Work, Work, Work & More Work

PHOTO: I spent a year away from being a student between high school and college and worked at Scott and Williams Company in Lakeport long enough to save money for most of my first year in college.

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

I am occasionally asked where I get my ideas for this column. The truth is that this is a history column and everything that is past is history, so there are a lot of choices. However, this is a New Hampshire history column so my articles must involve New Hampshire, and that limits the choices a little, as does the fact that I want the articles to be of interest to the readers. So I look in different places and I read and I listen and I think, and then I decide what to write on any particular week. I am hesitant to write about myself, but sometimes that’s the choice I make.
As a child I sometimes joined others at a 4-H or Grange meeting singing about work. “There is work, work, work, there is work for the children to do,” we vocalized. And we solemnly sang, “Work, for the night is coming when man’s work is o’er,” while inwardly hoping that day was not imminent.
Indeed, according to Scripture, God put mankind to work soon after He created him, and made some of that work burdensome after the man fell into sin. Nevertheless, work can and should be pleasant and enjoyable, though I must confess that I have sometimes found work that was not pleasant or enjoyable at all. As a child any reluctance to work was probably not because the work was considered distasteful, but because I would have preferred to be doing something else. I found there was enjoyment in feeding the animals – be they chickens, pigs, or cows- or the dog or cats; and even could reservedly say the same in removing the manure from behind the cow in the barn, as long as my aim was accurate and the shovel full of manure went through the open window as it was supposed to and onto the manure pile outside.
I suppose that I appreciate now, in my old age, more than ever before the work experiences I had as a country boy that many a city slicker never had. I thoroughly enjoyed working with wood. As I did that I also learned about the trees, becoming able to name one from another by seeing the leaves, the trunk, branches, bark, and sometimes the blossoms and seeds that they produced. My father never owned a chain saw so, except possibly when someone else was hired to help, all the work of cutting down the trees, sawing the trunk and branches into manageable sizes, stacking the wood, and then, after hauling it to the woodshed, sawing and chopping it into sizes fit for the stoves, was done by manpower.
After all of that it still had to be carried into the house and placed into the wood boxes ready for burning. So the challenge was to the boy, not to the woodchuck, as to how much wood could be cut and split with saw and axe on any particular day.

There were other farm duties to attend to, but I’ll go on to some of my other work experiences.
In a limited sense I feel that I have been a jack-of-all-trades but master of none, because of the variety of my work experiences, though most of them in not so impressive roles. There have been some agricultural stints outside the ancestral home, including several involving greenhouse work. I spent a year away from being a student between high school and college and worked at Scott and Williams Company in Lakeport long enough to save money for most of my first year in college, thanks to my parents not charging me for room and board.
I have never forgotten my first two days of work. I was hired in the time-keeping department to count and wash small parts in a solution made to remove the oil used in the machines used to make the parts for knitting machinery. I was on the second shift but was told at the end of that first day’s or night’s work (mid-night) that they wanted me to train on the first shift the coming morning. The sound of the factory full of machines running went through my head the rest of that night as I tried to get some sleep. One day when I went to work all the machine workers started to leave the building for a union meeting I was told.
Not having heard about any meeting I asked where we were suppose to go. I was told that I wasn’t to go because I didn’t belong to the union and couldn’t because as a member of the time-keeper’s department I was part of management. From that day on my job seemed more important to me.
There were those summer days while in college working for Harold Tefft , a Laconia City Councilman,in construction, mainly small paving jobs. I still think of that when I smell hot asphalt like I sometimes hauled in a wheelbarrow or smoothed over with the hand-operated roller we used on the jobs. I remember standing on the back of a dump truck with a shovel helping to unload gravel and that good size house we once moved on a truck-bed through the streets of Laconia.
I also remember those few months I worked for the maintenance department at college and the time I, not fond of being on the edge of something very high up, was taken by a fellow worker to the slanted roof of what I think was at least a 3 and ½ story building. There, my partner tied one end of a rope around me and the other around himself. I was to stand on one side of the roof while he went down the other side to fix a gutter attached to the edge. One concern was that he was a heavier person than I was at that time, so how was I expected to pull him back if he went over? I had also been told that his philosophy was that if you didn’t shed blood on a job it wasn’t worth it. This time however, no blood and yet the mission was accomplished.

Not being a maintenance type guy I went to washing pots and pans in the sinks off the college kitchen. Hours and hours of washing pots and pans and sometimes when I thought I was finished for the day someone would bring more in to be cleaned. I eventually was invited to join the cooks in the kitchen to help prepare the meals, and the day came when I was given a supervisory position during weekends, and then over the breakfast crew.
I recently found a note from those days among some old papers which was from the college treasurer informing me that I was to receive a raise of pay to one dollar an hour. In that note from many years ago I was instructed to keep my raise strictly confidential.
Upon my graduation I was offered a full-time cooking job at the college, but instead launched out to begin a few decades of Christian ministry as a pastor in small town and country churches, a position I wasn’t fully prepared for. The second funeral I ever attended I was the officiating minister.
With a need of supplementing my income at times during those days and before and after, I have worked as a machine operator in two additional factories, a veterinarian’s assistant, a mason’s mud-mixer, on a town’s road crew, on a pre-cut home-builder’s crew, night-watchman, salesman for end of physical life arrangements, and furniture store employee.
Looks as if I couldn’t keep a job, but most of these were not intended to be permanent, and you know the saying, “variety is the spice of life.” Also, “ A little work won’t hurt you.” Actually it might hurt you, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth while. In fact, the ones that may cause the greatest risk of hurt may still offer the greatest satisfaction and be the most worthwhile.
Don’t underestimate the guy that washes the pots and pans, however. What would we do without him?
Work isn’t a bad thing. As long as it isn’t bad work.

NH History