The Uncommon “Common Laborer”
I’ve never cared much for the term “common laborer” because most of the laborers in my life were anything but common. You see I’m from the proud heritage of the blue collar worker that frankly built and sustained this country, at least in the “good old days.”
I’m the grandson of a plumber and coal miner and the son of a factory worker and grocery store cashier. I would retrieve nightly from my parents’ basement my father’s lunchpail and thermos and sit at the kitchen table watching him tie his shoes and head out to the factory. The smell of extruded rubber products in his clothes. For 42 years he went to work for Goodyear Tire and Rubber and frankly I can hardly ever remember him complaining about the work. On more than one occassion I watched him rub his head with a headache or exhibit the symptoms of the flu and when I asked him why he didn’t stay home and call in sick he’d simply reply “You don’t work you don’t get paid. And I’ve got to put food on the table and bills to pay.”
My mother worked different shifts in a small grocery store chain. Standing for hours and ringing up the items on the conveyer belt long before you could scan them. Checking the prices on each label and entering the cost with manual key strokes as fast as any “checker” in the midwest. All the while treating the customers like family. I remember her telling stories after a long shift of the married men who might come in and say something that was inappropriate while she managed the cash register. She taught me early on how to treat women in the workplace.
I still remember looking at the helmet and light on my paternal grandfather’s coal mining gear when we visited his home in rural Kentucky. I tried to imagine what it was like working in the dark underground with coal dust in your nostrils. As a kid I routinely stopped by my maternal grandfather’s plumbing shop in my hometown and walk the aisles of hardware he kept as inventory used to fix people’s plumbing problems.
These uncommon role models left me no excuses. I spent my summers working either as a cook in a restaurant, on the state highways doing maintenance or in a cold meat packing plant. I’ve never looked down my nose for one second upon the laborers in this country. You see the dedicated men and women who head out daily to provide the products or service that give us the quality of life we are accustomed to in this great nation are anything but common. And unfortunately in this day and age fewer of those jobs exist than before (but that discussion is for someone else’s blog.)
I was inspired by my parents work ethic along with their appreciation for our public servants to take up a career in policing. My dad used to say there are two kind of jobs; “The job you shower before you go to work and the job you shower after a day of work.” I shared with him early on in my career that police officers and deputies in dark uniforms, wearing body armor in warm weather often had to shower before and after work.
Many people in this great nation will enjoy the benefits of a day off on Labor Day while many more will go to work assuring us of our safety and security. I’ve had the best of both worlds, raised by uncommon “common laborers”, working on Labor Day to help those in need and getting a day out of the Office as a law enforcement executive. But when I look back on how I was raised and the examples that were set for me, I’m grateful for the job I’ve always had. Its like my dad always said; “You don’t work you don’t get paid. And I’ve got to put food on the table and pay bills.” And call in sick to get a day off?!? I don’t think so. My parents would have none of that.
I tip my hat to the Uncommon Laborer and find myself grateful for their contribution to the fabric of America. Thanks mom and dad.
