An Honest Day's Work

October 2nd, 2003

In truth, except when I was a teenager, I have never done an honest day’s work in my life. By honest day's work, I mean work that makes your back sore, or your hands rough, or gives rise to many grunts. Yet some people like me, look down upon those who do physical labor as their intellectual inferiors and somehow part of a subculture they want nothing to do with. I don’t.

Over the past year, we have made extensive changes in our house, requiring the services of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, floor and carpet layers, HVAC people and painters. My wife, thank God, does the landscaping with no little help from a friend, and also gets involved in doing a lot of the physical labor inside. In addition, she is our general contractor. Praising your wife is common, and I do so, but I also mean to praise each and every workman who has contributed to our house with a single exception.

I suppose we have been extremely lucky in our choices. Good workmen these days are very hard to find and often have the habit of skipping from job to job leaving each one incomplete. Not so in our case. The only catastrophe we had was when two nincompoops who installed wall board in my office not only did a sloppy job but managed to cut a few wires in the process. The rest have not only been excellent and meticulous at what they do and more I have enjoyed listening to them. They may not have college degrees but they certainly have a lot of intelligence and even wisdom. They see through politicians in a flash and are usually quite liberal on social issues.

Our carpenter’s wife came by one day to view the job that obviously her husband had been talking about. She is a bright, attractive woman who has some reasonably high level white collar job. The notion that she would have married some shlub is inconceivable and indeed, she didn’t. She made the point that too few people go into the trades these days. She hoped her children would follow their father. It is an honest job, she said, one very much needed in our society, and it paid fairly well.

It is obvious watching our workmen that they take great pride in their job and enjoy doing it. They also seem to have more fun than the rest of us. There is endless conversation about hunting, fishing, car rallies, camping and the like. Moreover, their own home improvements are terrific. And I have yet to meet one who would not be considered a good father.

All this is really a reaction to some people in our community putting down Vo-Tech students. Vo-Tech is for talented kids who like to work with their hands as well as their minds. It is a passport to really good jobs; jobs better in many respects than those available these days to the average college graduate. Money spent by the school board as its contribution to Bethlehem Vo-Tech, where our students go, is very well spent indeed, as well spent, in fact, as money spent on AP courses for college bound students.

Now, anybody know somebody who can do a good job laying flagstone?