Labor Day 2009
I’m never far from labor. I am labor. The only real distinction between my work life today and when I was paying dues is that I’ve eliminated a few overlays of people telling me what to do. And on this score I’m beginning to understand, just a little what my father was up to.
My father loved his autonomy, he followed the rules; paid taxes, contributed to unemployment and benefits for his workers, he worked longer hours than any two men, and neglected a family life that didn’t coincide with his labors. He just did what he needed to do to have a little breathing space. I never once recall him bitching about paying taxes or benefits. Never. Although he was a boss with an eye to finishing his jobs, his motivation was more for some personal control than economic profit. Another thing I never heard him utter was the oft used term, “bottom line.” He would say that a job turned out well or they did well or not. Sometimes he made some money but over time I realized that money was just a byproduct of jobs that went well. Some of his jobs were “stinkers” but he’d keep at it. I heard from someone that that first big job in Ogdensburg lost $10,000. Not a great start. But the stories he told of that job had nothing to do with money. His stories were about the saloons in the town, and about Uncle Ray and Grandpa’s drinking and about the aggrieved nuns out on the porch. I never heard that the job was a stinker. I’ve seen a black and white photograph of a brick arch that they had built and though the image is very grainy in my head the archway is some sort of a connection between the old church and the addition that Pa and the Murray Bros. crew were building. The picture was taken before the mortar had set up, the joints are still dark, and probably just after the arch support was removed. In the picture you see, bricks, mortar, the rubble of new construction, the amazing connections between a previous mason and Pa but there is no reference to money. A few years ago, I asked Uncle Dick about the business, about Murray Bros in particular and he told me something that I’d never heard, he said, “Oh, you mean the time we went broke?”
“Went broke?” I asked.
“Sure, a few years after we started, we went broke. Had to go down to Lincoln Bank to borrow money.”
Apparently, and I remember this, there was some connection between the bank and the Murrays. It may be that the loan officer was a classmate of Pa or Uncle Dick or Grandpa but there was some connection. They got the loan and continued for another twenty years. Funny part about that is in his catalogue of stories the going broke part never came up. The term ‘bottom line’ never made it into Pa’s lexicon. He was a working class boss – a very odd duck.
So where am I going with this little ramble? I recall one Labor Day many years ago, back in Syracuse, Pa had a job, I don’t recall where the job was but this is in my/our era you may have been in school by then. Anyway, he’d rousted me up from sleep to go to work. I said, “Pa, it’s Labor Day.”
He had that grin of his, the mischief grin, “That means we’re supposed to labor. Get up.”
Most likely he followed that up with his favorite lie, “It’s only a half a day.” Which to my ears meant we’d work till noon and I’d be home by one in the afternoon and could still have a life. Uncle Dick later decoded the term for me, “For your old man, half a day is twelve hours.” Dick version was usually closer to the mark.
I can’t think about Labor Day without connecting the day to our family’s brand of labor. Most of the Syracuse version of my past is either the grainy black and white or faded color tones of old photographs. My memory has no well defined edges. Work and Labor can sometimes be the same. To me work means the fine grey dust of mortar, the sandy sharp edges of brick, a truck windshield silvery with dust, the smell of fresh concrete and old truck exhaust, how weirdly natural a ‘Rose’ trowel feels in the hand, being out in a cool fall breeze with nothing above you but the blowing clouds. I love being outside in the time of year when the air is crisp and leaves fly. I guess I’m a romantic sucker for all the years that have passed without a single thought to the reality of today. When I’d attempted to get my teaching credential I told a friend that I was quitting the trade for once and for all, “It’s like being in a bad relationship. I’m sick of getting my feelings hurt [by masonry].” I realized after a semester of school that teaching high school would require me to serve a multitude of bosses and that I’d be more miserable than I am already. I’d be walking on eggshells every minute of every day in fear of, cursing, saying something insensitive, of showing my volcanic anger in fear of, you name it – everything.
What kind of a person talks about his work as a relationship? I guess a person who still loves dirty pick-up trucks and jobsites and the feel of brick in the hand. I have to admit that I’m about as crazy as anyone you may ever meet and my craziness at least part of it, comes from my relationship with bricks, and work, and jobs, and Labor.
