A NATION WITHIN A NATION

(7 of 11)

Many of the poor urban whites' children hang out, sullen and sledge-fisted, at places like "The Lunch Pail," a tawdry dive on Chicago's seamy North Side; many become winos, staggering along the hallways in search of a corner to crumple up in. There are 30,000 Appalachians in the North Side area, a melting pot of penury composed of 10,000 Indians, 5,000 Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, and a smattering of Eskimos and Cuban refugees.

The Appalachians are the most hopeless: they arrive in ancient automobiles, hoping for nothing more than a quick profit on a job that will permit them to return to their holler. They are generally too individualistic to work with others and cannot tolerate taking orders. When the womenfolk get work, male pride often degenerates to ire or alcoholism. The men get hooked on day-work (which they can quit easily), earning maybe $7 or $8 a day as a launderer, car washer or janitor. Or they begin hitting the bottle, hanging out in such bars as the "Country A Go-Go" (hillbilly music and rock) where they "jest set" and tip back straight shots of bourbon. Arguments start, fists and knives flail, blood is spilled. As one Appalachian woman complained recently, while her kids played games with the mice that infest her apartment, "Daddy's gone, and I'm tired of bein' a nobody, a nothin'."

MAINE: The Shores of Lake Winnecook

Appalachians are not the only poor whites; they can be found throughout the nation. "Years ago," says an old Maine selectman, "a boy could leave school, get himself a saw and a jitterbug (tractor) and go into the woods to cut lumber. He'd do all right." Men like Everett Williams, 35, can no longer do all right. Williams, a lean, bony man in outsized boots and a gas-station-green work shirt, lives with his wife and eight children in a rusty 8-by-23-ft. trailer on the swampy shore of Lake Winnecook, just off Interstate 95 near Unity, Me. During the summer he runs a lakeside parking lot for tourists; during the fall he digs potatoes for $1.40 an hour; between times he drives a chicken truck when he can. In 1967 he earned about $3,000, but after breaking a leg while ditchdigging last fall he missed much of the lucrative potato-digging season. He did not receive workmen's compensation.