The Best

I came into work this morning, and as I walked inside the building and went past the north entrance, I saw out in the parking lot a truck with a man-lift on it.  Several men in hard hats were around the truck, and one of them was in the lift working on a security light on a pole in our parking lot.

I watched for a bet, and it became apparent that they were finishing up their project.  My guess is that they hadn’t been there long anyway.  The man in the lift finished what he was doing on the lamp, put the cover back on and fastened it, lowered the lift to the ground, and got out.  As he got out, he unfastened a couple of safety straps.

Another man and he took the tools and materials out of the lift and put them in the truck.  Another man swung the boom around and “parked” it on the truck where it was supposed to be when the truck was moved, and brought in the leveling feet that kept the truck steady.

Then the man who had been in the lift walked around the truck and picked up the orange cones surrounding the truck, walked toward the cab, spit on the ground, got in the truck, and drove off.  Another man stayed behind the truck and made sure the man didn’t run into anything as he backed up to get out.

No big deal.  This happens multiple times each day in a city like Wichita.  Workmen doing something outdoors, many times with some kind of large equipment, is a rather frequent occurrence.

I say all of this, and blog about it, to say that I sometimes wish I had been one of those kinds of men…large, muscular build, rather gruff-looking.  The hard hat wearing, spit on the ground type who climb on to a chunk of iron the size of a house and move the controls in a dance that builds, renews, and accomplishes.  I’m not that way, though, and at this stage of life will never be that.  I do have on my bucket list to operate a backhoe one day…and I did farm back in the 60’s, but that’s about as close as I’ll ever come.

Some of these men may be rough on the outside, but can do some of the most delicate moves with huge machines.  I knew a man in my hometown who operated a backhoe for a living.  His hoe wasn’t one of the gargantuan things you sometimes see.  It was a smaller one fastened to the back of a smaller tractor.  But he could operate that hoe in such a way that most folks who watched him (and many stopped to do just that) were mesmerized by the movements and what he was able to accomplish.

I have to think that Gene could feel what was happening down in the hole at the end of his bucket in his hands as they operated the hydraulic controls.  More than once I saw him gently find a buried pipe of some kind and work around it, exposing it without cutting into it or breaking it.  And he did it all by feel.

His bucket moved as if it was alive.  And you would have sworn if it had eyes painted on it that it WAS alive.  Never a jerky motion (unless that’s what he wanted to do to accomplish some task), never unnecessary movement, Gene was the best backhoe artist I’ve seen (and probably ever will see).

He was also the resident grave-digger.  The sides of the grave hole were straight and on the mark.  They were always clean with no dirt messing up the area.  He knew more about cemeteries in Harper County and the surrounding area (including northern Oklahoma) than anyone else, and has helped bury scores of his friends and relatives.

Gene doesn’t dig anymore.  His hoe sits silent on the lot where he last parked it.  Oh, he’s still around, I think.  But he’s 89, according to the Internet, and just doesn’t do that anymore.  I have to think that most people would probably look at his life and say that he was just a grave-digger and backhoe operator.  But there’s more there than that.  He was the best there was at what he did.  He always dug the best hole he could dig.  He always did the best he could do to help others do what they needed to do.

And I hope that in my vocations, people said the same thing about me.  I’ll never operate a backhoe for a living.  Nor will I ever wear a hard hat, spit on the ground, and haul myself on to a chunk of machinery the size of Texas to go to the next job.  I may have been just a maintenance man, or just a helper at the school, a minister to seniors, or just an engineer at the radio station.  But I would like to think that I did the best I could do and tried to help others do what they needed to do as well.

And the most blessed thing I’d like to hear one day is, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  That, dear friend, will be heavenly.