My dad worked at a coal mine in Wyoming for close to 40 years. For my entire youth, I watched him pack a white Coleman lunchbox and an old metallic green Stanley thermos full of coffee, and disappear for 13 hours a day, coming home with the thermos and lunchbox empty.
I remember being probably 5 or 6 years old, hearing his 1980 Chevy Truck, the one with the V8, pull up at around 8pm. I’d run out the house and open the heavy steel passenger side door of his blue and white pickup, to grab his lunchbox and thermos to carry inside for him like I was “helping.” I doubt I was actually helping, but I don’t doubt that he appreciated the efforts of a 5 year old.
I’m not sure when I stopped meeting him in the driveway, but I do know that it ended, as he continued that work schedule long after I moved away from home 11 years later. I can’t say if he missed having help, but I would like to think he did.
Nostalgia is a helluva drug. I inject that shit into my veins regularly. Memories of times when I had no idea what was going on are perhaps the best memories. There’s no bigger bummer than reality at times, and some lessons aren’t meant to be learned immediately. I don’t want to think about the thoughts of a coal miner watching a tiny version of himself, imitating his life, carrying a lunchbox and thermos at 5 years old and 8pm, so I’ll just leave this as a nice little story about a kid I used to know.
It’s not lost on me that my dad worked hard every day. And the $15 per hour he was making back in the 80’s and 90’s didn’t go very far when he had a mortgage and a couple of idiot kids. I will say that he stretched the shit out of that money, and he made things fun that a lot of people wouldn’t think were fun, or even normal.
The “adventure” of collecting firewood to heat our Wyoming home. Stabbing a marshmallow onto a dirty stick to roast over a campfire, but really just lighting it on fire so you can blow it out and turn the roof of your mouth into a little upside down crime scene. Not fun at the time, but fun in retrospect.
These days, you can just buy S’mores in convenient little packages from the grocery store, and skip the violence that is the S’mores origin story. No dirty stick needed.
I’ve had this conversation before with a few friends that have had similar childhoods. How the free things in life - you almost need to keep them a secret - because as soon as rich people find out about them, it’s fucking over. Camping. Hunting. Fishing. Crawfish boils. Driving down dirt roads to just get outta town for a few hours. Sitting on a tailgate to watch the wind toss juniper brush into the air. Allow your nose to filter the blowing dust.
It’s how poor people things become unaffordable as soon as the fortunate find out about them. It is shocking to this day when I go to a restaurant to see shrimp and grits for $19 on a menu, knowing food like that was next to free a generation ago. But holy hell is it good. Always will be.
Now there are guided fishing tours for $10k. Guided hikes for a group rate. $19 shrimp and grits.
I guess that’s the natural trajectory of this certain blend of capitalism and technology we live in. I’m not necessarily opposed to these advancements and access to things, but I may be opposed to simplifying and bundling them to the point of an almost sterile experience. Dirty sticks on the ground might forever go unnoticed if there is no chocolate/marshmallow reason to pick them up.
But there is safety in packages that you pay money for. In FDA-approved camping treats. In guided tours and staying on pre-approved hiking paths.
Just like there is safety in keeping a dipshit kid from understanding how the meaningless act of carrying a lunchbox can have so much meaning. How that same empty lunchbox at 8pm is both depressing and beautiful at the same time. It depends on whose eyes you are looking out of, or whose eyes you are looking into. But let’s not package that. Let’s let it play out in real time, like a charred marshmallow on a dirty stick on its way to commit a crime on the roof of an unsuspecting mouth. A life lesson learned in real-time, and one of life’s nostalgic moments.
Thanks for reading, y'all.
- Curt Thompson
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