A Simplistic Tale

We were fortunate enough to have our good friends Jeremy Weber, Jonathan Miner, and Mitch Rodriguez spend the weekend with us . . . our first overnight guests! Our basement apartment got carpeted the morning before Miner and JWeb arrived, so it was perfect timing for them to sleep on the floor.

I spent a good amount of bonding time with workmen last week, the carpetmen among them. But the carpetmen weren't as interested in bonding as the first pair were. They were furnace men (forgive me, I don't know the actual names for any of these careers). Jim was an older white man from the Maryland woodlands. He wore a padded flannel jacket over a flannel shirt, and any skin that was exposed was red and swollen from years of working in cold environments and in the outdoors. James was a slightly younger black man, on his second day with this particular furnace company. He had no front teeth, big round eyes, and long crinkles of hair sticking out from beneath his stocking cap. His primary job was to sit with Jim's truck outside of the house, watching to make sure no one stole any furnace equipment from them.

Our interactions were strained and awkward at first. In fact, I left the house for much of their first day of work--that's what's expected of the middle-class lady of the house in this sort of situation. But when I returned in the late afternoon, and Jim and James were locking the door behind them as they left, James ran over to me and collected the burden of grocery bags I had brought back with me. He rushed into the house and set them on the kitchen counter, and I think that's when I decided to abandon all characteristic assumptions and expectations. The next day I anchored myself to a kitchen chair--by necessity of finishing a job application package in twenty-four hours--and Jim and James came in, but I didn't leave. Jim and James started working, but I stayed put. Then, Jim requested some music.
"Where's the music?"
"Oh, would you like some?"
"Nah, I'm just kiddin' . . ."
"It's no problem to put some on . . . I like it when I'm working. What would you like?"
"Oh anything . . . but you got any country?"
I thought for a moment. "I have older stuff . . . like some Johnny Cash."
"Johnny Cash is great."
And then James said, "Oh, I like just 'bout anything."
So we listened to Johnny Cash. They both loved "My Name is Sam Hall" (damn your eyes) and agreed that they resonated with his attitude. And when Jim got tired of that, we listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival. And when he got tired of that, I scrounged up some Dolly Parton on Pandora. We listened to that all afternoon. Dolly Parton isn't half bad once you actually sit down and listen to her; her accent is cute and contagious.

Pretty soon, we were chatting about how old the two guys were, how they felt about New York City ("Too many heads"), and how James's nephews play video games to the extent that they now believe they're gangsters, and try to live into that characterization. Jim and I agreed about the peace and solitude of country living, and James and I discussed the corrosion of society and community as evidenced by children's addiction to the television instead of the outdoors.

When Jim and James left, I gave them Halloween candy and wrote a nice evaluation on their receipt form. I saw them to their truck (which had not been robbed) and before they left James looked at me apologetically,
"I'm sorry I talked so much to you. I really didn't mean to. I just . . . I just get bored when I've got nothing to do, you know? I gotta do somethin'!"
I was taken aback. "Please don't apologize," I said. "I don't work and I'm alone here all day. It was great to talk to you."
He smiled big, relieved. "Okay. Okay. Thank you, thank you, take care."
And that's how it was when they left. I was not working, and I was alone again. I've told a lot of people this story, but it doesn't seem to impress many of them, and it's okay if it doesn't impress you. I spent a lot of time with two men twice my age--men whose life experiences are completely different from my own but who still inhabit the same world I do and resonate with many of my own convictions. To me that is important, even if it sounds like a simplistic tale to my friends. It is good enough that these men were--if even for the briefest time--my friends.