From 5 till 10, what a way to make a living

I've held this folder close since Dad died. It's filled with pictures, letters, postcards, even Dad's resume from when he applied for the town manager job with Coeburn in the late '70s and his letter to the town council 30 years later announcing his retirement. His obituary from the Coalfield Progress is even here. It's a folder I turn to again and again when I need a dose of Dad.

Let me just say that there's a year's worth of blogs here, my friends. 

Tonight I am loving this.

Dad. At 10:00 a.m.

Dad. At 5:00 p.m.

Dad, shirtless, cigarette dangling from his mouth, working at the typewriter in the office of the Coalfield Progress. I can only assume that air conditioning was not a luxury the newspaper could afford. 

My own recollections of Dad working at the town newspaper include visits to the back room where the giant presses churned out freshly inked papers. The smell is potent. To this day I am drawn to the scent of newspaper print.

 I don't now if this picture was a joke or seriously shot on a deadline. But for whatever reason, Dad was half-naked at 10:00 a.m. He's working at something. Many of the papers in the Dad Folder I have are typewritten. The capital C hangs up slightly above the line in many the documents I read. 

And then at 10:00 p.m., he's still there. Typing away. That C must be hanging up.  He's not stopped smoking. Where's the smoke? What's he typing? Is it really 10:00 p.m.? Were the Norton street lights really that bright in the '70s? 

I'll never know. What I do know is that Dad had a work ethic that could not be topped. Apparently, this wasn't lost on the photographer of these photos. 

No picture, though, could capture what Dad taught me. You could work from sun-up till sun-down and never get the job done if you didn't put your entire heart and soul into your work. 

You had to work with integrity. You had to know that when you took a job, you gave your word that you'd accomplish it. Frankly, it didn't matter if you loved it or not. If you promised to do it, then, by golly, you'd better do it right. 

Oh, how I have failed.

Like when I worked at Hardee's during college and quit the night before the Spring Formal. Or the time I quit being a bank teller after maybe a week because a better job in human resources with a competing bank came along. 

It's been some years since I quit a job willie-nillie like that. I like to think that the job I have now is the one God has called me to do. I teach. I teach with a sense of urgency. I think of it from the time I wake up till the time I go to bed. (Except, perhaps, during summer vacation.) I don't teach half-naked, and I don't smoke. But I do keep the work I do in mind every moment of every day. 

Thank you, Dad. Thank you for the work ethic you gave me. Thank you teaching me that my job requires my heart and my soul and that it all belongs to God.