Guys Like Pappap

This week I  started a new job at a smaller company, much smaller than the mega-corporation I have been happy to work at for almost nine years. It was weird and sad and exciting to walk away from, but I felt like I would regret not trying this new one. I put up a photo print at my new place, which always reminds me of hard work . . . and my grandfather, Pappap. The picture is "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper", which is a somewhat popular photo taken back in the 1930's when '30 Rock' was being built. A crew of guys sitting on an I-beam, no safety gear many stories high, having lunch. A picture of that entire era in lots of ways, yet it reminds me of something more than simply a time in history.

A few years ago my dad and I installed new lights in the choir loft in my home church. (Really my dad did most of the installing : ) At some point I asked, "Why are we doing this?" and my dad pointed up to the top of the sanctuary arch. This was an old, huge stone church from the late 1800's. The peak of the sanctuary had to be forty or fifty feet tall, and at the very top facing the choir loft were a few light bulbs. My dad explained that there was not an easy way to change those. "When one burnt out, guys like your Pappap would climb up a wooden ladder, bending to nearly vertical on the way up, just to change a bulb. No one wants to do that anymore."

"Guys like Pappap." That did not surprise me. I was a little nervous just picturing myself climbing that tall, wooden ladder without safety gear, but that Pappap would have done it? Yeah, what else is new. Pappap was one of those guys who knew the value work and was willing to do it, any time, any where, for any one. He was out-working guys half his age when he died, and he had been doing that for over fifty years! "Hard working" probably would not do him justice. "Unyielding." "Tireless." Maybe that would get closer.

And that is of what this photo print reminds me. Men who would do the job. Sometimes to provide for others. And sometimes to prevent someone else from having to do it. And sometimes just because there was work to be done, and they knew they could do it! In my line of the work, there really is no physical risk. (Maybe eye strain?) But as I work, for a career or otherwise, I would hope to be a "guy like Pappap." Maybe some day my son, who never met Pappap, will think of a "guy like Clay," because the call to work was modeled well for him. We have to give our very best, and maybe have time for a photo at lunch too : )