God bless the working man.

My father never wanted to be poor. You see, he was one of eight children. Seven brothers in one bed for warmth and because they couldn't afford but one other bed, which was where their mother and sister slept. He told me about how the brothers would argue about who had to get out of bed to start the fire in the stove mornings so Ma could make coffee. I don't think my grandfather was around, or at least, he wasn't mentioned as being anyone.
The story of my father, like my own, is part myth and part tragedy. A jack of all trades, it would seem there wasn't too much the old man wouldn't do for a living; discharged from the Army, fry cook, restaurant manager, construction worker, farm worker, and even some things that might have not been entirely legal. My earliest memories make him a cross-country trucker.
The way I remember the story, my Dad hauled caskets out of Chicago to pretty much wherever his truck would take him. I believed he'd been everywhere, but only because I couldn't find anywhere on the map he couldn't give me directions to. Later in life, I even made a couple of those trips across the country with him. When his back failed him (broken in a trucking accident), he drove taxi for a living.
He drove that damned taxi like a man obsessed, and he was. My mother said he didn't pay his bills, but I don't know if he meant it to be that way. I remember him driving 72-hour shifts, coming home to sleep for sometimes as little as 6 hours, taking a shower, and being gone before anyone was awake the next morning.
I remember my father saying "Don't ever do more work than you need to." He was not a lazy man, but he was accused of being one. What he meant was to work smart, not hard. He believed there had to be an easier way. I don't know he ever found it.

So why am I sitting here, crying like a little girl over a man who's been dead for over a decade? Maybe it's because I remember his spirit and the pain it brought him. My father was a free man. Sure, he had ties that bound him, but he chose those ties; his wife, his children. My father was not the kind who took supervision well, because he could see the foolishness of his "superiors". My father was not the kind to stay in one place for too long. My father was not the kind who candy-coated his thoughts for you. My father was not the kind who could work in a factory. Neither am I.

I remember one time, when I was around 16 or 17 years old, I went to a local factory near my hometown to apply for a job. The idea scared me, but everyone told me that this factory was a good place to work. It provided steady pay, good benefits, and was close enough to home that it was convenient. When I walked into that factory, all I remember hearing was the machines. Clank, hiss, clank, hiss. It sounded to me like the noise Hell must make, and I ran, literally ran in fear. I knew right then that I could never, would never be able to do that kind of work.

Here I sit, unemployed. I haven't had a job since April this year. This is the longest I've ever been without a job, and I'm beginning to grow concerned. I don't know what the future holds, which may be why I'm wandering through my past this way.

God bless the man who can walk into a factory and see a machine he can tend to, operate, and spend his days with. God bless the man who can spend his whole life with a machine. Oh, I know what that kind of toil brings. It brings things like security, a mortgage, a nice car. It brings the "American Dream" to life, but I just don't have the stomach for it. Neither did the Old Man.

Maybe I am doomed to inherit the spirit that my father was possessed with his whole life. Maybe I already have. I am not lazy, I just can't be a cog. I can work hard, and have worked hard. But I would rather feel the sun on my face and the wind blowing through what's left of my hair.

Right now, I don't know where things are going in my life. I would like to have a job. This unemployment bullshit is getting old. I need more options in my life, and being broke isn't doing it.

I'm so out of my mind, I've even taken to blogging. . .