The Strenuous Life

Noble learning

The snapping rubber band hurt my cold hands. Flexing my fingers, I looked to my brother, who shook his head and said, "You've got to be smarter than the rubber band to make it work. Try not to break any more, Hercules. Those things cost money."

After an exchange of insults that brothers understand as terms of endearment, we stuffed our bags and started the long walk. The quiet of dark skies was overwhelming as stars and planets spun by.


All work is noble, I've been told. One learns a lot through labor and achievement. While American pop culture has attempted to train us to idolize those who shirk responsibilities and engage in the island lifestyle of no time clock, no deadline, and no sweat, the truth is that respect comes primarily for those who have toiled in some way. To believe in the American Dream is to believe that constant effort, noble intentions, and hard work can elevate not only a lifestyle, but a life. True, there is a right-place, right-time lucky quality added to it, but we, as a country, have a singular unmistakable admiration for those who work hard.

The value of work comes in myriad forms. With my own experience as a father, I see the value of those who stay home to do the hard work of raising children. With my experience as a high school boy working at Don's Pharmacy on Markham Street, I see the value of learning a profession, seeing dedicated folks who love their jobs. With my experience as a landscaper, I see the value of manual labor.

My older brother started a paper route when he was 13. As an 11-year-old, I tagged along with him in the hope of splitting the money. Soon, I added my own route and we helped each other. Then my little brother acquired one. Soon, my youngest brother joined what had become the family business.

The four of us delivered the Arkansas Gazette to over 500 houses each morning and had a system that involved working together, holding each other accountable, and strategic days off for each of us.

My father was a bank executive back then and was used to supervising people and functions. Despite working long days as a banker, he was the glue that held our team together as he helped us organize our routes. As we added more routes, my father helped us load up the family station wagon every morning at 4:30 and drove every day. He never had a day off.

Middle-school boys can find adventure even as the quiet night gives way to the awakening of daytime. There was the time we found the dead guy in a driveway. After several panicked moments we were thankful to find out he was just passed out drunk. We had contests to see who could hit a porch from farthest away, often resulting in a bone-rattling slap on a front door. When it snowed, we packed our papers on sleds as the climb up the hills of Sturbridge and Colony West and Echo Valley were made worth it by the exhilaration of racing back down on our Flexible Flyers. As we entered high school in the age before Instagram, girlfriends on the routes left us perfumed love notes outside their windows and we raced to get them before the tragedy of a brother reaching them first occurred.

The overwhelming quiet of the mornings still holds a corner of my memory. The city stopped moving in those hours, it seemed. The birds had not yet awakened, the cars were not yet moving, homes were not yet alive as we marched past.

As a middle-aged man I continue to long for that quiet. I continue to seek the peace that comes from being still, being silent even just for a moment.

My paper route taught me much. It taught me how to interact with clients. It taught me how to organize and execute a plan. It taught me to overcome obstacles and it taught me the value of the silent moments in a day. One of the first conversations I had with my wife was about how much my paper route impacted me. She nodded in agreement. She had one, too, and her father had helped pull it off.

I watched as my bank-executive father stood in our kitchen helping us fold papers. With bed hair waving every which way and his old gray sweatshirt and dad jeans standing in contrast to the suit he would soon don, he concentrated on his pile of papers to fold.

I wondered why he did that, why he sacrificed two hours of sleep each day to get his boys going and keep us engaged with our routes. Later, I understood that he wanted us to have the money to do the things we wanted to do.

But, more importantly, he wanted us to have a strong work ethic. He wanted us to value the good things, the tangible results and the intangible benefits, of working hard.

He wanted us to know, unmistakably, that all work is noble.

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Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org.

Editorial on 04/21/2018

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