Montana Viewpoint: A lesson on work and life

Jim Elliott

“The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough…he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the want ads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.”

― John Dos Passos, from his book "The 42nd Parallel" (1930)

This passage has haunted me all my life. I first read it when I was 18, working and living alone on a boat in wet storage far out on the New River in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It spoke to me of the many, many possibilities that lay ahead of me in America. It spoke of a vast and mystical trove of possible jobs to learn and places to live and experience. It spoke to me of hope.

Every Monday the captain would visit the boat and line out my jobs for the coming week, all maintenance work, mostly sanding and painting. It was lonely, I was one of the few people working in the boatyard, dinner or groceries were a mile walk, my nearest friends were fifty miles way. I hitchhiked to visit them on weekends. After work I would sit on the front deck, smoke, and read. The boatyard was next to the Seaboard Airline Railway tracks and I would watch the Orange Blossom Special cross the drawbridge over the New River in late afternoon.

I walked many of the streets referred to in Dos Passos’ writings, I slept in dingy rooms. There was one place where we got a clean sheet once a week. It went on top and the dirty one went to the bottom. They were so old that one night I woke up hopelessly entangled in a torn bottom sheet. I worked the jobs; dishwasher, busboy, bellboy, second mate, counterman, donut maker, brickyard worker. I learned that every job had a purpose, every job had a rhythm, and, if it involved working with others, a choreography. I learned also that every job had dignity and I was proud of doing my work well.

Years later, at 33, my father died and I came into enough money to buy a small ranch in Trout Creek. It was a rough go and needed lots of work to clear land and I was now an employer hiring what seemed to be every high school kid in Trout Creek. And they were all good workers, hard workers, and it surprised me that they turned out so differently from one another.

One, who became my regular hired hand, was orphaned when he was sixteen. I gave him a raise every year until he hit a great job core drilling for a mining exploration company and I couldn’t afford to match their wages. He put himself through college in electrical engineering and now works in the aerospace industry. Another managed to get on with a telephone company and did well.

The others? Many were felled by booze and drugs. Back then there was not a lot of opportunity for a kid to get a decent job, and I was always happy when someone from “The Creek” made it good. Still am.

One fellow who worked for me for a couple of years was hitchhiking home across country and got lost in Denver. He asked a man if he knew how to get back to the freeway. “I don’t”, the man said, “But if you want a job with the circus, I can give you one.” And the next time I heard from him he was on the Circus ship off the coast of Argentina living next to the Big Cat cages.

Now he is ill and after 40 years I am going to go visit him in rural New York state. I will take to him a book on his circus, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows, that was given to me by my friend Paul Ringling of White Sulphur Springs, Montana.

What I carry with me from Dos Passos’ quote is the sense that there is worth in all work, that there is opportunity for adventure, and maybe even success, and that everyone’s life is intersected by the lives of others, maybe for a moment, maybe for a lifetime. Grab it while you can.

Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for over 30 years. Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.