This hat. This image. This company IS my childhood and adolescence.
My Father worked for this cattle ranch (now Five Rivers Cattle) in the American Southwest. Mexico being only 50 miles south and sandwiched halfway between Phoenix and San Diego, you smelled the 100,000+ steers as you trekked along the Interstate-8. My father gave this company 20 of his best years and it was a good living. He became a foreman within 18 months of being hired on. They offered many benefits, but let us not forget the reality of what a rural, small-country town career looks like. Backbreaking work. Overextending hours. Incredibly challenging summer temps.
And shit. SHIT. Cow shit everywhere. Manure as far as the nose can smell.
Nothing too much for a workaholic such as my father. A provider. A boy that became a man by 16 because he wanted more than what life would hold for him in the tiny village in central Durango, Mx. More on this later.
The cows and everything that comes with it - the “simple” work. The manual labor. The filthiness of ranch duties. These factors are what lead me to share my thoughts and feelings about the professions our parents fall into. How our impressionable small minds can blind us from truly appreciating their hard work and determination as providers.
The dirty jobs. The lowly skills. Those that fall into the “lowest on the totem pole” careers. And some may even argue how you can call those “careers”. These professions are still the most important in a society. House keeping. Garbage and sewage. The dump or landfill. Working a service for someone not willing to get their hands dirty. I now see the major virtue in those fields. I witnessed it, firsthand, when the 2008 recession hit.
I was working a warehouse job as an order puller for a lighting supplier. I was a high volume employee, always on time and never missing a shift. Orders would range from hundreds of feet of cabling and piping, to concrete fixtures, to small electrical fixtures and light bulbs. So, when cuts came and people were put on the chopping block, my young 20-year-old ass got spared. You know who didn’t? The 50+ year-old that was in charge of taking out the dumpsters full of trash and recyclables. You know who picked up the slack out of their own volition? Not one fucking soul. And we all paid for that. We had to work within a pretty hazardous environment. The garbage would spill into the aisles and getting around them on foot, let alone a forklift, became arduous. Eventually, I was laid off on the second wave of cuts and so the resolution I never saw.
However, that taught me a valuable lesson. To treat every job and those that work them with respect and show value to those that give their best efforts. The ones that actually take pride in their profession and output. Even if we don’t care for a particular job, that is still your name that gets stamped across your work. The quote from Simon Sinek’s book “Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't” will forever ring true to me. And it reads, “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
Growing up, all I knew was that my father worked at the local cattle ranch and he worked a lot. And when he wasn’t working, he was wiped out from the grueling hours and he tended to his rest (when not making additions to our double-wide trailer home and 1/2 acre lot). I didn’t get much one-on-one time. It didn’t help that he was emotionally distant. Not saying I felt a lack of love, but looking back I could say that I would’ve benefitted more from some deeper connection to my father.
The work, though it pains me to admit now, brought me a sense of shame. My father worked in a profession that required him to walk through cow dung for hours on end. He would come home and smell like feces. His skin. His clothes. His work truck. He also would help with autopsies on deceased cows which comes with another level of stench. Even though this cattle ranch was a major source of income, employment, charitable to the community, etc. the school kids, whose parents weren’t employed there, would tease you. And I have tough skin, but as a young kid it still seeps through to some degree.
I played football, soccer, and baseball in high school. When the opposing team would come and play us, they would all tease us because of the smell. The school was, at most, one mile from the cattle ranch. The stench is unmistakable. Unavoidable. That added to my existing feelings toward the place. I still defended our home and made sure I played my best to prove to these “city kids” that I wasn’t just some dumb “country boy”. It did help force me to rise with a sense of pride.
Years prior, I remember wearing a shirt, hat, or jacket with the company logo, I don’t quite recall, and receiving some flack from my schoolmates. Made me not want to wear one ever again. Nowadays, I would understand if my child felt the same way about how I go about putting a roof over our head and food on the table, in an honest way. But, it would sting to feel a lack of respect and pride in the work I would perform day in and day out. However, in my situation, what more could I expect of my father considering his situation. He made incredible sacrifices and awarded me the blessing of being born in a great country such as ours.
My father left his tiny village, in the heart of Mexico, as the youngest member of his family at the age of 15. With his sights on the great country to the north, he made his way up successfully. Multiple times. I want to say he was deported at least a handful of times. (Now is the moment I realize I’ve been omitting his name, subconsciously. Julian. My Father’s name is Julian. Why that might have happened is probably another psychoanalysis I’ll have to perform on myself and we’ll save that for another day.) Julian took up all the backbreaking work you can think of. Working the agricultural fields, ranches and feed lots. He eventually met and married my mom and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in his own regard. He learned English and became a high functioning member of the community.
I always respected my father. Julian was a hard man. Old school. I mean, what else does walking across hundreds of miles of the Sonoran Desert before adulthood and scratching together every ounce of will to build something out of nothing breed? Literal nothing. You don’t know anyone. You don’t know the language. But you have heart and determination to survive. It breeds a certain sense of ethic. A “get it done at all costs” mentality. No matter the strain on your body, mind, family, relationships, spirit, etc.
It wasn’t until my early 20’s when I realized just “how little” my family of 5 survived on. I had a sense in high school, but I was never the nosey one. I always had clothes on my back, food in my belly, a roof over my head, and gas in my car. Of course I had the “want for more”, but what kid didn’t? Julian may have been emotionally distant, but he was ever-present as a provider and head of the household. We got by just fine and that’s how he showed his love.
I have no doubt he left this world with thoughts, emotions, and feelings that weighed heavy on his heart due to a failure to share. I wish I had a better nature to have been able to cultivate that connection and could’ve enticed him to break down some barriers. But, again, we only have so many tools at our disposal and most of us have a severe lack of know-how in properly using them. The world hardens you. For good or bad. It all has its moments when it is beneficial, but equally detrimental in other aspects.
As I reminisce, I feel quite fondly about my upbringing. I’m grateful my father made my first summer job working those cow pens. A whole Arizona summer spent washing and scrubbing the cow’s water troughs for 8-10 hours straight. The following year, getting to work the chute at 2am, help the veterinarians, and cutting open deceased cows with the mortician. Even after varsity football games, the night before, and the partying that would follow. Getting up at 4a to hit the clock and put in some tough hours, it allows me to appreciate that my current days are spent in AC, talking music, and selling beautiful instruments.
My takeaway is for you to look at your parents or those playing your parental role and give them thanks for what they have managed to do with the tools at their disposal. That they have persevered at life when it is so easy to give up and forsake our duties. That they found a way to provide for you in the only way they knew how. To not feel shame, like I foolishly did, in their honest work. And to realize that a lot of us show our love by what we can offer, what we tangibly bring to the table, and how useful we may be to others.
Gratitude. Display it proudly.