Treasure Amidst The Weeds

One of the biggest changes in moving from a career as a lawyer to one driving trucks is that I no longer spend much of my days around beauty. As a kid raised in a midwestern suburb to an adult who raised his own kids in a midwestern suburb, I had become accustomed to an environment cultivated for the sake of appearance.

I have been surrounded by well-kept landscaping and attractive buildings. My previous work life was spent in office buildings that were designed to appeal to the eye. Whether I was in “Class A” space downtown with marble and dark wood paneling or in less pretentious suburban space, these were always accommodations that were professionally maintained for their best appearance.

Now I spend much of my workday in the parts of my city where the real work gets done. Every city has these areas, but most of us out in the burbs come into contact with these areas only on our way somewhere else. The streets I now traverse are not lined with shopping centers and restaurants, but are instead the home of truck yards, manufacturing operations, and even a landfill.

I spend a lot of time waiting at loading docks, and loading docks are like the back side of your house. There is a front entrance with an office (which is where any money allocated for appearances is spent) and then there is “the yard”. These yards are places where big trucks come and go, and where there are often stacks of pallets or unused machinery taking up space. It is hard to stay ahead of rust in these areas, and rust is almost universally seen on almost any outdoor metal surface, no matter how much the maintenance people may try to paint over it. And then there are the weeds – anyone who doubts the hardiness of God’s creation has never paid attention to the variety of plants that somehow thrive in the most inhospitable locations. Only with the greatest effort are unwanted plants kept at bay.

Because weeds and rust occupy much of my visual field for much of the day, I appreciate other sights. Some of them are fun – like the other day I watched two late-model muscle cars stop next to each other at a traffic light. They were first in line, and I wondered if I had a front-row seat to a drag race from my place in the oncoming lane. When the light turned green, one of the cars shot forward with a distinct chirp of the tires and roar of exhaust. The other guy was not, evidently, in the mood to race that day, so I had to settle for a half of a drag race.

Rarely, I come across a sight that is genuinely heartwarming. One recent morning I was in “the yard” at a manufacturer of plastic products, waiting for my assigned loading dock to become available. About thirty yards away, there was a tanker that was probably delivering plastic pellets or such. As I watched on that calm summer morning, I noticed that the driver had a helper.

The driver was a man, probably in his late 30’s. His helper looked to be a boy no older than perhaps age seven. We have all been sent on activities in which we had no desire to take part, but this clearly appeared to me a case of a little boy who wanted to do nothing more than help his dad. He had clearly done this before, as he had his own work gloves and seemed to know the different operations necessary at different parts of the truck. He did not walk, but ran from place to place, always after quick instructions from his pop.

It occurred to me that many kids would be wandering around looking at other things. My own kids at that age might have been looking for bugs or rocks or wandering around to take in the unusual sights. Not this kid – he eagerly paid attention to business and looked proud to have a part to play in the complex operation of preparing the tanker to pump its contents into the company’s tanks.

Perhaps this warmed my heart so because I never got to spend as much time around my own father as I might have liked. Or maybe it was remembering the Little Golden Book that my mother read to me as a tot, which was entitled “We Help Daddy” – about two small kids who are made to think that they are contributing to their father’s completion of chores around the house. In any case, I enjoyed the sight and was reminded of how this is real life (as opposed to the sanitized and curated things we see online.)

Watching what seemed to me the slow-motion bond forming between a father and his son was something that truly made my day. Not everything I see in an otherwise ugly truck yard is rust or weed.

30 thoughts on “Treasure Amidst The Weeds”

  1. I think it’s funny you mentioned the areas where “real work” happens.

    I’ve worked in software dev for 20 years, but I’m not enamored with tech; In fact, I have been joking it’s not real work — “When your entire career’s output can be wiped out by an EMP, it’s not real” is how I put that.

    Thinking about how civilisation actually works, I’ve also said: “The really important people to society don’t get to work from home: the trash truck driver, the store shelf stocker, the person making my coffee…”

    On particularly ‘hard’ days at work, I like to joke: “I’m going to get a real job digging ditches — who am I kidding? I’ve worked in software so long, I’m not qualified to dig ditches.”

    I think it’s rare, to have someone’s perspective such as yours, to get to experience both sides of the coin.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I felt that way in law, although I eventually made peace with the fact that I was part of the clean-up crew that could sort out the mess of human disagreements off to the side of the main route where all of the real contributions to society takes place.

      It is true that some jobs just cannot be done from home, and it is a nice change to be in one of them for a change.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. I read somewhere that being in nature regularly is good for your health. Two years ago I discovered this nearby arboretum (Laurelwood) where I took this picture. It reminds me of the Garden of Eden. After walking through this beautiful preserve, I felt different–better!

    The Little Golden Books and other children’s books from that time have a certain quaint, innocent quality about them. When I was in elementary school, our library had about twenty volumes of Beatrix Potter books–small green hardcovers that looked as though they were created in the 19th century. I also remember the Richard Scarry books, like What Do People Do All Day? Browsing through the children’s section of the local library today–the “vibe” is very different. That quaint innocence is mostly lost. This is what kids are growing up with now.

    My picture:

    Laurelwood Arboretum, Wayne NJ

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I am not one with a strong call to spend time in nature, but I agree that there is something life-giving about a scene like the one you photographed. Just the opposite of how I would imagine the effect on someone who spends all his time in urban decay. Fortunately, I get mix of both in my life. The pastoral scenes offer healing and solace while the others are just as necessary, even if most upper-income people can avoid them.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Since the definition of work is force x distance I tend to think of such things as real work too. Keyboard strokes aren’t much for force or distance. I once had a summer job as a delivery driver for an industrial tool company, and I got into all sorts of interesting plants and loading docks. Amazing they would just let a 17 year old kid with a pickup truck into the mammoth Stelco steel mill in Hamilton.

    Very heartwarming to see an interaction like that, my own son was very interested to follow me around and ‘help’ until about age 5 when some switch flipped in his growing brain and thereafter he was not. The classic example was when I asked him for help doing an oil change because he’d need to know this and he said “Dad, I’m going to be an accountant, I’m going to pay people to work on my car”. And so he will.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I thought about your second paragraph after I published – that it is a certainty that this unknown kid will, within a few years, consider his truck-driver father to be the dumbest human on the face of the earth and will have no interest in spending a day on the job. Hopefully he will outgrow it and come to a newfound respect for his father in the way most of us experienced at some point during our young adulthood.

      I am coming to believe that one of the biggest divides we are going to see in Western civilization is between males who spent time in jobs like factories, construction and warehousing and those whose experience was limited retail/food service/academia. Only one of those paths will bring a middle-class kid into contact with people from a wholly different way of life than his own.

      I will confess that around 30 years ago I came around to your son’s views on oil changes.

      Like

      Reply

  4. This entry is appropriate, as we spent the last few days in the Pittsburgh region. Many of the surrounding communities were built around an industry, and they are the ultimate in function over form. Beautiful they are not, particularly as the infrastructure remains even though the industry it supported has been long gone.

    Some cities are trying to repurpose their unused industrial infrastructure. Bethlehem has turned its old steel mill into a public venue. It is certainly more fascinating that the cookie-cutter architecture that infests so many urban centers these days.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • As I drive around some of the grimmest areas of Indianapolis and see the really old industrial structures, I marvel at how many of them were designed with beauty as a consideration. This is certainly not the case in modern industrial structures – which will likely not last as long in any case.

      Like

      Reply

  5. A wonderful post. I worked many years at the Corporate Headquarters for a manufacturing company in the middle of a large industrial district. I was on the first floor of the nicely furnished three story building and served as part of the palace guard insulating the top executives on the upper two floors. The backdoor of the building connected to a large factory where the “real work” was done. I always told family and friends not to worry because I was never allowed to touch the airplane parts that were being manufactured. I was no longer there when a much grander headquarters was occupied downtown in another city not connected to any of the manufacturing facilities.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I have not thought about it before, but you make me think that when a company’s executives lose the tangible, day-to-day connection with the nuts-and-bolts operations of the company, nothing good follows.

      I loved your description of being part of a human shield between the top-level execs and the general public (or rabble, as they probably saw it). 🙂

      Like

      Reply

      • One of the few times in life I was encouraged to exaggerate how important I was in order to attempt to deflect agitators and complainants. The implications I presented were so strong that I was often “promoted” to Vice President in plaintiff filings and depositions.

        Liked by 1 person

  6. This brought back memories of my advertising sales days. I’d visit a bank on one day, marble floors like you mentioned, and the next day I might visit a granite or lumber yard to sell advertising. Back then, no GPS on cell phones, so I had my map and would think — Am I in the right area? Slowly I realized there were so many hidden gems in these industrial areas. Ornamental garden stores, hardware for bathrooms/kitchens, caterers, and more. Fun to explore. Nice post.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. My husband knows the fossil fuel industry from two perspectives, having worked on the rigs and having worked in the corporate office. He remembers when the office staff complained about all the photos of rigs that hung on the walls. They wanted to replace the photos with landscapes or some such thing. The manager said no, the rig photos stay as a daily reminder of the activity that pays everyones salary.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Good for that manager! And I get the feeling that guys like your husband are a vanishing breed. It seems that the norm today is filling the offices with people who majored in “management” or “business” and not with people who spent time coming up through the specific business and learning it from the inside. Kind of the way schools are staffed with people who majored in “education” and not in the specific subjects that they are teaching.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. I think you have a touch of the poet in you, J.P. I love the Golden books as well. One thing our society is sorely lacking is dads and I think it’s pretty cool that a man can take his son with him and “show him the ropes” of what he does. What a great thing! There’s far too little of that available as well. It’s something that’s desperately needed and just isn’t available anymore.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Thanks, Herb! I don’t know if I am a poet, but I like to think that I have the ability to notice things in the world around me and share them.

      There were times I took my kids into my office and would find useful age-appropriate work for them to do. As I have thought about it, I can remember maybe a couple of occasions in my teens when I went into my father’s office and helped by performing some basic reviews of documents he needed to go through.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  9. I love this. When my dad was a boy in West Virginia, his dad drove truck. Sometimes his route brought him through the small town they lived in, and he’d pick up my dad and they’d ride together in his truck for weeks (in the summer). It was among Dad’s few precious memories.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. What you witnessed with that father and son was awesome. And enviable. The father is remarkably tuned into the son and the son is so receptive to the father.

    This was great.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • The scene reminded me a little of my brother-in-law. He grew up working side by side with his father on a family farm, and his own son (who is fast approaching the age of 40) did the same thing. My nephew is great with kids and has boys of his own who are getting the same exposure. Very few families get that kind of opportunity.

      Like

      Reply

  11. You forgot the inevitable cigarette butts at the loading dock. Ours is a new, generally clean facility, but certain areas are swimming in them.

    Great post, JP. I had a similar experience to the kid’s shortly before Dad died where I was having problem removing the dashboard trim to install a new stereo in my car. I called up Dad, he was game, and I drove up to Goshen. He had my stripped screw removed in seconds flat! Then we got Mexican food at his favorite restaurant, El Maguey.

    I was twenty at the time, but still served as the gopher. I was happy to! I didn’t get many chances as a kid.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Thanks, Ted! I get what you mean. I made my relationship with my own father a lot more complicated than it needed to have been, but have some really good memories of the few times when we worked on things together.

      In addition to the cigarette butts, I have come to notice the ubiquity of rat traps. They must be working because I have not yet seen any rats.

      Like

      Reply

  12. When I spend a lot of time in gritty areas, I get a strong urge to mow or weed my lawn. I think if I had your job, I’d probably mow my yard every other day.

    I like you story of the boy helping his dad.  I have fond memories of accompanying my father to work when I was a kid.  Dad worked as a construction manager at a university, and at times supervised maintenance too.  Sometimes in the summer or on school breaks I’d accompany dad to work, and he would often give me jobs like to wander through his buildings and look for maintenance problems like burned-out light bulbs, loose trim pieces, etc.  I felt very important, and it was much more fun than school.  I’m glad some kids still have an opportunity to help their parents out at work like that.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Haha, it takes a lot more than this to make me want to cut or weed my lawn! 🙂 But then again, yard work is near the top of things I hate doing.

      I really believe that kids need to be given real work to do when they are young. I certainly don’t condone child labor in sweat shops, but kids know when they are making a contribution and when they are not. When they are young, they really want to make a contribution and that usually involves getting a taste of what real work looks like. After a few years that desire can go dormant if it is not encouraged.

      Like

      Reply

  13. I have always been envious of father-daughter time to learn things … I really had none of that hands-on teaching and after my father took off for parts unknown, a family moved next door to Mom and me and the Southern gentleman that he was, took it upon himself to teach me things I should know. He had two boys and a girl, all grown and out of the house long before they moved in. He was appalled my father had never taught me basic car maintenance, household fix-its, outside miscellaneous things. He would gladly come to the house and do small handyman-type things but they were done when I was there to watch him, step by step. I may have mentioned in comments before that I had a locking gas cap and when the service station attendant handed me the key after pumping my gas (before self-serve gas stations/pumps), he accidentally dropped the key down the window well. He was mortified, but I had a spare key so no worries. But my neighbor thought it was important I retrieve that key and not get a duplicate made at the key store, so we spent a day taking apart the door panel, retrieving the key and putting it back together again. I was sorry he moved away, at the insistence of his wife, then they divorced a year or so later.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • There were a few older guys like that in my life, and I could not be more grateful for the time they spent teaching me things. I was fortunate enough to learn many things from my own father, but so much learning in life comes from just being together every day – which was something circumstances prevented he and I from having.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • That’s too bad JP because every child, boys especially, need a father figure. I remember you wrote in your blog your parents divorced. You learned about cars and are handy in that respect because you enjoy(ed) doing this. I am sure many men have no clue how to do simple fixes, especially now with everything so high tech. I remember a coworker several year ago and he was angry because he could not change a headlight in his car, something he had always done himself, because it now required a proprietary tool only available at the dealership to get the job done.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment