"Work" Part II

An idea came up in a beer driven conversation with a former construction partner. I don’t know whether it was an original thought that Josh had, or if he got it from someone else. It seems a little deep for Josh, but beer does that. Josh’s idea was that society ought to be set up so that we all just party and have a good time until we’re, say 55, and then work our asses off until we drop dead. This idea warrants some consideration. George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I would agree, and add that work is imposed on the young. Think of all the youthful creativity and energy wasted on the drudgery of “making a living”, when what we are really doing is making a slow death. Think of the money that would be saved on health care for the aged. If an old fart gets senile, he just stumbles in front of a bulldozer, and that’s it. There would be no drawn-out humiliating existence in a care facility that takes up valuable resources and wastes the talent of nurses and doctors—no more images of emaciated, bed-ridden grandpas with sunken eyes and tubes going in and coming out. The possibilities for societal improvement seem endless. The economic stimulant implications are immense. The young do not take the senior discount, and are less likely to skimp on tips. Like most utopian solutions, this one has some flaws, but it should be in the conversation.

Another possible solution to the problem of work would be to increase pay based on the degree to which the work is disliked. The obvious problem with this idea is that it probably wouldn’t change things for most people. The office administrator who spends the day licking the shoes of some self-important personification of the Peter Principle would still make more than the house painter who will walk off the job and straight to the bar at the merest hint of bullshit from the boss, reeking of satisfaction all the way. An even greater problem would be the need for some device for measuring discontent. We certainly couldn’t just hand out money to the biggest whiners and starve the stoics. There would have to be a brain implant, or a periodic test similar to the personality profile questionnaire you answer when you apply at Home Depot.

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”—Booker T. Washington:
This is, among other things, a paean to those who toil. Toil is strenuous labor, but not necessarily work. Work contains no dignity. Some examples differentiating work from toil are in order.
· Building fence is great sport: outside, physical, yet requires some craft—straight, square, etcetera—immediately tangible results, and can be done while having a few beers. There are many “puttering around the house” activities that are good rewarding fun. Some are not.
· Plumbing under the sink sucks, and qualifies easily as work.
· Fixing cars made before about 1980 can be fun. Working on any car that has the engine in there sideways sucks. If you look through the engine compartment and see the ground, there is potential for some entertainment. If the compartment is so packed with shit that not even light can escape, you have a black hole, which sucks in the literal and figurative sense.
· Sales, which I have done most of my life now, sucks—rejection, disappointment, catering to assholes, motels, fast food, or no food, and windshield time.
· Mining was a kick and didn’t become work until it made me sick. It was a little kid’s dream—playing with giant Tonka Toys, blowing stuff up, unrestrained cussing, and a great espirit de corps.
· Writing a poem does not suck.

One of the triumphs in my life of toil came during a summer stint at the lumber mill in Walden, Colorado. The mill superintendant was the father of a classmate. Kent was one of the class jocks, and I think looked down on me for my comparative lack of prowess in football. I suspect he and his dad thought it would be entertaining to watch me perform in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Dad put me to work “tailing the green chain.”

When a log went through the initial process after debarking, it was ripped lengthwise into flat segments that would eventually become boards. Making a round log square necessarily leaves four “slabs”, which are the ugly outside segments that have jagged limb stubs sticking out, and are often warped, hard to manage, and always pointed on the lead end. When the ripped log shot onto a chain conveyor, my job was to, by any means necessary, get the slabs the hell off the conveyor and let the future lumber go by. I stood facing the onslaught and dodged lumber while grabbing slabs and flinging them onto a conveyor going another direction. I was aided in this by a high speed roller called “the pineapple” because it had beads welded around for traction on the slabs. The pineapple would grab anything that touched it and shoot it about 20 feet. Boards get directed away from the pineapple; slabs get directed onto it, and the tender better not let his ass touch it for a microsecond. My position was on a little platform right in front of the pineapple, and I became a virtual ballerina on that deck, dodging and slinging in a rhythm matching the output of the saw, and all the time avoiding getting grabbed by that spinning pineapple.

Kent was doing a much more dignified job in the same area of the mill, and was in position to watch me all day. After about a week and a half, Kent said, “You know Grant; I’ve got to tell you I didn’t think you’d make it this long. We usually give that job to winos and bums because we know they won’t be here long. They almost always take a ride on that pineapple and don’t show up the next day.” I knew I had his respect after that, and I had mine too. I quit two days later and went to the mine for an extra 25 or 30 cents an hour.

Now that was good, wholesome, make me dog-assed tired, toil. And I’d go back to it in a heartbeat if I still had any ballerina left in me. I know some women who get turned on by the smell of pine pitch and diesel fuel.