Burns.

The leaflets were an invitation to a meeting of rank and filers that we called “Teamsters for a Decent Contract.” — people getting together to talk about the upco…