My dear Aunt Loretta returned to God on August 14. What ameliorates the sadness of sorting through her stuff is finding things like this, my grandfather's ID badge for the Rainey-Wood Coke Company (steel mill), circa 1920's. At some point, according to legend, his job was to, after the molten steel was drained, walk around the bottom of the open hearth in wooden clogs and scrape off the scale before his shoes burned off. When my mother told her classmates where he worked in answer to their inquiries, they thought it was cool he made Coca-Cola. Anyway, sometimes I think the superhero stories are popular because they don't have guys like this around anymore. I knew my grandfather for a couple years before he died in 1960. He was rather aloof but I remember the world class fights he had with my grandmother. I learned all my choice Polish phrases from those battles. Today I asked my mother what they fought over. She says it was actually nothing. One time, he said in polish to my grandmother at dinner out of nowhere or close to nowhere, "There aren't enough sticks in the forest to properly beat you with". It was all verbal, because he apparently never laid a hand on her. But I can't help but think of the parents in "Everybody Loves Raymond".
I still have my father's Pittsburgh Steel Company ID badge.
ReplyDeleteAll these jobs contained a great amount of danger if you were not careful. My dad was a great 'safety first' man.
It disturbs me very much the overhype about "first responders." There are plenty of other people who put their lives and safety far more at risk for the benefit of the economy, but we don't honor them. Maybe that is what labor day should be about.
My aunt who died recently was a WWII vet along with her husband. She was very disturbed when her senior living home found out she was a vet and put her on the honors list. The part of the "greatest generation" that I knew felt that serving your country was just part of being an American like everyone else.
Yeah, sometimes the whole "get a prize for showing up" seems to be a bit much. On the other hand, people don't "neighbor" like they did decades ago. When you don't know who even lives next door, I suppose that when strangers spontaneously come to help, sometimes from miles away, it seems remarkable.
DeleteOur house burned when I was 10, and the neighbors were in and out of our house trailer every day with food and stuff all summer long until we were moved back in. It seemed normal. You don't see that now. Maybe work people are the new neighbors, but its not the same.
Both my grandmothers were hard workers. Both raised on farms. Milked cows, sheared sheep, slaughtered and plucked chickens, trained herd dogs, fixed horse shoes, baled hay, painted barns, tatted doilies, and made their own clothes. And yet if I knitted them a pair of slippers for Christmas, they went gaga over them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it takes a worker to appreciate the work of others ...
Remember on "Everybody Loves Raymond" when Father gave Ray absolution as soon as he found out Frank and Marie were his parents? Ha!
Yes, Jean. My roots were ultimately rural, too, rural Poland, that is. My mother and her sisters wore clothing my grandmother made from flour sacks. All kinds of skills. My maternal mother's mother was apparently a folk doctor and herbalist back in the old country.
ReplyDeleteJack, yes, all those guys who died building bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers and they still do.
Hoo boy, the home cures! Everything seemed to involve vinegar, ginger, and/or horse radish in red flannel or a plain gray wool sock. There was also some woo woo that involved brushing your hair a certain way to get rid of or prevent migraines. OTOH, Gramma lived to be 96 and died with every one of her own teeth.
DeleteI can't resist putting this up.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=_3mw49mk_x0
That was GREAT!I'm gonna watch that every Labor Day.
DeleteI would air that as it stands. That was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI forwarded the YouTube link to a
ReplyDeletefriend. He pointed out that those jobs are no longer unionized. The assholes won.
The first thing I want to know when the gub'mint starts bragging about falling unemployment is WHAT KIND OF JOBS DID THESE PEOPLE GET? My kid works full time as a coffee shop hiring manager. He also makes the coffee, fills in for college kids too hung over to show up, and doesn't want a salary job because of the uncompensated overtime. (Salary works all holidays to save the owner paying double time.)
DeleteWhat I don't get is why the Millennials put up with this crap. I'm wonder if their gutless GenX parents who dressed for success told them the had to take this crap.
I think, to paraphrase Rev. Niemöller, "First; they came for the air traffic controllers, then....". The capitalist class brainwashed just about every part of the American brain. Go to college and can't get a job? It's your fault, loser, for studying the wrong stuff. Company executives are the elite, everyone else is scum. If the pharoah does well, we all do well. And on and on. When millenials did rise up, as in Occupy, the put down artists were working around the clock. I'm also wondering how long it will take and what it will take for them to revolt.
DeleteWe read Prufrock in lit class. One of the girls said she remembered it when she had a conflict with her boss and decided she "did not dare disturb the Universe." Much as it makes my heart go pitty pat when a kid remembers something we read, I was dismayed that she was taking the Prufrock route.
DeleteShe said maybe someday, she needed the job for now. Honey Bun, you will always need a job. It will be harder to disturb the Universe when you are 35 and have a couple of kids. Still, she's asking the question. And my faith that literature helps us ask the right questions is intact.
No wonder The Man keeps cutting the humanities.
Jean, I agree on the importance of literature and the liberal arts. When I started working nearly a half century ago, I could sense a difference between the products of the humanities heavy Catholic colleges like St. Joe's and those from the nearly 100% engineering schools like Drexel U. Like my fellow alumnus put it tongue-in-cheek, "the Jesuits ruined us".
ReplyDeleteYah, for awhile Michigan State Uni was requiring their MD candidates to take a cohort of literature classes in hopes of humanizing them. It struck me as too little too late.
ReplyDeleteWhat do parents think their job is nowadays? I guess I should ask the students what humanities-oriented obligations they feel to their children, if any. That should take up most of the class period ...
"What do parents think their job is nowadays?" Well everybody tells them it's to steer the kids into STEM classes and careers. Because supposedly that's the path to a secure future. We sort of tried it with our oldest. He took that track in high school and did well in those classes. But then he went to college and announced that he was finished, as in done, with all that. He was a history major with an English and economics minor. We worried how he was ever going to get a job. He did, and has done well in it. Our younger boy we knew was never going to be STEM. He is too right-brained. Was always interested in art and design, and got a degree in graphic design. He is doing fine also. I get so sick of people telling me that liberal arts majors are always going to be working fast food.
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