Holiday Rambling

The holiday is here and even at this early hour, I’m already enjoying it. I’ve got a few chores to do today, but they are things I enjoy doing. Creativity is what I enjoy and I have to build a few things down at the Senior Thrift Store; a fitting room, handrails for the stairs and a planter box for the front of the store. And I need to get some previous projects (around here) finished as well. I have a feeling that this early morning cooling will help to make it a pleasant day to get some work done.

Labor Day; a great holiday, but few remember what it’s supposed to honor. But isn’t that true of all holidays? Is there any one holiday that has the power to hold us enthralled for an entire day? For more than one hour? We may remember the reason for the holiday when we first wake and make note of the fact that we don’t have to work that day, but that’s usually the extent of it. Merchants and politicians are the true beneficiaries of holidays.

I suppose it’s the holiday that has me thinking of work and the fact that I don’t work anymore. And the more I think about it, the more I see how complicated a subject it is. For instance; how many of us work, or worked, at a job we loved? I can’t imagine it being more than 10% of the working population.

I had half a dozen jobs before I found the one that suited me, and that was construction. It was also the one job that my father warned me to avoid.

Construction suited my personality type. I could be creative and I was in charge. Usually. Very early in my career I became a foreman and then a superintendent and it was all because I would make decisions. Those who are really in charge, the “suits”, love decision makers! The decision maker gets to make the mistakes and is punished while the “suit” says, “I told you so!” No, it’s not really that simple; but I do remember that many of the people I worked for were always looking for the one worker that would make a decision quickly. And so it was that I would often be free to run a job the way I wanted. In fact, the only painful memories I have of my time in construction are of those times when I was supposed to be in charge but had to deal instead with some micro-managing “suit”.

Yes, that’s the way construction used to be…workers versus the “suits”. There was a certain “pirate” mentality in construction work then. We obeyed the rules we wanted to and ignored all of the others. We were hardhat workers. We performed a dangerous job. In fact it was the danger that made the days work so much fun! I have to admit that I looked forward to the days when I knew we would be doing something both monumental and dangerous. Stuff that bank tellers and clerks would fear doing…we reveled in our persona as hardhat workers. When we were standing on the edge of the building, 30 floors up and directing a crane to swing this way or that, we knew that people were watching and envying us. Were they really? Or was that simply wishful thinking?