Workers and Warriors

I think I told you before about how our family was about colored people. Did I send you a copy of my story "The Only Time We Were Robbed"? If not, tell me and I'll send it post haste. Long story short, my dad let them shop in his store back in the 50s, long before it was required by law. He caught some flack about it from some of his other customers, but he told them that, if they didn't like it, they could take their business elsewhere. I remember the first and only time I said the word "Nigger" at home. I was quite young and must have picked it up at school. I was told in no uncertain terms that we don't use that word in our family. I got the impression that it was a swear word, and I wasn't allowed to use any of those in front of women and children either.

After my folks moved to the suburbs, they had this colored guy named "Luke" who used to help my dad with some of the yard work. I had left home by then, but I met Luke several times when I was visiting. He was a fine gentleman, who became almost like a member of the family. My dad told me that, the first day Luke worked for him, he packed his own lunch and intended to eat it in his car, but Mom and Dad would have none of that. They invited him to eat at the kitchen table with them, which he did from then on. After Dad died, Luke still came by once a week to mow the lawn and do odd jobs for my mom. Eventually, his own health declined to the point that he couldn't do it any more, but he still came by to visit on occasion. By then, some of the neighbors were getting too old and infirm to mow their own lawns too, and this crew of Mexicans ended up doing most of the neighborhood's lawn maintenance. They were a really professional outfit and showed no interest in dropping in for lunch at any of their customers' homes.

I looked up those Ottomans over the weekend. I guess I knew about them, but I didn't realize how extensive their empire was. I always wondered why they were called "Ottomans", and I found out that it was an Anglicization of the name of the single dynasty that ruled the Turkish Empire for about 700 years. I had previously thought of the Turks as the guys who trashed the Byzantine Roman Empire, much like the Goths had trashed the regular Roman Empire some thousand years previous. The difference seems to be that the Turks actually took over and ruled their empire, while the Goths just wrecked theirs and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

I can understand how those Janissaries could be at least as loyal to their outfit as they were to the Sultan. The British regiments have always been like that, the Americans not so much. When I was in the army, people rotated in and out of their assignments as individuals, while the British rotated whole regiments together. A Brit didn't just join the army, he joined a specific regiment that was entirely composed of guys from his own neighborhood. Once we trained with a squad of Brits (about 10 guys). The squad leader was the father or father in law of everybody in the squad except one guy who was his nephew. Now that our guys are deploying National Guard units to foreign assignments, it may be like that with them too. National Guardsmen are usually assigned to an armory close to home and, when they are deployed, they all ship out together.

I don't think you understand what I meant by "workers". I'm not talking about a whole socio-economic class of people, I'm talking about a personality type. This is the kind of guy who doesn't party a lot after work. He comes home and mows his lawn, tends his garden, maintains his car, paints his porch, remodels his kitchen, builds birdhouses, or otherwise putters around in his garage or basement workshop. He has no expectation that these activities will ever make him rich and famous, or save humanity from its own folly. He does this stuff because he likes to, and that's good enough for him. He takes pride in each accomplishment, but doesn't consider it to be part of some master plan for the Universe. As soon as he finishes one project, or is waiting for the paint to dry or the glue to harden, he starts another, often having multiple projects in various stages of completion. I agree that most of us are a mixture of these personality types. If we weren't, people might call us "fanatics" or something.