Connect the Dots

Yesterday would have been my dad’s 109^th birthday.  Early last week I was driving behind an AT&T van and thought about him because, as a repairman for New York Telephone Company, he had driven a green truck around Buffalo’s neighborhoods five days a week for 49 years. 

My father was thrilled when I went to work for Illinois Bell.  I wasn’t exactly following in his footsteps, but it was close.  However, as my career progressed, neither he nor my mother ever really grasped what some of my roles and responsibilities were and that frustrated them.  It made us both aware there was a white-collar/blue-collar gap in our lives.  Such was the norm playing out in many households of my generation.  We first baby boomers were expected to go to college and there were so many new types of jobs to pursue.  In the tradition of a parents’ wish for their children to have a ‘better’ life, one result for us was the creation of the largest gap of a professional connection to our forebears than any previous generation.

Telephone repairmen, at least as we used to know them, don’t exist anymore.  That got me to thinking about other professions from my childhood.  A favorite errand was when my mother stopped at the butcher shop.  A bell tinkled when you opened the door.  The sawdust on the floor was the smell that was prevalent, at least on our side of the counter.  A need was shared, options were discussed, and we went home with a package wrapped in thick white paper and tied with twine.  Thirty-five years ago I moved from the suburbs to a Chicago neighborhood where there was a little corner store that sold and butchered live poultry.  A coffee shop now occupies that location. 

Butchering is a skill that is still needed and it is a profession that I’m sure has been impacted by technology and by industry and cultural trends in ways I don’t understand.  There probably are still a few honest to goodness butcher shops around this country.  As an adult I’ve only met one butcher and that was more than thirty years ago.  

When I think of the era of my visits to the butcher shop, there are other professions that have disappeared or morphed or grown with changes in society.  Gone are the days when everyone had milk delivered, and while I know that industry has tried to revive the concept, I’m not sure how well that caught on.  Growing up, we had an egg man, and, for a while, a fruit and vegetable man, who brought their products to us regularly, but they had disappeared by the time I was in high school.  Morning and evening papers were delivered by the paperboy and you could count on the Fuller Brush man calling a couple of times a year.  Everyone knew their mailman and he knew everyone on his route. 

I hope you followed this musing that took me from the AT&T van to the mailman and that perhaps along the way you remembered a smile of your own. Oh, and by the way, imagine my surprise last Friday when I took a different route from work and discovered Mario’s Butcher Shop within a mile from my home!

Marilyn