What Was Lost

What a world of cheap goods and labor has stolen from us.

It is 5:00 am. The wind howls as you open the door and step onto your wooden porch. The snow cuts across your face as it is picked up from the neighbor’s roof and blows towards you. You walk towards the steps, listening to the ice crackle under your feet. You get to your 1986 Chevy K10 pickup truck. The door handle is cold, and the button sticks as you press it to open the door. You pump the gas pedal 4 or 5 times, trying to push gas into the intake from the carburetor. The key turns, and the motor whines as it gallops trying to start. The motor turns as you pump the gas pedal, desperately trying to get it to fire. You stop for a moment and wait, listening to the wind blowing across the metal roofline

You pop the hood and tap on the carburetor, attempting to free the float in the bowl. You check the distributor cap and rotor. You grab the can of ether from inside the cab and spray a little into the air cleaner, then hop back in the truck.

You pump the gas a few more times and hit the key once more. It revs, and you push on the gas pedal, holding it to the floor as it coughs a few times before finally the old 305 fires off. You hold the gas halfway down to keep it running and attempt to warm the motor to get the glass defrosted.

You walk back into the house and see your 10-year-old son putting his boots on. You ask him what he is doing?

“I am getting ready to come plowing with you.” He replies, standing up straight with pride.

You smile and pat him on the head and reach into the cabinet for some hot cocoa. You place the pot on the wood stove and grab a piece of wood, shoving it into the square hole in the front of the cast-iron belly.

You pour in the milk from the glass jar into the pot and let it boil while the truck runs out front. You cut off two pieces of bread from the loaf your wife cooked yesterday and place them on top of the stove to brown.

The pot boils, and pour the contents of the cocoa packets into two coffee mugs and fill them with milk, handing one to your son. You know he will get used to this process over the course of his life, and today will not be the last time he leaves the house at 5 am.

You and he sit and put in some carbs for the long day that begins now.

The two of you get to your first job for the day, and you show him how to run the plow control. Once you are done plowing the lot, you have to shovel the walks and put down salt. He grabs a shovel and helps you as you push through the heavy snow.

You finish your lot and head off to the second. The roads are full of snow drifts and haven’t been plowed yet. You go slow, but eventually you hit a dip in the road, and the plow gets stuck. Time is money on a day like today. Businesses want to open, and you are the one who can get them to that status. Your child, though, is now stuck in a truck surrounded by a deafened world of white.

You get out and try to dig the plow out to no avail. It has to come off and be the drug to the bed. The plow weighs nearly 350 lbs. You know you cannot move it on your own. You look at your son through the windshield. You open his door and tell him, “You need his help.”

You set the plow down as far as it will go and unhook it. You each take a side and lift. He handles his end like a grown man for a few steps. He looks at you as he drops it, feeling embarrassed. You smile and say, “Boy, that is damn good. Think you can go again?”

“I think so.” He stammers through his jacket zipper.

He bends down, lifts, and starts walking. You move at his speed, and little by little, you reach the back of the truck.

You finagle the plow into the bed and get the truck unstuck, turn around, and find another route to the next customer.

You finish your day as the sun sets, and he is fast asleep. You walk over and carry him into the house.

You two just made enough money to pay the mortgage and electric bill for the month in a day. He has no idea how instrumental he was to you. He has no clue that you just watched a boy become a man and earn for the family. He has no idea how important today was. You tuck him into bed and stare at him for a minute. He is exactly what every father prays for.

The things he did today will leave a mark on him for the rest of his life. He will pull on this memory when times get hard at future jobs and have the wherewithal to move forward when his bones and muscles scream. When he has a son to feed and a roof to keep over his children’s heads, he won’t quit. He will find a way.

This is no different than the countless generations before. The ones who went to Bastogne or saved those airborne boys by having the ability to troubleshoot problems and keep their tanks running in the winters of Northern Europe, battling the nazis.

The men who had to build bridges over the creeks or barges to cross rivers to sell their crops with nothing but an axe, a dream, and an empty stomach. The men who laid the crops in the ground and built cabins out of foreign wood, in harsh environments, who birthed their great, great grandparents.

Somewhere between the Summer of Love and the George Floyd riots, we lost some of that. The ability to buy food at a store and put auto bills on a credit card gave us the ability to divorce ourselves. We no longer relied on our neighbors and our grit to get by. We stopped caring about the horses that carried us from place to place. We used to be stewards of our possessions. This is why when we say women should be property, it seems like a foreign concept. No one maltreated their possessions before the 1960s.

You oiled and greased your machinery. You sharpened your knives and axes. You oiled your leather and guns. This basic thing called stewardship and maintenance has become a lost art form.

There was a song from Toby Keith (may he rest in peace) called Made in America. He sings about his pappy's disgust of people driving foreign cars and wearing cotton we didn’t grow. He would never buy anything he couldn’t fix with WD-40 and a Craftsman wrench.

I have the same feeling. I grew up being forced to work on cars that we needed to get from place to place. I survived and fed my family by being able to fix the things I owned. I paid rent by fixing my apartment many times. I got through by carrying a tire on a rim on my head and walking 10 miles to get it fixed. The jack fell through the rusted body, and the car landed on my hand, and I still took my ass to work. This isn’t to say that being tough is all there is to it. But having the ability to walk through and figure it out is paramount. We lost some of this.

I even go into debt to pay for stuff I don’t need. This has become like a cancer upon our bones. It’s like an addiction. Not having money gives me a panic attack from time to time. The precarity of not being able to fix the things I own. The month-to-month concern of having no way to predict if things will be ok. Will I be able to pay my car note? Will I be able to pay the electric bill? It is scary. It didn’t used to be this tight constantly.

We have been robbed of so much by our choosing short-term comfort and growth over long-term stability. We shipped our manufacturing to China. We automated and credit-flushed our savings. We destroyed the things that made us able to survive. Today, a few others and I teach men the basics of car maintenance and the importance of knowing what engine is in your vehicle. This premise was something we laughed at women for not knowing 15 years ago. We would say, “If you don’t know the motor and transmission in your vehicle, you should not be allowed to drive it.” The premise still holds true. There is a reason men were so fiercely loyal to brands. Each had its idiosyncrasies and problems. Drawbacks and positives. Men had the tools to fix them, Ford had their stupid engineering and need for specialized tools. Chevy with their cheaply made pickup modules. Dodge with their transmission head wiring and fuel consumption problems. We all knew what was needed and the positives and negatives. We bought them for a purpose. Today, you need an electrical engineering degree and $300,000 in lifts and computer equipment to change a headlight.

Our refrigerators have wifi and touch screens. Our washers and dryers sense individual loads and have plastic holding motors together. Your washer used to have a concrete block inside up until the 2000s as a counterbalance to keep the basin steady. Today, there is a brushless AC motor with a capacitor in the back of your washer and dryer, that, if you're not careful, will toss you across the room if you try to work on it. My grandmother had the same washer and dryer that we kids and grandkids would fix for 30 years.

This is not to say these things cannot be fixed easily. But the culture we have developed incentivizes you to throw it away and get a new energy-efficient appliance at every turn.

As times go back to normal and the ability to build cheap stuff anywhere on the globe and ship it 6000 miles comes to a close, we find ourselves lacking the basic skills that we developed over 10,000 years of living in the harsh environments of Europe. We have thrown away in 2 generations what we had built over 2500. After all the talk of the libertarian retards of being reliant on the government we find ourselves reliant upon the economy and corporations for basic survival. Without the knowledge that the boomers are taking to their graves.