Jun 25, 2010

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James Peters, Success.

In internet terms, I disappeared for all of last week. No blawg, no Twitter, no Facebook. Full radio silence. It was not laziness. Or business.

On June 12, my 86-year-old grandfather died. We shared a birthday. He was one of the few living men I would call a hero. So last Monday, I set my office in order, giving the externs enough work to get them through the week and trying in vain to clear my desk. On Tuesday, I left with my brother, my wife and our 2-year-old son for Clinton, Mississippi, where my grandparents moved in 2005 following a suggestion from mother nature.

I wasn’t going to write about him. It’s obviously a personal thing, and I didn’t want to trivialize his life by making it a teaching tool or something. But the experience of the funeral and my family’s shared memory of him has been stuck in my mind ever since, so I feel compelled to share.

My Grandaddy James grew up in Mashulaville, Mississippi.1 He left college unfinished to serve in Patton’s Army in World War II, and came home to work as a mechanic. Not long thereafter, he went to work for the Postal Service as a letter carrier in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans.

He worked hard. At his funeral, someone said “Jim didn’t just know every street in Jefferson Parish, he knew how to pronounce them all…” (no small feat in the Nawlins suburbs). After some years working as a mailman, he moved into the mechanics department.2 He worked. By the time he retired, he’d been given a job working with architects to design the mechanics for future post office buildings.

When he wasn’t working, he worked. Someone else told a story that, when she was a kid, my mom bought a broken radio at a church fund raiser. When the seller pointed out the radio’s condition, my mom didn’t skip a beat. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “My daddy can fix anything.”

And he did.

My grandparents’ minister said that, when he first started at the church, my grandaddy was introduced to him as “the one who knows how the whole building works.” He knew the light switches, speaker controls, doorkeys, kitchen appliances. When the church bought a bus, he went to the DMV to get certified to drive it. When it was suggested that the Bible/Hymnal holders be replaced, my grandaddy designed new ones – down to the color and head-style of the screws – and then manufactured over 100 of them. By himself. In his backyard.

After the Hurricane, the minister spent a few harried weeks nearly alone at the church, trying to get utilities and services restored. There was damage. When my grandaddy came home, he went to the church to see what he could do. The minister started rattling off a laundry list of problems and broken things. Mid-rant, without a word, my grandaddy just walked out on the exasperated pastor.

“Two hours later,” the minister said, “James Peters walked back into my office and every one of those problems had been fixed.”

Why am I writing about this? Well, for one, my Grandaddy James was a man of the best sort – happy, genuinely, in a way that made you happy to be around him. Hardworking. Loved his family. Had convictions. And there aren’t enough places where men – real, everyday men – can be celebrated. So I’m celebrating.

But there’s something else. That thing that’s been gnawing at me the past week or two. For my entire life, I have been inundated with the notion that “no one reaches the end of their lives and wishes they’d spent more time at work.” I’ve heard it from public speakers, blogs, blawgs, classmates, teachers, pretty much everyone who ever wanted to make a point about “balance”.

Well, I don’t know what my Grandaddy James is thinking about right now. I doubt he wishes he’d spent more time at work. But I know he doesn’t wish he’d spent less time there, either.

To my grandfather, his skill with building things, fixing things, knowing how they worked, it touched every part of his life. He used it when he felt called to, by his country, his church or his family. It fed his children and fixed their radios. It led him from the army to a mail route, to the truck, and then to the attention of learned men with degrees and money. It afforded him the respect of his pastor and his friends.

His work was not his job. His job was not his life. They didn’t balance – it didn’t work that way.

Before this trip, I didn’t know what exactly my grandaddy did. When I got to Mississippi, I asked my mom and dad and my grandma. You should’ve seen them talk. They were so proud of his ascension at the P.O., his military service. About where he was able to get to from a little house in Mississippi with no running water.

My Grandaddy James – grunt, mailman, mechanic, father, husband, artisan, bus driver – was a smashing success.

And it occurs to me, thinking of my grandfather’s life, that whatever abilities I’ve been able to develop are not supposed to just make me a better lawyer, or a better writer or public speaker, or even to make me a lot of money. They exist to make me a better man. No matter where I am – home, office, anywhere – I hope I am using what I’ve got to use. I hope I am at work.

And when I am gone, I hope my family is as proud of my work – writ large – as I and my family are of my grandfather. It is an essential part of a life so greatly lived.

1. The town is so small my GPS refused to believe it existed. [↩]
2. I assume repairing mail trucks, but I’m a little fuzzy on this part, still. [↩]