A lot of peo­ple don’t like to hear that they’re doing some­thing wrong, but if they are, you’ve got to tell them they can’t do that: Stone rub­bings, bicy­cling inside the ceme­tery, jog­ging, tri­pod pho­tog­ra­phy, nov­el­ty pho­tog­ra­phy. We don’t allow peo­ple to dress up out here like it’s Hal­loween and use this place as a back­drop for pho­tos. When you get peo­ple com­ing in here dressed up as nuns with crazy make­up on their faces and skele­ton cos­tumes, you kind of go, ​“I’m sor­ry, we just don’t allow this in here.” It’s dis­re­spect­ful. And it’s been the rules and reg­u­la­tions for as long as I’ve been here. You’ve got to uphold some type of integrity.

I used to work at a paint­ball shop. One of my cus­tomers used to be the cre­ma­tor here, and he told me they were look­ing for peo­ple. I need­ed a bet­ter job so I came in and applied, and the super­in­ten­dent gave me a chance. It’s work­ing on 10 years now.

Ron, the sole gravedig­ger at a large ceme­tery in Chica­go, told In These Times a sim­i­lar sto­ry: ​“If I’m at home and I think of some­thing I did ear­li­er in the day and now that I’m think­ing about it a lit­tle bit more, I think ​‘Oh, maybe I could have done this a lit­tle different.’”

Elmer Ruiz spoke to Terkel about the dif­fi­cul­ty of his work as a gravedig­ger, exac­er­bat­ed by the math­e­mat­ics as well as the art of pre­sen­ta­tion involved, espe­cial­ly in the win­ter when the earth is as hard a cement. ​“Not any­body can be a gravedig­ger,” he said. ​“You have to make a neat job.”

For three years in the ear­ly 1970s, jour­nal­ist Studs Terkel gath­ered sto­ries from a vari­ety of Amer­i­can work­ers. He then com­piled them into Work­ing, an oral-his­to­ry col­lec­tion that went on to become a clas­sic. Four decades after its pub­li­ca­tion,Work­ing is more rel­e­vant than ever. Terkel, who reg­u­lar­ly con­tributed to In These Times, once wrote, ​“I know the good fight — the fight for democ­ra­cy, for civ­il rights, for the rights of work­ers — has a future, for these val­ues will live on in the pages of In These Times.” In hon­or of that sen­ti­ment and of Work­ing’s 40 th anniver­sary, ITT writ­ers have invit­ed a broad range of Amer­i­can work­ers to describe what they do, in their own words. More ​“Work­ing at 40” sto­ries can be found here .

“Do you ever see any ghosts?” I get asked that all the time. ​“Is it real­ly true you’re bury­ing peo­ple six feet deep?” But there’s no ghosts. And, no, we go rough­ly four-and-a-half to five feet deep.

For a bur­ial, you’ve got to find the grave, make sure you’re in the right spot. Then we have what’s called a pok­er. You stick that in the ground, make sure the grave is open. If there are vault box­es around it — those are the cement box­es the cas­kets go inside of — you’ve got to find the one edge and mea­sure, make sure you’ve got three feet of room. A grave is three by eight feet. All graves, unless it’s a child, are three by eight. Chil­dren’s graves are usu­al­ly three by five. And then you’ve got the ash graves, which are rough­ly a one-by-one square, depend­ing on the size of the urn.

So we strip the sod, throw out the black dirt, throw out what’s called the head end, or the top of the grave where the head­stone will go. We get the scoop of the back­hoe in there, take out as many scoops as we need. Then we throw out the foot end, where the bot­tom of the grave will go; get that all nice and lev­el, make sure our walls are square all the way down, make sure the ground inside the grave is lev­el. Then we come in with our box-set­ter, which sets the vault box. Then we put our greens out, which are basi­cal­ly pieces of astro­turf which cov­er up dirt and make the grave look all pret­ty. Then we put our low­er­ing device on.

When the funer­al arrives, we bring the cas­ket up, or the pall bear­ers do, and we put it on the low­er­ing the device. The fam­i­ly or the priest or who­ev­er would say what­ev­er it is they say, and then we low­er it. We get rid of our equip­ment, take away our low­er­ing device and we take away the greens. Then we come in with our box-set­ter again and we put the lid on. And then we com­mence the back­hoe­ing. You open and close it with a shov­el. The rest is done with a back­hoe. It’s pret­ty time-con­sum­ing. A lot of work.

My pre­de­ces­sor was here for forty-four years. He was fan­tas­tic. He was the great­est guy in the world. He’d make you cry you’d be laugh­ing so hard, you know. Knew this place like the back of his hand. Now I’m the only gravedig­ger that’s out here.

What’s a bad day for me? Two buri­als in one day. That’s very bad because it’s so time-con­sum­ing that you’ve got to hur­ry up to make sure that you’re ready for the next one. The equip­ment is not light — if it was, it would­n’t be a prob­lem. But the equip­ment is heavy, it’s time-con­sum­ing. And you have to make sure that you’re dead-on accu­rate because one lit­tle mishap can throw off the whole deal, and then you have to start the whole deal all over again.

Graves cav­ing in while you’re dig­ging them is a bad day. Because what would nor­mal­ly be a two- or three-hour job turns into an eight- or ten-hour job because you’ve just got noth­ing but cav­ing. And by the time all is said and done, you could park this truck in the hole. [Points to a large pick-up truck parked near the equip­ment shed.] It’s the truth.

The sum­mer of 2007, a microburst, almost like a tor­na­do, ripped through Chica­go and ripped through this place — knocked out about 110 trees and shut the ceme­tery down for about six to eight weeks. But we still had to bury peo­ple. We had to make sure that if we had a bur­ial, the roads were clear of trees. That was bad. You’re talk­ing 100-year old trees falling like tooth­picks. And that made for a bad cou­ple of months.

I get the week­ends off, pro­vid­ed there’s no buri­als on Sat­ur­days. Which, I have a bur­ial this Sat­ur­day. And then I get vaca­tion, I get per­son­al days. Every now and again you need a lit­tle break, you get burnt out.

There’s a union. I’m part of the labor­ers union, SEIU Local 1. They just nego­ti­at­ed my con­tract, so I’ll see those guys in about two years. But I’ll have con­ver­sa­tions with my rep every now and again, maybe a phone call here and there. But oth­er than that, it’s pret­ty good. Things could always be bet­ter and things could always be worse.

The worst buri­als are the chil­dren. I’ve had to bury a few kids, and those are the worst ones because they did­n’t have a chance in life, you know? But when you’ve got some­one up in their eight­ies, you know they’ve lived a long life. Let them rest.

But it’s a job. You’re pro­vid­ing a ser­vice for fam­i­lies and you do the best that you pos­si­bly can and hope­ful­ly get a thank you out of it. I talk to some of the fam­i­lies. They crack jokes dur­ing the ser­vice because that’s just the way that the fam­i­ly is. They’re appre­cia­tive of what you do and what you’re pro­vid­ing them. Nine times out of ten I get a thank you, and that’s all I look for.

You’ve got a job you’ve got to do. You can’t go ​“Aw, man, I can’t do this.” You’ve got to main­tain a cer­tain respect for these peo­ple. You just stand off in the back­ground, and when the funer­al direc­tor says ​“Hey, come on,” that’s when we go. If the fam­i­ly sticks around, that’s great. If not, that’s great. They’ve got their choice of whether or not they want to wit­ness every­thing for their own closure.

Do you feel like you’re part of the process of closure?

Me per­son­al­ly? No I’m just pro­vid­ing a ser­vice, I’m bury­ing a loved one. The fam­i­ly does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rec­og­nize what I do. They just fig­ure you’re a guy here, you’re going to put who­ev­er in the ground. And they’re going to say their final good-byes and they’re going to walk away. So I’m not part of any clo­sure, I’m just there kind of tak­ing up space until they’re ready. But I’ll tell you, gravedig­gers are the last peo­ple to ever let you down. Keep that in mind. When you catch that joke… [Laughs.]

Do you think you’ll change jobs again?

I hope not. I’ve been here for ten years, man. I’m 40 years old. I don’t want to be out there at 45 look­ing for anoth­er job.

The econ­o­my sucks. And jobs suck. I’ve got bills I’ve got to pay. I don’t want to be out look­ing for anoth­er job, going to all these inter­views, wor­ry­ing about if I look okay or if I’ve spo­ken cor­rect­ly or if they see one of the tat­toos I have. So no, I don’t want to look for anoth­er job. I want to retire doing this.