“Well in the town where I was raised…”
Dateline: Guntersville
“Home is where we start from.”
T.S. Eliot
From.
When I lived where I was from I wanted to be from somewhere else, but as soon as I got to somewhere else I wanted to be back where I was from.
From.
Kind of a funny looking word…from…looks like it’s missing a letter or two, but it is a word, it is a feeling, that follows us our entire life.
It is one of my favorite words, this funny looking word…from.
This Team Championship shindig I’m at has a two hour period that is in fact my favorite two hours of the tour.
Fitting that it is always at the end of the season, these two hours, because to be honest, I’m burnt out, bruised up, and have credit card companies hounding me.
As I write this I’m at 25 1/2 weeks on the road this year…these favorite two hours buffer all of that.
For two hours I stand pretty much in one place, the beginning of the registration line for the event, I stand there and I shake the hand of everyone who comes by, EVERYONE.
Lasterday, what one of my kids called “yesterday” when they were young and it sounds better and closer to the fact, lasterday I shook the hands of 394 competitors…plus a couple wives and one of course, little Gracie.
And when I shook their hands I only asked two questions, “Where you from, and what do you do?”
In storytelling they may be the only two questions you need to ask.
Many of the hands I shook came from big, well known “froms,” many came “from” places that had a lot of not a lot.
I’m from Buffalo, N.Y., my father worked for 30 years selling refrigerators at Sears & Roebuck, my mother worked for 20 years as the cafeteria lady in a junior high school.
Neither finished high school, both were the children of immigrants, dad bought a new small house in a post-war development through the GI Bill, drove a Chevy Bel Air, when things broke he fixed them, kept a savings account book in the bottom drawer of his dresser, once a month his spare change on top of the dresser got deposited into the account.
Dad was funny, humble, hard working, a part of him, like many other dads on my street, a part of him/them never quite left Iwo Jima.
My mother and I were never friends.
It happens.
That’s where I come from.
Here’s where some of the 394 hands I shook, here’s their, “from.”
“…back where I come from…”
Handshake #24: A young, skinny, tall kid with a beard, “from New Hampshire.”
I tell the kid, me too, sort of, “Lived in Derry, N.H., when I first got married some 40 years ago, what do you do in New Hampshire.”
“I’m an air traffic controller.”
The young man looks all of maybe, MAYBE 30 years old, he tells me he works the Boston sector, “anything above 10,000 feet comes my way,” and when I looked surprised because he looks younger than the Crocs I have on he says simply, “did it in the military, trained in the Air Force.”
Of which, all I can say is what all of us would say, “Thank You.”
Handshake #41: An older guy from Missouri, or Texas, he mumbled.
“I’m just a plumber.”
His eyes looked down when he told me that, his body sort of caved in some as well, and #41 just kept walking down the line hoping to get out of this hand shaking with a stranger thing. “Just a plumber,” said while walking to show his fishing license.
To his possible horror I walked right along with him. And I said to him, “Cool, thank you man.”
That’s when he stopped.
My father was a salesman at Sears & Roebuck, my mother was the cafeteria lady, I grew up on a block filled with plumbers, mechanics, steelworkers, landscapers, small fireplug built guys who poured concrete.
No plumber needs to lower his eyes around me.
We are a sport of plumbers, auto repair guys, carpenters, HVAC guys, truck drivers…I met dozens and dozens of them in line yesterday.
A UPS guy 21 “froms” ahead in line of a postal worker.
I met a man who built “aircraft,” a half hour later I shook the hand of a pilot.
Same line.
I don’t care about the color of your collar.
I don’t car about the color of your skin.
I care about the color of your life.
I get the struggle of making ends meet, of hoping for overtime, of ending up a bit short, I’ve seen the payday loan envelopes.
If you are a working stiff, instead of a taking a hand out stiff, you get my respect, you get my thank you.
And I get the honor of shaking your hand.
No need to look down with your eyes because it is you I look up to.
“…where I'll be when it's said and done…”
Handshake #196:
Me: “Hey man, where you from and what do you do there?”
#196: “Tennessee, and I work for the government.”
Me: “Which government?”
#196: “Ours.”
Me: “Cool and what do you do for our government?”
#196: “I disarm Nuclear Bombs and catalog the nuclear grade uranium.”
I just back up, some.
Handshake #201: “I’m from Florida, own a restaurant there.”
“Nice, is it a good restaurant.”
“You bet, next year will be our 60th year in business.”
Next time I’m in West Palm Beach, I know where I’m eating.
Handshake #215: “…I sell cars.”
I forgot where he said he was from but you’ll understand why in a minute.
“Nice, what kind of cars.”
“Maserati and Ferrari.”
I have no idea what else he said, I’m a car guy, he talked some, at the end I just hugged him. I’m a car guy.
Handshake #273: “…I’m a vacuum engineer.”
“Nice, sales, Hoover or that Dyson thing.”
“Ah no, I’m an engineer I design vacuum systems for particle collider systems where they try and split atoms.”
I just look at the guy standing next to him, his teammate…I have the “is he lying” look on my face.
“Nope, that’s what he does.” Handshake #274.
“…well I'm proud as anyone…”
There came through two small town cops.
There came through a Chicago cop.
There came through a state trooper.
All whispered when asked, “law enforcement.”
Whispered.
One, I won’t say which one, told me he didn’t want to say it too loud, “with you know all that’s going on now with police all around the country.”
I am not a fan of the government, especially politicians of any make or breed.
I am a huge fan of the people in the government who stand between me and the bad things that can happen to me and my family.
No need to whisper “law enforcement” around me, in my heart I know that 99.9 percent of the men and women in blue are kind and decent human beings doing a tough, if not impossible, job.
And trust me, they do it better than I would deal with the punks out there.
“Thank You,” is what I told those in line who whispered.
I also said, “I appreciate what you do,” and it wasn’t in a whisper.
‘…that's where…”
“db, what do you call that knit thing that you wear on your head in the winter time up north?”
So you know, “Up North,” are the key words here.
Handshake #1
I believe in my heart that those of us who try to be kind and decent human beings are more alike then we are not alike.
I’m a long haired ex-hippie from the Northeast.
The question came from a short haired young man from Alabama.
Hank Weldon. Tripp Weldon’s son. Hank and I don’t shake hands, we hug.
The doors are not open yet for registration, I’m the only “Yankee” in earshot.
“I call that knit thing I wear in the winter time a cap, actually this is what I really call it, ‘Barb do you know where I put that knit cap thing I wear on my head to snow blow the driveway?’”
“Down here db we call it a toboggan.”
A toboggan, where I’m from, is a long wooden thing that you sit on and slide down a hill of snow and chip your front tooth on like my wife did when she was just a kid.
Pretty much every one at the B.A.S.S. table told me, in fact a toboggan was something they wore on their head.
I love and respect these people, they love and respect me.
I don’t wear a toboggan on my head.
They do.
That’s the, “from,” in their lives.
From.
It is my favorite two hours of the tour.
I get to meet your, “from.”
You get to meet my, “from.”
And they more we do that, me and you, the more I realize that basically, down deep, we are all “from” pretty much the same place.
It’s just that some of us slide on toboggans.
And others, wear toboggans, on their heads.
“…I come from…”
Back Where I Come From
Kenny Chesney
db
“People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.”
~Linda Elerbee