The Hohokus Hill

       My Dad commuted to Wall Street for 17 years from Ridgewood. He usually walked and used the Hohokus Hill to access the train station. It's hard to imagine people still make this 3 hour a day commute.

     This photo is about 80 years old. I don't know if the sidewalk was put in after he started walking this hill twice a day. We used to explore the woods on either side of this feeble excuse for a road. Though my greatest adventure occurred shortly after I began driving. I was driving a stick shift car up the hill and at the turn my engine stalled. To compound the tension of the situation my passenger's Dad was walking up the hill and noticed us sitting in the stalled car. He showed no emotion and might have even offered a silent prayer to the saints for lost causes. I gave him a thumbs up from the driver's seat and gently took my foot off the brake and let out the clutch. We rolled backwards and miracle of miracles the engine turned over before we slid off the hill. I immediately put the car in gear and we both gave him a jolly wave as we sped up the hill. He never commented on that moment until some ten years later when I mentioned it to him. He just gave me a smile and said he knew I would pull through. I'm pretty sure he was fibbing but the smile on his face was priceless and I'm not one for being a know-it-all guest.

Tin Ears

      My Dad taught me a lot of $50 words in his day. Two of the most memorable are Nepotism and Tin Ear. I learned the meaning of nepotism when I told him at the ripe old age of ten that I wanted to work at his law firm. He smiled and sensed what they call today a "Learning Moment" and told me that was impossible. It had nothing to do with my desire only that his firm had strict rules about hiring relatives. I went and looked it up in the dictionary and never forgot it. When I got to college and met the students at the nearby Dickinson School of Law, I was glad for nepotism policies. What a dull lot of people they were and what an equally dull profession they were seeking out. No offense intended towards all my friends who are lawyers and are not dim-witted by any means. I can only speak for myself.

     The second $50 word I recall is Tin Ear. I was explaining the antics of a particularly greedy president of the New York Stock Exchange. My Dad knew him well and wasn't at all surprised by his avarice. He added that the man had a tin ear. I asked him to explain and he simply said that with everything going on around him and all that was being written about him in the papers he had to be completely oblivious. I went to my trusty dictionary again to be sure I understood:

      Insensitivity to the nuances of current situation or subtleties of a craft; indifference to somebody else's attitudes and moods.

 

Yes, that pretty much described the man who was walking a way from a job in disgrace with a huge golden parachute.

 

 

 

      

Checking In

      Last weekend after looking through my Gmail contacts I decided to send an email to every person I hadn't contacted in a while. My family was excluded and anybody I had been on a Zoom call with during the Pandemic. In total I sent 28 versions of the same email. Though I personalized each but mostly wrote about how we were getting along and that if the person had a moment to let me know their status. I kept the note as brief as possible but not so short as to make it appear as a thoughtless exercise.

     The responses to date have been fascinating. The people I have known the longest were among the first to reply. It didn't matter if we hadn't spoken in years the connection was still there and they all appreciated the interruption to what has become a very boring time in our lives.

     I'll likely wait to respond to everyone and see if I can't draw some conclusion to share. Or I'll just respond to them individually and let the email trains go wherever. I realize that letter writing is a lost art but maybe we can improve upon email.

The Dignity of Work

      Yes, I'm quoting an elitist, Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, in order to make a point about the dignity of work. It seems we have forgotten that most people in this country and in Europe do not receive a college education. The fact that they now need one to earn enough to raise a family is another topic for discussion. When did we get so hung up with credentials? I can recall growing up in a town where most of the women did not have college degrees and a fair number of the men as well. You didn't need a college degree to deliver the mail, teach wood shop, or work in a retail store. These were respected jobs and enabled people to enter the middle class and own their own home.

...."On asking what we can do to make life better for people, whatever their credentials. That, however lustrous, however modest their circumstances, they can live dignified lives and be recognized. Not only rewarded, but recognized for the work they do, for the families they raise, for the communities they serve. Be recognized for contributions to the common good.

 

     We could simply blame globalization and our collective desire for flat-screen TVs which cost less than a $1000 but that would only be scratching the surface. We have to include all the cues we receive every day about having more stuff and why this is better than a life of simplicity. 

     This simpler life I imagine would be one where kids would say, "I'm bored" to their friends and parents. Being bored is fine and is a signal to use one's own mind to create a less boring outlook. I don't think we have the a single boring moment in our lives today. Children have so many choices in which to invest their time, and some activities like video games can take all of their attention and then some.

     Which brings me back to the need for bestowing dignity upon work. I understand that paper routes are never again going to be first jobs. I'd also include leaf raking, snow shoveling, and cutting grass on that list. What's going to take their place?

     First we need to re-establish a trust among neighbors to allow for today's youth to do things like teaching people how to use their technology safely. Or cleaning out an attic or basement; anything involving a bit of lifting and cleaning. But first a trust in one another must exist. In previous eras trust was created by participation in groups like Girl Scouts with their cookies. Unfortunately, this devolved into seeing who could get the most cookies sold by whatever means and the work aspect was completely lost. How much work is it to give your sign-up list to Mom and Dad to take to work? Not much.

     I don't have any good answers. I can only see that we have a great many lonely people who have the means to hire youngsters for their first paid jobs. Maybe it could be expanded to include hiring any under-employed adult. People would have to get over stigma of being under-employed and having to do manual labor. It's not an impossible suggestion though first there would have to be a confidence in the character, ability and truth in the people making the transaction. We've spent a lot of time denigrating manual labor by underpaying and not giving it the respect it deserves. A college education is not a lifetime pass from doing manual labor. Just ask all the former service workers who lost their jobs and now have student loans to repay.