Recharging the battery for 2005

This time of year is very special to me.  Normally work at ETDS is brutal this time of year.  From Thanksgiving we work twelve hour days and with the commute it turns into fourteen hour days.  The weather is usually pretty bad and worst of all we get jumpers.  Jumpers are usually teenagers who take the packages up to the houses for us.  In theory it makes us much more efficient, but if you get a bad one the day is horrible.

Eleven months of the year I'm alone in my truck and I have National Public Radio and books on tape to keep me company.  NPR has lead me to such authors as Edna O'Brien, Ann Lamott and Spaulding Gray.  From January to November I listen to a tape, hit pause while I walk up to the house, and then back to the tape.  My job requires so little thought.  When I was a child I used to ring doorbells and run.  Little did I know I was preparing for my future vocation.

With a jumper you can't listen to the radio or books on tape.  The jumper usually has a narrow taste for music.  This is the typical conversation:

Me:   What kind of music do you like?

Jumper: I like all kinds of music.

Me:    Really, what is your favorite opera?

Jumper:  I don't like opera, I'm more into the stuff they play on the radio.

Me:  Ok, how about country music?

Jumper:   I hate country, it's almost as bad as rap. 

Me:  I understand, you like rock and roll.

Jumper:  Yeah, but not the new stuff, I like the old stuff from the eighties.  Plus I hate the hard-edged stuff and that sappy stuff too. 

Me:  Ok, I like to listen to the blues.  How about if I put some of that on and you can let me know if you like it.

Jumper:  No thanks, the blues are too depressing. 

Me:  No problem.

Then we work in relative silence until he gets to know me enough that he feels comfortable telling me how hard it is to be young.  I have a tough time summoning up sympathy.

I had one jumper say to me, "Man this job sucks!   I mean it really sucks, anybody who does it more that a couple years is a real asshole."  I then told him I'd been doing it close to thirty years, his reply is "I didn't mean you man, I meant anyone else."  The day didn't get better.

This all gets back to the fact that after the holidays I'm starving for something intellectual.  I usually take the week off after Christmas and just relax.  I find something interesting and immerse myself in it.  One year it was Hemingway, another it was James Joyce.  Two years ago it was megalithic ruins and standing stones, last year it was Dorothy Parker.  These immersions restore me and I don't know how I would survive a year of mindless work without them.

This year I've immersed myself in the works of Thomas Paine.  Years ago I read The Age of Reason and it influenced me greatly.  Going back and reading everything from Agrarian Justice to Worship and Church Bells has made me whole again.  Paine was such a Freethinker and intellectual that I am in awe of his writing.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL writes:

He had more brains than books; more sense than education; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes -- no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for the truth's sake, and for man's sake. He saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many against the titled few.

I go back to work in less than a week and I feel good about it.  I am fully refreshed and raring to go.  I really think 2005 will be the best year yet.