A WORKINGMAN'S MESSAGE OF HOPE

Hi again, folks. As I’m writing this, it’s early New Year’s Eve 2008 and I’m listening to a song whose lyrics begin:

There are people in this country who work hard every day,
Not for fame or fortune do they strive.
But the fruits of their labor are worth more than their pay
And it’s time a few of them were recognized

Hello Detroit auto workers. Let me thank you for your time.
You work a forty hour week for a living, just to send it on down the line.

Hello Pittsburgh steel mill workers.
You work a forty hour week for a living, just to send it on down the line.
This is for the one who swings the hammer driving home the nails…
Or the one behind the counter, ringing up the sales.
For the one who fights the fires, the one who brings the mail,
For everyone who works behind the scenes.

You can see them every morning, in the factories and the fields.
In the city streets and the quiet country towns,
Working together, like the spokes inside a wheel,
They keep this country turning around.

There are, right now, quite a few of us who recently did that but now don’t pack a lunch pail, punch a timecard and hit the line. I’m one of them. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we get overwhelmed by how slim the margin between a roof and a cold night’s sky seems.

We wonder how much we’re going to have to give up or let go of in order to keep from hitting the streets with a backpack and a prayer. For some of us, the hours between two a.m. and dawn are the hardest.

It’s tough for a lot of us to ask for help. We were raised to believe that a man’s not a man unless he’s got a job and can take care of his own. We’ve done a lot of different kinds of work ~ some of it real dangerous ~ to remain true to that definition of what a man is or should be. Some of us, thank God, though, have also survived the narrow interpretation of it.

I’ve personally had over these holidays, some cause to reflect on the other ways that a working stiff ‘takes care of his own’. We still get asked for advice about stuff; to fix things; evaluate a resume; deal with a late night panic attack; sit in on discussions and give my opinion. Stay up late at night with a troubled friend. Help fix a leaky roof. Share resources with a few others and sometimes to be there to celebrate the small victories over apparent adversity.

Whether the line needs us at the moment, they will again eventually. This isn’t going to last, no more than any other recession has. We’ve got a lot of people working on this and it’ll get solved. And whether the line needs us at the moment, our family, friends, neighbors, community and country still do. Nothing ever changes about that because it’s the legacy of a working stiff. It’s one of those immutable constants.

I’ve also studied some on the history of this country and been through about 60 years of it now myself. We, as Americans, are not always the brightest stars in the galaxy, no matter how much we’d like to believe otherwise. We’re the authors of about half of our own misery and sometimes we’re so stone flipping foolish we embarrass even the most patient and understanding of our gods.

We also, however, have a remarkable penchant for seeing the light and correcting for course. We elevate ourselves to the 222nd floor of the Tower of Babel, get knocked off by a strong breeze, get real sheepish about it and start working on being a little more humble and in touch with the rest of the sentient life on this planet.

We’re going to do that now too. Americans are insufferably arrogant at times but we are not stupid, nor are we lacking in compassion, decency and integrity. We just occasionally need a rough jolt to snap us back to a reality that is even older than the universe.

We’ve got some work to do, folks. It’s time we best got on then, eh?

Rusty