Now And Then

When I was eight years old, I hit a line drive that struck the pitcher. The Masoneilan Little League field hushed when the kid dropped to the ground in obvious distress. I recalled the incident after working in a plant last week.

Quad Graphics is one of the largest printing companies in the world. In their Hartford, Wisconsin facility, an old on-the-road electrician workmate rode up to me on his cart. We shared news and reminisced of jobs past, as well as observed the industry’s current state, where so many “old timers” were now gone, and the new kids considered, well, lacking.

My friend said, “Remember the old days? We busted our ass to get stuff done. I worked twenty-four straight hours once, went home and all I thought about was the job, getting it done. Could hardly sleep.” My friend paused, raised his palms upward, and looked around us. “Today… nobody gives a damn.”

Generational lament is so historically common it may be instinctual. A James McMurtry book conveyed what late 19th century, rural Texas women thought of their new daughters-in-law’s work ethic, those considered spoiled by such unimaginable conveniences as washing machines and gas stoves. My generation emerged in the post-WWII era of tough, distant fathers who thought us soft, themselves progeny of even harsher tannery and mill workers. A few years ago, I interviewed local guys who had grown up in the 1960s.

“She was feisty,” Dennis Hebner told me. “I’ll tell ya, I was afraid of my father, but I was kinda afraid of my mother, too. God, we had that big lilac bush out back. If I pissed her off, she’d go out there and snap off a long freakin’ whip and she’d say get in this house right now, if you don’t get in now, you’ll get twice as much when I get ya! She’d freakin’ whip the back of my legs, owww… My father used to beat the shit out of us, too. Oh yeah, yeah. But know something? We deserved it!”

“I’ll never forget, my father tried to be tough,” Phil Nolfi recalled. “I’m lying in bed, I’m a freshman. I’m gonna go to hockey practice and these guys, not to be corny, but these are the guys that you went and you watched, now you’re gonna go play with them? Holy shit. I don’t know… So I’m lying in bed and I’m just getting ready to go to sleep, and I’m not gonna sleep anyway, the covers come down, the old man grabs me by the ankles, he drags me across the bed and flings me against the wall. I’m looking at him, of course you wouldn’t say anything, and he says ‘I don’t think you’re ready!’”

“You can’t discipline kids today,” Paul Angelo said. “Now you can’t even yell at them. We came from houses where you couldn’t go home and tell your parents you screwed up, they’d give you a backhander. Today you go home and say the teacher did something and you have the police and the lawyers and everyone else…”

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A co-worker told of cowering in a corner as his father beat him with a belt, the story related with a sense of pride, that he had endured, that it had helped make him the man he was today. His attitude seemed almost universal, as though every generation embraced its circumstances, and forged them against the next.

It certainly appears that the times they are a-changing, in many ways for the better. I cannot imagine treating my grandchildren the way many of my generation were raised. Yet I sense in my contemporaries’ manner of speech that same wounded pride in experiencing, enduring, and surviving our upbringing.

After working in Wisconsin last week, I saw a TV segment where a little leaguer hit the pitcher with a line drive, and the kid ran to the mound to see if the pitcher was okay. It was a feel-good, end-of-the-newscast segment meant to celebrate the kid’s humanity, his concern and compassion. As I watched, I recalled myself at his age, on Masoneilan’s ballfield. The difference between now and then? Then, I ran to first base and worried that they might not award me a hit. Now, I have more empathy for both those kids, two generations apart, both attending to the job at hand. We both gave a damn.