When pressures mount to the point of distraction, from business, I know it is time to slow down and smell the Tennessee farm air, let it blow in my face and remind me of the reality of my life. The reality is, I'm not some hot shot business executive, I'm from humble stock, generations of working farmers, mechanics, carpenters and other hard working professions that did what they had to do to keep the family fed and clothed. My Grandfather Hitchcock, during the Great Depression, had to sell the farm and move to town to find work. He was nearing 50 years old and strong as an ox from working hard all his life. He found a job delivering Ice to the Kansas City tenements for their ice boxes, before most people had electric refrigerators. He would put a 50 pound block of ice, on each leather bound shoulder, holding them in place with his ice tongs, and then walk up flights of stairs to his customers who might live on the fourth floor. Try going up tenement stairs carrying 100 pounds of ice, to fully experience the will to work that his generation had. When he would pass the long lines of out of work men, waiting in the "soup lines", he considered himself blessed to have the job he had, when others had none. My father, at 14, during this time, quit school to go to work to help feed the family. His two brothers, who were working age also, did the same. They were all fortunate to keep working during this hard time, and it made them stronger, in years to come.
So, you say, what's my point? We are not in a Great Depression now. That's true. The Government keeps telling us how much better things are getting. But, ask the small business owner, who has had to shut his business down, or the worker who has been laid off, it's pretty dang Depressing to them, no matter what you call it.
So, after a morning of coffee on the front porch, I slip into my fresh laundered old pair of Wranglers, put on a clean old work shirt, and climb into the leather seat of the old '57, taking my time, an old hillbilly heading into my job of trying to run a Cable TV Network.
Behind the wheel I wonder, have we really advanced to a better place in time? This old truck, for instance, every single little part, down the the smallest screw, was made in the United States by an American worker. It rolled off the Assembly line, in St Louis, Missouri, proud and true. That Assembly line is long since abandoned. The Steel was from the great American Steel Mills....since, closed down. The glass was from the American Glass Plants....sadly, now closed. I have to think that the spirits of those workers who created something that would still work, 55 years later, felt pride when she rolled off the line...a job well done. Two of my Dad's brothers, Uncle Cliff and Uncle Leslie, both worked at the Fisher Body Works, building body's for GM cars and trucks in the 30's and 40's, putting together wooden frames for the metal workers to attach the metal to the body. They did it with Pride.
So, I keep the old truck, to drive occasionally when I need the lift of spirits, in honor of those craftsmen from long ago, who cared enough to do the job right. We don't build very much in America any more, not like before, but we once did, and I'm proud that I can still "Drive American" at a time when we need to try to find that spark of American pride in what we built. -Stan
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