Municipal Building story by William Nardi, Municipal Restored
Mr. Nardi discusses his employment with the post office that was located in the Municipal Building. Mr. Nardi was a student at UW-Madison at the time that he worked at the post office and was downtown for protests and other events that took place in Madison during the late 1960s.
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- INDEX:
00:10- OPENING OF MADISON MUNICIPAL BUILDING (12/8/18)
00:25- WORKING AT THE POST OFFICE, 1967-1968
[START OF RECORDING]
Narrator: My name is William, W-i-l-l-i-a-m, Nardi, N-a-r-d-i.
Interviewer: And this is Ardina Boll, and we’re here at the opening of the Municipal Building on December eighth, twenty-eighteen. I’m here with William Nardi. He’s going to tell us something.
N: Okay. I worked in the Post Office here back in 1967 to 1968. Going to school at MATC I would come over in the afternoons and work a three-hour shift. My shift, uh, consisted of doing various duties in the mail sorting and package sorting areas of the postal system. I would basically sit and do two or three different things each day, for a short period of time. Nothing was ever too long.
I never understood why I did so many different things in a three hour shift but that’s what it amounted to. I would arrive in the back of the building, at the loading dock area, come in, punch in and then do my shift and leave.
And it was, at that time it was a good-paying job—two dollars and thirty-five cents an hour for a student going to college. It was a little bit more than you could get anywhere else so it turned out to be a very good job.
I was married at the time and, uh, we had our first child a year later, so.
I: What were you studying?
N: Accounting.
I: Oh awesome!
N: Business Administration.
I: And did you work with other people here or was this solo?
N: Yeah, I didn’t get to know anybody. It was a three-hour shift and I didn’t really make a lot of friends. We were all there part time for the most part. The supervisors were full time, but, uh, there was a supervisor in the mail sorting area, there was a supervisor in the packaging receipt area and then they would move us from one function to another and then back.
And that was done on a daily basis. I worked about two or three days a week, I recall, and—my father was a postal employee in my hometown so I was— I felt kinda at home working in the post office, and for a long time—eleven years—I worked on, just on the corner of the block off the square at National Mutual Benefit.
I worked there for eleven years so we were there during a lot of the periods of the, the rioting and the protest marches here on this section of the block.
I: And, uh, have you been back here since, or is this?—
N: This is my first time back in since I stopped working, I believe, in the post office. I never come back in this building. It’s kind of interesting to come back and see the changes and—
I: Thank you for sharing. Is there anything else?
N: No, there’s nothing really. Other than I did work in this building and I worked across the street in the building across the street so that’s kind of— nice little neighborhood (laughs).
I: Thank you!
N: You’re welcome!
[END OF RECORDING]
