And Another Thing

LOVEOF A Labor

As kids we heard Tennessee Ernie Ford sing about loading those 16 tons and what’d he get? another day older and deeper in debt. I always thought he was just making a rhyme, but the more I live and work, the more I think he might have been onto something. The joke is that money talks, but all it ever says is goodbye. Or that everyone says money won’t make you happy — but everyone sure would like to find out for themselves.

What a sheltered life I led as a little guy. I thought second-grade spelling was work. Had no idea my mom and dad were out there with hard hats on, trying to figure out how to keep fish sticks on the table and food in the freezer, and maybe, just maybe, get us to Six Flags once a year. Like life, work can be difficult. That’s why they call it “work,” the old folks always told me, and not “sitting on the couch.” Fortunately, we live in America where it is not that difficult to build some wealth. (Not writing from experience, but I hear things.) If you know a youngster who’s just entered the “work force,” have a talk with them about how money works. That, or tell them to read Ben Franklin. They’ll thank you for it. And the sooner they have the info, the better. Since I will never have any real money at all, it’s a good thing that I actually like to work. Just glad I can. When people ask me how I’m doing, my standard response is “I’m vertical, got some people who care about me, and employed: living the dream.” I love working. Mainly because it gives me a chance to hang around my friends. Take a minute and remember all the jobs you’ve had (and true, some of them weren’t so hot). I helped build the “new” sewer system in Bawcomville around West Monroe back in the very hot summer of 1977. Was mainly a shovel guy. If you ever go to the bathroom in Bawcomville, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the flushing and the water pressure. We built it to last. Let me know. Helped build the Camden Bypass in 1981. Again, shovel. But next time you drive on it, well, you’ll see. There are roads, and then there’s the Camden, Arkansas Bypass. But it wasn’t always high cotton for me, and probably not for you either. Before I scaled the lofty shovel heights, I was paid 50 cents a bushel picking cucumbers for Mr. Peabug Miller, a sometimes ornery but mostly happy farmer of my misspent youth. I was 6. First paying job. Turns out by mid-morning, in a field the length of a soccer pitch and just as wide, the nearest shade a lifetime away, I took my third bushelful and set it at Mr. Peabug’s muddybrown-leather-laced-up-booted feet. Looked up at him and said, as if I were the union boss speaking for all the teamsters — it was only me and his daughter Susie — “Seems like a lot of work for fifty cents.” “It is,” he said, understanding. “But you got a better deal coming along today?” Hmmm. At that point in my life, barely able to read, mobile only as far as my bike and little legs could take me, all I knew was farmers and fields. I took my bucket and moseyed back out to the cucumbers. Life lesson and all. At lunchtime, Mrs. Colleen, Mr. Peabug’s wife and a country cook of the blue-ribbon variety, told me to belly up. I don’t know what we had that day but it would have been something along the lines of what we had most every meal at Mrs. Colleen’s or at any other table in Dillon County: fried chicken or steak, rice or potatoes, peas or butterbeans or baby limas, cornbread or biscuits, tomatoes and, of course, cucumbers, everything fresh, just picked. Not a bad way to make a living, I thought. Not when we eat like this. But I knew my life’s work wouldn’t be just cucumbers. No telling how many times at how many farmers’ tables I sat at back then wondering what I’d be when I grew up. I still wonder that. And still don’t know. But I’m working on it.

Teddy Allen is an award-winning columnist and graduate of Louisiana Tech, where he works as a writer and broadcaster.

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