Odd Jobs, part 2

The flipside of today's Janus-faced post is a clipping from the Bangor, Maine paper that my Dad included with his latest letter. It's an ad for contract logging workers in northern Maine. A feller-buncher operator in Fort Kent, Maine can get work at $13.00 an hour operating one of these fascinating machines. Time and a half after 40 hours; housing, transportation and equipment are provided at no cost. Wages, of course, are subject to change.

The sticky note on the clipping, written in my Dad's inimitable scrawl, says "Dangerous, away-from-home job opportunities. Wage scale is great for woodsworkers, isn't it?"

Coming from a stock of woodsworkers and wartime factory laborers as I do, I'm the second generation of college-educated and highly paid white collar executives in my family. I have a faded picture of my great-grandfather sitting on a rocking chair in a logging camp. He's smiling, probably because he's done for the day.

I'm proud of where I come from, and sometimes embarrassed by the outward signs of my own success. I know what I do is labor, too, but less physically demanding, and probably rewarding in different ways. It's hard to think about someone operating heavy machinery for 8 hours every day, for many years. But it's equally hard to think about someone sitting in a cube or in meetings for that long, too.