Dream Jobs: Lumberjack and Working Outdoors

 We tend to romanticize working outside (and activities like camping) for good reason: the fresh air, the scenery, the weather, being around nature. It feels natural and organic, how humans are supposed to live. 

On the other hand, camping has been rightfully satirized as a bizarre way to have fun -- sleeping outside in an uncomfortable tent on hard ground, having to carry all the comforts of home into the woods, just so you'll feel like you're at home. Why not just stay home? (One clue: it's about buying the equipment, which is a pretty big part of most hobbies, when you think about it.)

When I was a teenager, I was in the Boy Scouts and enjoyed learning about axes and chopping wood, for some reason. I was lean and strong and well built for this sort of activity (at least then). I found out -- about the same time -- that my family had owned a logging camp in Washington state in the early 1900s, and I'm sure I convinced myself that this was in my blood. Maybe it was, though my Norwegian heritage would also suggest that I would into fishing, and I've never quite taken to it. ("There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot," as one comedian once said.)

I arguably held one of my dream jobs when I worked as a summer camp counselor at a place called El Rancho Cima when I was 16-22 years old. I wasn't a "counselor" in the sense of living in a cabin with a group of kids, like the movie Meatballs. At this particular camp, a boys' camp, counselors ran programs and taught kids skills, including outdoorsmanship and things like outdoor cooking, while the boys slept in campsites with adults they knew. 

Anyway, while working with the kids was mostly enjoyable, what I really enjoyed was working outdoors and teaching things like wilderness survival, rock climbing, and, yes, axemanship. At one point, my job title was even "Adventure Director," which sounds pretty cool. (In reality, this meant I managed three or four other guys I mostly considered friends, which wasn't always fun.) I loved working outdoors, taking hikes as part of my job. At times, my job involved driving a little bus and playing the guitar. There was even some acting when I played "Jake," the lost miner, and helped kids "pan for gold" (which was a ruse to keep restless young boys busy for a while, though it usually only took them a half hour or so to figure it out). 

Living the lumberjack dream: This is me at the top of a pole climb at Philmont Scout Ranch. 

At this job, I found my "group" in this job, like I belonged. Many of us had the same mindset and had taken a job like this to get away from something, to get away from the feeling of not fitting in elsewhere. In the few years I worked there, I became one of the most popular and well known people at the camp -- a kind of feeling I had never experienced -- probably due in no small part to my guitar skills. (Is there any instrument quite like the guitar? Maybe that's a post for another day.) To this day, I have friends who say I "light up" when talking about this job, and maybe that means it really was my passion for a short time in life. It's hard to follow your passion at all times, but sometimes it finds you and the result is magical and life-altering. 

Playing the Trombone

 In junior-high and high school, I played the trombone in the school band. I quit my senior year because there was a schedule conflict with my theatre class, and it was one of the first moments of realizing you can't do everything at the same time, and I was clearly involved with band for the wrong reasons. 

I never liked the trombone as an instrument much, even though I'm generally keen on trying new instruments and can figure out almost anything on a rudimentary level. I am an avid and pretty skilled guitar player, but I've also dabbled with the banjo, the ukulele, and the piano. I chord the piano like a bad lounge act, but it's a remarkably fun instrument with a complex tone and sound quality that naturally touches on all things spiritual and moving. 

I was terrible at the trombone because I never liked it much. Although the trombone is often seen or depicted as a fun, jazzy instrument (and it can be), it is also used most often as a middle-tone filler instrument in large marching bands, and I was never good enough to play solos or be engaged with the instrument at that level. I didn't practice much, so of course I never got better. I envied tuba and euphonium players because their instruments seemed neater and more precise. The trumpet seemed to have instant sex appeal, and even instruments like the clarinet had a certain contrarian appeal. The trombone involved endless maintenance (with that slide that could easily be dinged or accidentally bent).

The trombone was "picked" for me when I was in 7th grade because I didn't know what I wanted to play. The band director sized me up and that's what we went with. There was little discussion. My brother played the trombone, so it seemed like a natural if preditable choice. I always resented the idea of this instrument being foisted upon me, yet I lacked the inner voice and confidence to object.  

This is me plaing the ukulele at a party. I couldn't find a personal picture of the trombone.

The trombone was the instrument that a lot of "regular" guys, lanky guys with average personalities, played. The one thing I enjoyed about the trombone, however, was the comraderie. A lot of us shared an apathy for the instrument and boredom with the idea of marching in lines and taking orders from junior-sized squad leaders who took everything way too seriously, and we also shared a tendency to fill the time by being jokesters. Sometimes the joking went too far, but we were also teenagers with complex emotional lives, unrealized longings, and self-loathing that came in waves. The "joking" aspects of being a trombonists seemed baked into the role. It can be a naturally funny instrument, of course, capable of crazy sounds. The word itself (trombone) lends itself to all kinds of teenage-boy-type humor. There was a special trombone squad that played goofy songs (like "Tequila") during slow moments during the football games. 

I quit trombone at the beginning of my senior year, because of the schedule conflict but also because I realized even as one of the jokesters I didn't quit fit in and didn't do enough to help make the band a success in my own small way. It was perhaps a small moment of becoming an adult -- trying to focus more on things that matter and also trying to figure out where you really belong and what you really should be doing. I focused more on theater but also became involved with journalism and writing, something I realized I should have been doing all along.  

Dream Jobs #1: Puppeteer

 When I talk to my college-age students about employment, I caution them against taking the advice to "follow your passion" too literally. Passion is one element, I tell them, but you also have to consider the job market, your specific talents, and what you can learn by building on those talents. It's also important not to "kill" the joy of a hobby, I think, by turning a passion into a job without considering the implications. I've met professional symphonic musicians, for example, who are bored with playing the same "greatest hits" to middle-brow audiences every year. Such is the market for orchestral musicians in cities outside of New York, I suppose. Even though these musicians followed their passion and their talent, they sometimes wish they were doing something else and could still enjoy music the way they used to. It's called a job for a reason, after all. 

Sometimes I wonder if this advice is too cautious, though, and too much of a dream-killer. I tell myself that anyone who is driven enough to follow an "impossible" dream (like acting) will perservere no matter what kind of naysaying advice they get. I think this true for the most part. 

If I had followed one of my early passions, I might have ended up a puppeteer. I think I had a natural talent for making the puppets move as an extension of me and also with doing the funny voices. I have, through the years into my middle-aged existence, picked up puppets (including finger puppets) at various times and managed to entertain people. It seems like a silly thing to be interested in, and it certainly is embarassing to express interest in, for whatever reason, but it's also still a profession for a few select, talented individuals. 

Puppetry for me started, as far as I can remember, when I was 7 or 8 and my brother and I bought our first marionettes in Matamoros, Mexico, during a trip to South Padre. We entertained little kids at the condo complex where we were staying. My first puppet, whom I named Bluto in a bit of uninspired whimsy, had a guitar permanently attached to one hand and a bottle connected to the other. He literally could do nothing besides walk, play the guitar, and drink. He actually couldn't play the guitar because the bottle was in the other hand, come to think of it. It's not surprising that I picked a puppet with a guitar, as I was always drawn to guitars from a very young age, though the fact that he also held a bottle is a little scary. (My brother's puppet had a gun, I think. These tourist toys really were built on stereotypes.) We bought two more puppets the next year, before we lost interest, but in the interim we fantasized about turning our bunk-bed set into a puppet theater, with a backstage area on the bottom bunk. What a strange thing to fantasize about. 

Random photo of some kind of puppet-like statue thing that I took in McKinney, Texas.

Sometime before or after, maybe, I had a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll. These were quite the fashioanble middle-class Christmas item for a time in the 1970s. My mother warned me not to take the doll too seriously, as I think she had seen trailers for the movie Magic or had otherwise read about ventroliquists going off the deep end (this was also a gag in the TV show Soap). I never became disconnected from reality (at least not more than usual, for I was a dreamy kind of kid), though I did oddly spend time sewing new clothes for Charlie. I also somehow ended up with two dolls, after the jaw on the first one got broken. (My brother did an admirable repair job, but Charlie looked like he was talking out of the side of his mouth. I couldn't bring myself to throw away the original doll for some reason, perhaps because of some unaccountable feelings for inanimate objects -- I might write a future blog on this -- that I think infects a lot of writers and is surely an occupational hazard for puppeteers. 

As an adult, I made some funny videos for my literature classes involving famous-writer finger puppets, though I'd cringe if I saw them now. My girlfriend (now wife) and I had some fun making them, and I remember making her laugh in a way I'm not sure sure I've heard before or since. I'm still not sure what the appeal of puppetry is -- to humans or to the puppeteers especially -- though for puppeteers I'd wager they are largely a quiet and unassuming lot, maybe a little shy or tending toward introversion. On the other hand, I think I could have done the more boisterous and adult-like puppet shows like Punch and Judy or that vulgar and offensive buzzard puppet show at Astroworld. This could have been a way to combine a few different talents. Puppets are a strange kind of theater, intrinsically funny, but also, like other forms of theater, spooky and uncanny in other ways. Sometimes they seem like dream-projections, figures acting out our emotions in ways we can't. Maybe it's the access to those emotions that I sometimes miss.

 

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, who recently passed away at the age of 100, was the only president I ever met, and he was the first president I supported. I was only 7 when he ran for office, so my support was nominal and symbolic, but it was still clearly out of sync with my second-grade peers and, as I recall, my parents. (It's difficult to remember, though, and also surprising to some to recall that Carter won the Texas electoral vote in 1976.) 

I can't recall exactly what drew me to Carter. I like to think, as so many have said about Carter during his post-presidency years, that I sensed Carter was a fundamentally decent man. He certainly dressed and acted like a more common man, and I may have been drawn to that agrarian persona. I suppose I was also slightly contrary, even for a 7-year-old, and I liked supporting this underdog who seemed so reviled by my classmates in elementary school. (I can only assume that, living in the Houston suburbs, they were echoing the conservative opinions of their parents. My own parents seemed content enough to let me have my own opinions, even if they made me less popular with my classmates. This was an unfortunate pattern, perhaps, in that I wasn't guided to be more liked by my peers when it mattered the most.)

I think I may have also been keen on Carter's identity as a peanut farmer, which was made larger in a kind of teasing fashion by mass culture at the time, as if there was something funny about being a peanut farmer. That's an odd assessment, since somebody has to grow peanuts, and they are certainly popular (in spite of the growing allergy problem.) I loved peanuts, and I still love them, including all the variations in which peanuts are used (like Nutter Butter cookies). My love for peanuts has grown even as they are increasingly identified as not really nuts and perhaps not as healthy as other, real nuts (though peanut butter is a wonder food that has been used successfully to help address acute starvation). The point is, as much as Carter was referred to as a "peanut farmer," as if it were a reductive insult, to farm peanuts is a noble and worthy pursuit. 

The humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich, shown here served at a fundraiser for Kinky Freedman.

And, as much as we might connect "peanuts" (the word) to little things, including small amounts of money (and it is one of those inherently funny words, like banana), Carter clearly did pretty well for himself. As with most modern presidents who have been framed in this way, Carter's "humble" background was relative. 

Much has been written since Carter's passing about how he was a very complex and even a difficult man, who, again in spite of the humble persona, often knew he was right and was tough-minded in his negotations and persistent in achieving outcomes even when it irked the presidents who came after him. This loner quality makes me feel a certain kinship with Carter, as well, as decision-makers and leaders often must live with this kind of solitude in order to be effective (at least some of the time). 

I met Carter when I was in my 30s, at a book signing in Houston. The line was, predictably, literally around the block outside the independent Brazos Bookstore. He was gracious but, also predictably, quick. I think I had about 5 seconds in his presence. Meeting a president probably feels unreal to most people, since they exist as larger-than-life personas, and that's the way it was for me. I gave the autographed book away (I can't even remember if he made it out me or not) to a friend who I thought would appreciate the religious content of the book, though I did read it and found it compelling enough. He was a prolific writer on top of everything else, which is another reason I continued to admire him into adulthood, as my early admiration become more concrete.  

Though Carter has been most appreciated as an ex-president, I think most of all I connect his memory to his actual presidency and his time in the White House during the 1970s. Though those were difficult times (marred by inflation and the energy crisis), they seemed hopeful to me as a 7-year-old Cub Scout enjoying the optimistic themes of the bicentennial and the blue-and-gold banquet (which celebrated presidents, all of them). Carter gave me an early taste of supporting a candidate and considering the country's direction and our need for compassion and grace. I thank him for awakening in me those early impulses, which seem to have been appreciated across the aisle, in retrospect. 

Fourth of July movies, part 3

Continuing from my previous list, just in time for July 4th of 2004. Once again, these are cataloged in no particular order, and I'm not even sure my numbering (sequencing) is consistent with my last installment.

6. Return of the Jedi (1983). Even though this is the sequel with the cutesy teddy-bear like Ewoks, there are also some terrific sequences involving speeder bikes in the woods and Princess Leia as a hostage. It's also the movie where the idea of Star Wars as a metaphor for American independence (vs. the imperial British and/or fascist Nazis, take your pick) becomes most obviously revealed. Toward the end of the movie, the Ewoks and the other rebels celebrate their independence through fireworks and revelry. There's also a shot of the three Jedi spirit-ghosts (Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin) standing by in silent reverence, the senior guard guarding over the renewed spirit of independence and self-reliance. This shot was made ridiculous when Lucas digitally replaced the original, older actor playing Anakin beneath DarthVader's mask with a younger version of himself, as portrayed by Hayden Christensen. This is dumb for several reasons that I know have been expounded on at length on various websites through the years, the most important of which are (1) Hayden Christensen was only like 2 years old when this movie was released, and (2) the other Jedi spirits don't become any younger. (Why not replace Alec Guiness with Ewan MacGregor?) Besides being a great touchstone in the discussion about Luca's evolving "grand plan" that he continually has updated, this reminds me of the kind of Christian "lore" I used to hear as a kid, like the idea that we revert to our younger, more ideal selves if and when we get to heaven. But the image was already kind of dumb (and weirdly evangelical-like) in that Darth Vader (as Anakin) is able to step into this place of reverence and redemption after just a couple of lines of apology as he lies dying in Luke's arms. (Like, sorry about killing all those people, son, including those times I blew up entire planets or choked people with my mind.) The image reinforces that common religious idea that nobody is beyond redemption, which is OK, I suppose -- in that it allows people to still have hope and turn a corner no matter what they've done -- but that doesn't mean they should be revered and worshipped as dieties in death or that they should just be able to step into this weirdly little holy trinity of Yoda-Obi Wan-Anakin.

7 and 8. Titanic (1997) and Planet of the Apes (1968). I'm lumping these movies together because of the way they both make great use of the Statue of Liberty, albeit in very different ways. Rose admiringly gazes at the statue in the rain as the Titanic pulls into New York, and in Planet of the Apes --  well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, even though it's more than 50 years old. The statue remains a powerful symbol for America and all its promise, so powerful that it's often used as a signifier for the destruction of those ideals, and we see it toppled over in countless disaster and action movies. In both of these movies, though, it makes you think about what America has tried to stand for (even as it often failed) and how that optimism and sense of promise is often forgotten among political and personal battles. In Titanic, especially, it reminds us of the promise made to immigrants and also to the way ships have been used as a metaphor for America generally, as we navigate troubled waters and depend on a sense of purpose to see us to safety. 

Photo of flags on Bolivar ferry. Taken using Lomo "four-square" camera, which captures four slightly different times of the same image (separated by the distances of the four lenses) to convey a sense of quick action. 

9. Glory (1989). This was the very first film I ever reviewed for a newspaper, as a kind of "try-out" piece. The newspaper published the review of the other person trying out, but they still liked mine and hired me as a reviewer. (I think this was the most mainstream movie I ever reviewed, though; after this, the paper liked to send me to weird movies like the 4-hour version of the The Mahabharata). The film may seem dated for a number of reasons, but it's still a great, stirring, action-based film with nice performances from Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, among others. What other people may cite as "dated" (specifically the centering of the Matthew Broderick character) is still often done in movies (in spite of filmmakers' best efforts) as a simple way to make a narrative more complex and interesting. (Instead of "just" telling the story of the black regriment, you're also telling the story of the conflicts and struggles experienced by the officers in charge.) It's still one my favorite Civil War movies, and while many films romanticize the Civil War, this one does a good job of displaying the ugliness and horror of the violence as well, reminding us (in turbulent and divisive times) that a civil war should not be something we contemplate lightly. (I remember hearing people throw the term around when Obama Care was passed (!)). 

10. The Patriot (2000). I'm sure some people criticized this movie because the two main actors (Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger) are Australian (though Gibson was born in America and retains dual Irish-American citizenship), and the film has undoubtedly been increasingly ignored as Gibson has faced backlash (appropriately so) for some of his troubling personal behaviors. However, it's a stirring and well-constructed story that, like Glory, does not romanticize the graphic horrors of war and also pays direct attention to the problem of young people too eager to serve and sacrifice (a problem that seems all too relevant in the way that young people continue to be recruited and serve -- as is said in Troy, war is when old men talk and young men die). It's the only movie listed in my July 4th list (I think) that directly concerns the war for independence, and I think it approaches the subject matter with appropriate realism even though there are streaks of patriotic reverence (a kind of American Braveheart). Also, the action sequences with Gibson's character and his tomahawk are terrific. In another way, also, it's interesting to have Australians play early "Americans," since they would have been British subjects, anyway, and not entirely evolved as Americans in the way that we may envision. 

The TV Kid

 A few years ago, in a used bookstore, I came across an old copy of a children's book called the The TV Kid by Betsy Byars. I had fond memories of reading the book in the 4th grade or so, so I bought the faded copy to take home and read again, which I didn't do it until just a few days ago. As I remembered, the story is easily summed up as follows: a lonely boy who lives with his single mother in a motel they run is bitten by a rattlesnake one day while out exploring. The boy is a fanatical TV viewer and often references TV shows and characters in his ongoing mental narrative of the events that unfold. 

Sign in Utah (my photo, 2011).

Many Gen Xers were raised by television, so to speak, and it's in fact one of the defining characteristics of what shaped our generation (this is how generations are defined, more or less). I was probably on the more severe end of this Gen X continuum, in that like Lennie (our character), I was a lonely, quiet kid and had moved more than most kids (due to my father's being transferred and my parents' divorce). Television and reruns especially (also a favorite of Lennie's, as he references shows like The Brady Bunch and Bonanza) provided a kind of solace and refuge, and there wasn't much quite like the feeling of settling into thick carpet with a glass of Coke to watch reruns on afternoon TV as a way to assuage feelings of loneliness and being out of place (and spectacularly bad at sports). 

Lennie's story thoughtfully takes us to a place where the hero realizes, in the aftermath of his snakebite, the falseness of television and the reality of the people around him and even, appropriately so for a book with older elementary readers as its target audience, the value of reading and education. He writes a report about his snakebite experience and learns to apprepriate the people around him, including the visitors to his motel and a new policeman friend. There are a few striking, even heartbreaking lines in this book, a minor novel from a writer known for other works, including Lennie's thought that he sometimes thinks maybe he "needs to take acting lessons on how to be a person."

Lennie's realization about TV is all well and good for a story (and the snakebite as an awakening agent of change or epiphany is a nice, 4th-grade-level metaphor), though it's perhaps too obvious to point out the irony of this message being revealed through yet another kind of storytelling. It was a standard 1960s-80s perspective to denigrate the value of television, however, so this kind of meaning-making is expected. For me, though, it's important to restate that just as the "real world" exists online even as we insist it is only found elsewhere, television has historically served as more than just a medium for unhelpful advertising and cheesy, worthless entertainment. At its best (even before the so-called golden era of streaming television), it was a valuable medium for communal storytelling with important series like Roots but also with less important sitcoms like The Brady Bunch that helped to bring people together while providing a common set of images and references. 

For me, though it's painful to think about and reveal, television provided an escape but also a salve for my young loneliness, and I still have positive (though not entirely pleasant) memories of eating macroni and cheese while watching reruns of old Planet of the Apes movies that would show on Friday night television. I still like television, though an old book like the The TV Kid (and other books) probably does more to help me with loneliness these days. So I pass this old book along, though I wonder what a modern young reader would make of the dated TV references.

One side note on this book: Lennie conjures an imaginary set of TV commercials in his head for a product called "Friend," a life-size doll companion for lonely kids. This is meant to be rather sad and pathetic (and it is), though it also foreshadows the introduction of the My Buddy dolls in the 1980s (which in turn weirdly provided part of the inspiration for the Chuck movies). Byars and the My Buddy dolls rightly hit on a growing sense of loneliness among male children especially, perhaps, which has in turn grown into an ongoing discussion of male loneliness in general, still with us.   

Chicken Supreme sandwich

In 2021, Burger King officially entered the Chicken Sandwich Wars, I guess, with a large, "hand-breaded" fried chicken-breast that seems to clone all the others. It's probably a good thing I don't make these marketing decisions, because I think Burger King already won these wars back in the day with its first (now called the "original") chicken speciality sandwich. Yes, it was a sandwich made with a processed patty, instead of being hand-breaded (which, like "crunchy," is just a euphemism for fried) giant sandwich. It was a sandwich you could actually get your mouth around, not a monstrosity which makes its mark by being messy and impossible to eat. 

Original chicken sandwich at BK in Louisiana. (My photo.)

The so-called "Chicken Sandwich Wars" started as an official thing back in 2019 when Popeye's introduced its much-hyped new fried chicken-filet sandwich, and they sold out of the product in a way that would have been embarassing had it not also been a great marketing gimmick. People naturally "blame" the wars on Popeye's, perhaps to the frustration of Chick-fil-A, since it seems obvious that the entire corporate race to create the best chicken sandwich originated with jealousy over Chick-fil-A's popularity. In spite of some bad PR related to the conservative stances of some of the founders, and in spite of the fact that Chick-fil-A isn't even open on Sunday (a related quirk), lines to buy Chick-fil-A sandwiches are always around the block. The sandwiches are just that good.

This is a raw chicken about to go in the oven. "Help me!"

I haven't tried many of the other chicken sandwiches, other than a random Wendy's or Jack-in-the-Box spicy chicken filet sandwich (Jack's budget chicken sandwich is also a guilty pleasure), and these are minor players in the crispy-sandwich wars. The hoopla has reminded me of how much I like the "original" chicken sandwich at Burger King, however. This sandwich, far from being a crispy filet that inspires such adjectives as "fresh" or "juicy," derives its goodness from being tasty and simple. The chicken patty is placed on a sesame seed bun with mayo and lettuce (I like to add cheese to mine). It goes well with the similarly processed BK onion rings, which appear to be made from onion meal rather than actual onions but which I like for not falling apart when you eat them. These are terrible reasons to like foods, I realize, but there you have it. 

I try not to eat BK food or any fast food very much these days, but I remember eating an original chicken sandwich right after renewing my driver's license on my 40th birthday. I was feeling sorry for myself, and the sandwich provided a soothing comfort meal on that day. It also brought up some nostalgic (literally painful in the way that word's origins suggest) feelings about eating lunch in high school. I usually ate at the outdoor snack bar, and while I had some friends in high school, I usually end up eating lunch by myself or with another lonely friend I had, a guy from Argentina. I always ordered the "Chicken Supreme" sandwich, which was a lowly version of the BK sandwich but served on a regular hamburger bun instead of a hoagie roll. The nice older laides who worked the snack bar (and worked very quickly) would pull the chicken sandwich out of a heated drawer. It was packed in a foil wrapper and somehow, besides being a little mushy and oversteamed from that drawer, always tasted pretty darn good with a little mayonaise from a packet squirted on. I also usually ate a Nutty Butter bar as well, and then would promptly fall asleep in my pre-Calculus class after lunch. What can I saw? I was probably a little depressed and not exactly on top of my nutrition game, but I was also in that maddening condition that many 17-year-old boys find themselves: I was skinny, felt like I was too skinny even -- in spite of lifting weights and trying to bulk up -- and it seemed like I could eat whatever I wanted and still would feel hungry. (I would say I envy those days, but really, it created some bad habits that I'm still working on breaking.) 

Burger King has tried offering different versions of the chicken sandwich before, but they keep coming back to the original. There's even a few pages on the web about how to make your own at home.