DoingItAllOver
AgainVille
For those of you who have been stopping by here for awhile now....
Why this post again?
Because it's a tradition...
That's why!
_________________________________________
My Dad spent his entire adult life working for tow-boat companies hauling all manner of stuff up and down the west coast, from Alaska to California, and sometimes even across the water to Hawaii.
And he was pretty well paid for doing that job, especially once the 1970's arrived.
And while I know that part of the reason for my Dad's increasing salary, which helped make it possible for me to go to college, a first in our family, was the damned good job he did as he began to work on ever bigger boats like, say,
this one, I also know that in large part I owe my shot at a higher education to his union.
How do I know this for sure?
Because I also know that my Mom, who was climbing the ladder working in ever bigger branches on ever bigger jobs with ever bigger responsibilities of one of our country's biggest banks at the very same time my Dad was hauling logs, got paid peanuts by comparison for doing her non-union job.
But that does not mean that my Mom's passing down of her ability to be analytical, sometimes in the extreme, did not help me get to college too and, maybe even more importantly, help me become a full-fledged science geek in the end.
My mom passed away awhile back after a long, slow decline that left my Dad doing a whole lot of the work and the worry after his days of working for a living/pay cheque were long done. It was a tough lot that gave him little time or space to do much else. Which is why it was so special when he came over from the Island last weekend to see littler e's last big dance show as a kid*.
Anyway, with all that said, below is my now traditional F-Day post for my Dad....
I really do live a charmed life.
I have a wonderful wife and two great kids.
I
also have a job I actually like, where most of the time I get to do
what I want while working with people (also mostly kids) to produce
stuff that we are all really proud of.
And that job pays me well;
not hockey player money well, but I make more than I ever dreamed of.
Which, of course, means that I make just enough that we can afford to
live in our own house within the Vancouver city limits.
In fact, I
guess some might say that I am upwardly mobile enough that I should
quit all my complainin' because I'm one of the lucky ones that actually
benefits financially from many of the 'well-off folks first!' policies of
Mr. Campbell and Ms. Clark et al.
But here's the thing.....
I am most definitely not one of those 'ladder puller-uppers'
You know, somebody who's got theirs, and now says, "Screw you Jack," to everybody else.
Why?
I'll tell you why.
It's because of my Dad.......
My old man was a Union man.
And
the folks in the Union fought like bastards...and they fought
constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive
contract...things like an extra quarter percent on a COLA clause, or one
little add-on like an extra free filling per year on the dental plan.
And
when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely
no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were
just a little bit off their nut....all that energy going into what,
exactly?
After all, it was the 80's, and Dave Barrett and the
Socialist Hordes were long gone, and the Wild Kelowna boys were rolling
along, and Unions were bad, and Expo was coming, and Trudeau was going,
and John Turner was hiccupping, and Mulroney was lurking, somewhere off
in the distance....
....And if you were a half-bright, apolitical
science-geek kind of kid like me, breezing your way through college and
thinking about graduate school, you laughed when you saw the boy wonder
from Burnaby, Michael J. Fox, shirk his Family Ties and ape the young
Republicans while making fun of his willfully neutered Leftie of a Dad
on the TV screen...
....And if you were that kid, you thought
that you were living in a golden age that was tied, not to the social
democratic reforms of the past, but to the coming of Free Trade and the
promises of the Reaganites from the South...
...And from that
perspective you sure as heck didn't always get the irony of Bruce
Springsteen singing about the plight of the working class in 'Born in
the USA'.
But now that I have spent a good chunk of time in USA where I started a family of my own before coming home, I do get it.
I
understand that my Dad spent his entire adult life hauling logs up and
down the West Coast, working his guts out to help keep the robber baron
families rich because he had to make a living to support his own
family....
....And I get the fact that, because of the Unions, my
family's standard of living gradually improved, bit by bit, over the
years so that by the time I had grown up to be that callow young man
described above my parents had saved enough to help me go to
University....
....And I get the fact that I was the first one in
my family who got to go to University....Ever.....And it wasn't because
I was so damned smart....
....And I get the fact that, while my
parents' limited financial help and support was important, it would
never have been enough to get me into the same good schools if I had
arrived on the scene a single generation earlier or, perhaps, later....
....And
I get the fact that those Wild Kelowna Boys, and all the other neo-cons
that have come since, have been doing their damndest to destroy the
dream of a University education for all, and instead have instituted an
elitist education for some and one-trick-pony Technical training for
everybody else.....
....And I get the fact that, if it wasn't for
folks like my Dad and the other lefties of his time, my current world,
one in which I make a living with my eyes and my mind wide open, would
not be what it is today.....
....And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.
________
Photo at the top...My Dad and
my youngest brother getting ready for a highly ritualized Samuri
Fishing Rod Sword Fight (to the death!) up at Spectacle Lake at the top
of the Malahat on Vancouver Island in the early/mid-70's.
Photo at the bottom...My Mom
with somebody's kid, probably one of my much younger cousins, at the
picnic table in our daisy-filled old back yard on Monterey Ave. in
Victoria that was the scene of a
thousand-and-one-before-and-after-dinner soccer and/or cream-'em games
(although the latter were more often in the front yard for some
unfathomable reason) also probably from the middish '70's...And if I'm
wrong, rest assured that my brothers will be sure to correct me!
*That does not mean that littler e's dancing days are done...In fact, right after graduation she is climbing into a big cigar tube to spend a month in the Big Apple tapping her toes
.
