Saturday, August 4, 2007

A Caretaker and Maintenance Mentality

A Caretaker and Maintenance Mentality

I grew up in a generation of men who when they came home from work each day, they walked the perimeters of their house each night before bed, checking the locks and the window shades, and making sure everything was secure for the night. They'd look at the furnace and the stove, check the taps, the fuse box, and just scan with their eyes to make sure that their families would be safe overnight. They'd make a mental note of what needed to be fixed, repaired, mended on the weekend. They were everyday saints. They worked in un-air conditioned, low paying, physically difficult jobs so that their families could live and thrive. They came home and tired as they were, they walked the bounds of their home like it was their castle, to ensure their family's safety. And on weekends they became weekend warriors against rust, loose floorboards, plumbing and electrical problems, maraudering ants and wasps, low fluids or lubrication in the car, the grass (and weeds) in the lawn, or places their children may stumble at play... and every man did this, if he was "handy" (like my stepfather and grandfather) or not (like my dad.) They could handle clogged toilets and problem septic systems without giggling like a teenage tard about potty jokes. They were the caretakers and maintainers of their generation, and their like has pretty much disappeared as they have passed on to their reward.

Where are the people who maintain their family's home's safety and operational peak level? Where are the people who maintain the property they own and the people who rent live upon? (I read of an apartment building that burned down and people lost all, and it looks like a fuse box proper maintenance was the problem. For Christ's sake, I knew how to properly select and replace a fuse as a teenager! But I guess people don't care about other people's losses, especially if they have the rent money brass in pocket.) Where are the people who make decisions for communities, where a safe bridge is more important than "the revenue base" or prestige or "corporate partners?" This generation has more tools for more evaluations and more elaborate constructions, yet they write year after year after year of "reports," yet do not lie awake at night worrying until their report recommendations are fulfilled and the risk alleviated.


Whenever I drive, my eyes scan over buildings, structures, roadways, always watching for something I'd worry about, something for which I'd reach into my tool box (one in the car, one at home, and when I had a house, I had one on each storey.) Why are mayors and city council people not constantly worrying about the unsafe things they see everyday in their communities? And I'm not talking about eliminating playing "tag" in the playgrounds because you worry a child may fall, and a parent may sue. Have you noticed that every "futuristic" science fiction movie, book cover, illustration shows gleaming cities of steel or unknown alloys, and none look tattered as they do today? What a joke of illusion. People need safe buildings, roadways, waterways today, not in some imaginary pie in the sky science fiction scenario, where in truth the author would not even know what side of the wood to place a washer and a screw. A whole generation had better get swift about learning from those great caretakers and maintainers who still live among us and care about not only their families, but their communities and strangers, and who have the eye of one who walks the perimeters, guarding and maintaining. You can borrow one of my toolkits.