In the late 1980s-early 1990s, I spent many Saturdays rehabbing an apartment building above an old, fire-gutted bank at 292-98 South Orange Avenue, Newark, New Jersey with Habitat for Humanity. The red brick structure was three stories tall and a half-block wide, with boarded-up windows. Working on the upper floors, we walked across tattered sheets of plywood lightly fastened to the remaining floor joists that spanned the inner shell of the building. Watch your step.
I was just thinking along the same lines for the past few days. We've lost the manliness of the men in our Country and in the world. It is considered wrong now to be strong as men b/c that may offend somebody somewhere. I'm hoping I taught my kids better. My second son wanted a moped but we told him he needed to find a job so he could buy one himself. We wouldn't buy it for him. So, he went out and he found himself a job on a horseradish root farm. This work is dirty, hard, and hot even in the Swedish "summers". He perservered though and was able to buy himself the moped that he wanted (that made our lives easier, actually, but he needed to learn to earn something on his own).
That job of his led to another job that the other 2 oldest helped out with on another horseradish root farm. I still have pics I took of them coming home looking like they'd been underground all day! This job led to my two youngest (girls) getting a job on a vegetable farm planting potatoes, harvesting carrots and onions and other veggies and then washing prepping and packaging them. My youngest, especially, did NOT like the job. I told her that was fine but she wasn't allowed to leave it till she found another. She never did find another and now, one of the youngest workers there since she started when she was 14, she has one of the highest salaries for the teens that work there and she is trusted by the boss to take care of things when he isn't around. Amazingly, this sense of responsibility and higher pay has made her like the job a little more each year.
My kids knew from day one that we, as parents, weren't going to be giving them anything that they could buy for themselves with a little elbow grease and hard work. They all knew from the beginning that I started my first job when I was in kindergarten. I delivered newspapers in my neighborhood and at 5 years old I had to collect the quarter for those papers every month. That was my pay. If I didn't collect it, I didn't get paid. By the time I was in high school, I was paying for everything for myself besides room and board. I told them and continue to tell them, the crap jobs help to teach you what you don't want to do the rest of your life. Use that to inspire you to be better at whatever it is you do want to do or what you need to do to be able to do what you do want to do and you will go far in life and you won't end up flipping burgers for a living...
I hope we as a country find our way soon though or it won't matter that my kids are hard workers b/c there won't be a country for them to be working for left worth working for...
Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
there are also many satisfactions from physically exhausting dirty work, all food tastes great when you’re hungry, washing the dirt off and sleeping like a baby when your head finally hits the soft pillow.
Same here. I'm a mid 60's fossil and grew up fixing our car brakes, changing the oil, so on. First real job after paper route was chasing down gate jumpers at the CNE, who were generally rather unpleasant fellows. I did road repair and was a garbageman for summer jobs in high school. Garbage pickup then was twice a week for each house, no limits or restrictions on what could be put out. 2 men riding on the boards at the back and an alcoholic driver, 10 hours days minimum. My partner got a badly broken leg from being run over by the driver at the dump.
Even though I later became a "professional", I became unemployed at one point in my early 30's so went to work for my buddy building additions and renovating massive old apartments above street level stores in the old part of Toronto. Coated in cement and drywall dust day after day, carrying 4x10 double sheets of drywall up the narrow steps is something that still haunts me. Mixed a lot of cement on plywood, in wheelbarrows, and mixers.
Though I went back into "soft" jobs, I have never stopped DIY and can hardly conceive of hiring to do jobs at home. I just had to dig up my tree root blocked sewer pipe and yes, mix cement and bucket it downstairs to fill the long basement floor trench.
This summer I have to remove and dig out the poorly built and wrongly sloped patio. Wife asks me who I'm going to hire to do it - LOL, she's in for a surprise as usual. As I fossilize, these jobs get tougher for me so I just do them slower. (I'm also cheap so there is that, but hey, I live in Canada where everybody is a lot poorer than our southern neighbours).
I know how to do a lot of things - and with the internet it's even easier for anybody to know. But the difference now is not knowledge or the ability to gain knowledge, it's just as you say - a pure aversion to tackling anything slightly dirty or difficult. I encourage young people to get into a trade as they are going to be rare and make a small fortune, but most look at me like I'm a kook and are aiming for those soft, mysterious jobs - which aren't going to be as prevalent as they imagine.
The only way this is going to turn around is serious widespread hardship. Collapse of systems. Mostly I foresee a general decline, as has been happening, which will continue until something breaks completely. But there will be no major turnaround in attitude or gumption without it.
This was a great line. "Even though 7,600 Americans died daily before Coronamania, during the past three years, many thought, or at least pretended, that no one should get sick or die, no matter how old or overweight."
Government abetted by big media are dispensing fear. Young people, especially the zoom class, are riddled with anxiety and made up issues. I recently heard iof parents to be who were not satisfied with a “baby monitor “ ( who even had those in the 70s?) but want an electronic device to track the newborn heart and respiration rate while sleeping. Medicalizing and technicalizing of ordinary life - from birth to death. No wonder we have a rash of mental illness, suicides, and drug addiction.
Such a poignant essay, Mark. I’ve long lamented the loss of gumption. I spent hot Alabama summers with my grandparents, picking row crops like cotton and bell peppers. Papaw logged pine trees in the winter and sharecropped in the summer. They had an outhouse and a well from which we drew buckets of cold, iron-flavored water, and everybody drank from the same ladle.. Playtime meant grabbing a bb gun, running into a clearing in the woods, throwing a hubcap into the air and shooting it. Redneck skeet. We were plain covered up in white privilege!
I’m 66 now and have always been grateful for my childhood. (Rick Bragg, a great Southern writer, tells the finest stories about ‘my’ people). I worked my way through college and have led an adventurous life, including sailing around the world on a 43’ sailboat. My grandsons will never enjoy such life-enhancing challenges, and since their Grandpa is dead, they won’t learn how to fix and build practically everything, as he could. My estate planning does not allow them to use my money for college. Trade school, yes. I’m glad I’m old. I don’t see any way out of this mess. I enjoy your essays very much. Thanks!
As you said, this started long before covid. Look around, very few people mow their own grass or shovel their own driveways anymore. Simple daily physical tasks of living now outsourced to those with the "big equipment." We are just too damn lazy. This started decades ago when parents no longer required "chores" done by their children. There was a time most children were paid an allowance AFTER doing chores. Now they are just given money anytime they want, for doing nothing.
I grew up in the 60s-70s & my parents expected us to have a real work ethic. I was a doctor’s daughter & even so, I did every minimum wage job there was - waitress, maid, sales girl, & I had pride in all of them & learned a lot. Never, ever thought I was “too good” to do such work. I raised my boys the same - as soon as they could legally work, every summer they either sacked groceries, worked on a farm, did roofing or worked for a welder. My older son came home one day - hot, exhausted & filthy & told me not only would none of his high school friends do the kind of hard labor he was doing, they weren’t even expected to work. We were boomer parents & late to have kids so most of their friends’ parents were 10 years or more younger than us. I just laughed & told him it builds character. And it DID.
Another nail in the coffin of grit for men is the idea of “toxic masculinity”, which now seems to mean that being masculine is toxic. Thank god my son doesn’t buy that crap, but I have many times reaffirmed that masculinity is a desirable trait, just to outweigh the noise coming from society. Thanks for another great article, Mark.
Your co-worker in New Jersey was correct about the 12 step program. It does allow a person to search their own souls if they are willing to- it just provides a platform to overcome the addiction. The vast majority of folks cannot do it alone because most of us are fragile and we need support. The "program" provides a base- the individual has to engage. It's not for everyone, but many have benefited and gotten sober.
I liked so many things about this post, but especially "bring some toughness to bear". Doing those tough jobs while I was a teenager built in some appreciation for what my parents and grandparents had done earlier to establish their households and lives. I've mixed a few wheelbarrows of concrete, dug holes with a posthole digger, dug holes for concrete footings, etc. I still mow my yard with a push mower- don't mind sweating, but it's tougher than it used to be.
Thanks for the exquisite writing- It helps me to search my own soul a bit- but mainly it helps me to more clearly understand this whole scam of the last 3 years and to put it in the proper perspective. This whole business has been evil and it's not over.
Sorry if I posted this before. There is a great book entitled "Spoiled Rotten: Affluence, Anxiety, And Social Decay In America" (1999) that explains much of this.
From the Amazon review:
properly measured standards of material well-being have grown for practically all U.S. residents over the last twenty-five years, and this fantastic growth is responsible for a variety of negative social consequences
It's strange to think, but it's almost as though to be normal and happy, one MUST work hard.
Great article. I worked in a factory (no A/C) where we made heat treating furnaces for half my working life. I worked with steel and although it wasn't a death trap, you still needed to work smart. Without people doing the grunt work, there are no automobiles, computers and other "luxuries".
When you have been out in the world a bit, away from your phone or computer or video game, you can get a taste of what it means to survive. It takes some grit and determination at times. The rush to create virtual reality is destroying all will to survive beyond being plugged-in.
I see this in my teenage grandkids. Were I to ask them to help me move mostly boxes and storage bins, I don't think they could handle much more than a few.
American men have become pussified.
Hard work and fresh air needed.
Scouting, gritty parents and chores will go a long way to wean these kids from screens and immaturity.
Thanks for another prosaic gem, Mark.
I was just thinking along the same lines for the past few days. We've lost the manliness of the men in our Country and in the world. It is considered wrong now to be strong as men b/c that may offend somebody somewhere. I'm hoping I taught my kids better. My second son wanted a moped but we told him he needed to find a job so he could buy one himself. We wouldn't buy it for him. So, he went out and he found himself a job on a horseradish root farm. This work is dirty, hard, and hot even in the Swedish "summers". He perservered though and was able to buy himself the moped that he wanted (that made our lives easier, actually, but he needed to learn to earn something on his own).
That job of his led to another job that the other 2 oldest helped out with on another horseradish root farm. I still have pics I took of them coming home looking like they'd been underground all day! This job led to my two youngest (girls) getting a job on a vegetable farm planting potatoes, harvesting carrots and onions and other veggies and then washing prepping and packaging them. My youngest, especially, did NOT like the job. I told her that was fine but she wasn't allowed to leave it till she found another. She never did find another and now, one of the youngest workers there since she started when she was 14, she has one of the highest salaries for the teens that work there and she is trusted by the boss to take care of things when he isn't around. Amazingly, this sense of responsibility and higher pay has made her like the job a little more each year.
My kids knew from day one that we, as parents, weren't going to be giving them anything that they could buy for themselves with a little elbow grease and hard work. They all knew from the beginning that I started my first job when I was in kindergarten. I delivered newspapers in my neighborhood and at 5 years old I had to collect the quarter for those papers every month. That was my pay. If I didn't collect it, I didn't get paid. By the time I was in high school, I was paying for everything for myself besides room and board. I told them and continue to tell them, the crap jobs help to teach you what you don't want to do the rest of your life. Use that to inspire you to be better at whatever it is you do want to do or what you need to do to be able to do what you do want to do and you will go far in life and you won't end up flipping burgers for a living...
I hope we as a country find our way soon though or it won't matter that my kids are hard workers b/c there won't be a country for them to be working for left worth working for...
there are also many satisfactions from physically exhausting dirty work, all food tastes great when you’re hungry, washing the dirt off and sleeping like a baby when your head finally hits the soft pillow.
Same here. I'm a mid 60's fossil and grew up fixing our car brakes, changing the oil, so on. First real job after paper route was chasing down gate jumpers at the CNE, who were generally rather unpleasant fellows. I did road repair and was a garbageman for summer jobs in high school. Garbage pickup then was twice a week for each house, no limits or restrictions on what could be put out. 2 men riding on the boards at the back and an alcoholic driver, 10 hours days minimum. My partner got a badly broken leg from being run over by the driver at the dump.
Even though I later became a "professional", I became unemployed at one point in my early 30's so went to work for my buddy building additions and renovating massive old apartments above street level stores in the old part of Toronto. Coated in cement and drywall dust day after day, carrying 4x10 double sheets of drywall up the narrow steps is something that still haunts me. Mixed a lot of cement on plywood, in wheelbarrows, and mixers.
Though I went back into "soft" jobs, I have never stopped DIY and can hardly conceive of hiring to do jobs at home. I just had to dig up my tree root blocked sewer pipe and yes, mix cement and bucket it downstairs to fill the long basement floor trench.
This summer I have to remove and dig out the poorly built and wrongly sloped patio. Wife asks me who I'm going to hire to do it - LOL, she's in for a surprise as usual. As I fossilize, these jobs get tougher for me so I just do them slower. (I'm also cheap so there is that, but hey, I live in Canada where everybody is a lot poorer than our southern neighbours).
I know how to do a lot of things - and with the internet it's even easier for anybody to know. But the difference now is not knowledge or the ability to gain knowledge, it's just as you say - a pure aversion to tackling anything slightly dirty or difficult. I encourage young people to get into a trade as they are going to be rare and make a small fortune, but most look at me like I'm a kook and are aiming for those soft, mysterious jobs - which aren't going to be as prevalent as they imagine.
The only way this is going to turn around is serious widespread hardship. Collapse of systems. Mostly I foresee a general decline, as has been happening, which will continue until something breaks completely. But there will be no major turnaround in attitude or gumption without it.
This was a great line. "Even though 7,600 Americans died daily before Coronamania, during the past three years, many thought, or at least pretended, that no one should get sick or die, no matter how old or overweight."
I was banned from the office because I'm not vaxxed and I wouldn't mask up. I used the lack of a commute to work out more, the others all got fat.
I now go back in a couple of days a week, but no one is there. We allowed America to be destroyed over the sniffles.
Government abetted by big media are dispensing fear. Young people, especially the zoom class, are riddled with anxiety and made up issues. I recently heard iof parents to be who were not satisfied with a “baby monitor “ ( who even had those in the 70s?) but want an electronic device to track the newborn heart and respiration rate while sleeping. Medicalizing and technicalizing of ordinary life - from birth to death. No wonder we have a rash of mental illness, suicides, and drug addiction.
Such a poignant essay, Mark. I’ve long lamented the loss of gumption. I spent hot Alabama summers with my grandparents, picking row crops like cotton and bell peppers. Papaw logged pine trees in the winter and sharecropped in the summer. They had an outhouse and a well from which we drew buckets of cold, iron-flavored water, and everybody drank from the same ladle.. Playtime meant grabbing a bb gun, running into a clearing in the woods, throwing a hubcap into the air and shooting it. Redneck skeet. We were plain covered up in white privilege!
I’m 66 now and have always been grateful for my childhood. (Rick Bragg, a great Southern writer, tells the finest stories about ‘my’ people). I worked my way through college and have led an adventurous life, including sailing around the world on a 43’ sailboat. My grandsons will never enjoy such life-enhancing challenges, and since their Grandpa is dead, they won’t learn how to fix and build practically everything, as he could. My estate planning does not allow them to use my money for college. Trade school, yes. I’m glad I’m old. I don’t see any way out of this mess. I enjoy your essays very much. Thanks!
As you said, this started long before covid. Look around, very few people mow their own grass or shovel their own driveways anymore. Simple daily physical tasks of living now outsourced to those with the "big equipment." We are just too damn lazy. This started decades ago when parents no longer required "chores" done by their children. There was a time most children were paid an allowance AFTER doing chores. Now they are just given money anytime they want, for doing nothing.
Nothing like a big cup of hot coffee and a new Dispatches from a Scamdemic article in your inbox. Great way to start the day!
I grew up in the 60s-70s & my parents expected us to have a real work ethic. I was a doctor’s daughter & even so, I did every minimum wage job there was - waitress, maid, sales girl, & I had pride in all of them & learned a lot. Never, ever thought I was “too good” to do such work. I raised my boys the same - as soon as they could legally work, every summer they either sacked groceries, worked on a farm, did roofing or worked for a welder. My older son came home one day - hot, exhausted & filthy & told me not only would none of his high school friends do the kind of hard labor he was doing, they weren’t even expected to work. We were boomer parents & late to have kids so most of their friends’ parents were 10 years or more younger than us. I just laughed & told him it builds character. And it DID.
Another nail in the coffin of grit for men is the idea of “toxic masculinity”, which now seems to mean that being masculine is toxic. Thank god my son doesn’t buy that crap, but I have many times reaffirmed that masculinity is a desirable trait, just to outweigh the noise coming from society. Thanks for another great article, Mark.
Your co-worker in New Jersey was correct about the 12 step program. It does allow a person to search their own souls if they are willing to- it just provides a platform to overcome the addiction. The vast majority of folks cannot do it alone because most of us are fragile and we need support. The "program" provides a base- the individual has to engage. It's not for everyone, but many have benefited and gotten sober.
I liked so many things about this post, but especially "bring some toughness to bear". Doing those tough jobs while I was a teenager built in some appreciation for what my parents and grandparents had done earlier to establish their households and lives. I've mixed a few wheelbarrows of concrete, dug holes with a posthole digger, dug holes for concrete footings, etc. I still mow my yard with a push mower- don't mind sweating, but it's tougher than it used to be.
Thanks for the exquisite writing- It helps me to search my own soul a bit- but mainly it helps me to more clearly understand this whole scam of the last 3 years and to put it in the proper perspective. This whole business has been evil and it's not over.
Sorry if I posted this before. There is a great book entitled "Spoiled Rotten: Affluence, Anxiety, And Social Decay In America" (1999) that explains much of this.
From the Amazon review:
properly measured standards of material well-being have grown for practically all U.S. residents over the last twenty-five years, and this fantastic growth is responsible for a variety of negative social consequences
It's strange to think, but it's almost as though to be normal and happy, one MUST work hard.
Great article. I worked in a factory (no A/C) where we made heat treating furnaces for half my working life. I worked with steel and although it wasn't a death trap, you still needed to work smart. Without people doing the grunt work, there are no automobiles, computers and other "luxuries".
When you have been out in the world a bit, away from your phone or computer or video game, you can get a taste of what it means to survive. It takes some grit and determination at times. The rush to create virtual reality is destroying all will to survive beyond being plugged-in.
I see this in my teenage grandkids. Were I to ask them to help me move mostly boxes and storage bins, I don't think they could handle much more than a few.
Thank you, Mark. This essay, like all your essays, is a balm in this crazed world.