A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT WORK AND WORKING

I remember taking walks with my grandfather as a young boy. It seemed to me that old boy could do anything. He'd point to some building and say, "See that fancy brick work around those windows?" Then he'd hold out those big scarred hands to me and say, "These two hands did that". He could point to a bridge and tell me how he helped string the cables that held it up.
In material terms he never owned much but he'd worked on farms, in factories and a few times in small businesses of his own. He could build a house, milk a cow, pick apples or stand on an assembly line from sunup to sundown and do his part in making anything you could imagine. He could lay up a brick wall as straight and true as anyone. He once had a horse and wagon and hauled ice all over Jersey City to fill the ice boxes of the housewives. If an old Ford Model A rattled by he knew it might be powered by an engine he helped build or it might be riding on wheels he put on. A mighty battleship might be tethered to the pier with ropes made from hemp that he helped harvest. He didn't like doing the same thing all the time so he went from job to job but he was always working at something. I remember him telling me that once when jobs were scarce he asked for a job as a ditch digger. He was getting along at that time and the foreman asked if he thought he could do as much work as the young men he already had. "I probably can't do as much as they CAN", he said,"but I can do as much as they WILL" The foreman just handed him a shovel.
He wore patched britches and tattered shirts but he stood straight and wore them with pride. He knew his value and what he had done to keep the country prosperous. He never shared too much in that prosperity but that didn't bother him, and it didn't bother my grandmother either. She was as adaptable as he was. She could cook a great meal out of anything and if there was nothing she knew how to get it. She knew what wild greens were edible and when and where to find them. Bring in anything and she'd turn it into a feast. I ate many a dish of woodchuck at their table. As a kid I once caught a big snapping turtle and dragged it in. She kind of scratched her head over that one but we had some great stew that night.
She used to say,"I got clothes on my back, food in my belly and a tight roof over my head. That makes me rich". She knew that anything beyond that is just toys.
Seems to me that we've lost that pride. There is no place left for a man like my grandfather. Our factories are closed and rotting away. Our farming is done by machinery and not by men. If there is hand work to be done on the farms we bring in someone from a poorer country to do it.
Working in a cubicle and punching a computer may be work but it's work that is never finished. There never comes a time when the worker can point to something with pride and say,"I did that".
I may seem like an old man reminiscing about the "Good old days" but I really think we exported a lot of our pride when we exported our jobs.