Now, those skills aren’t necessarily items you’d include in a curriculum vitae if you were looking for a job, but I’m convinced they’ll come in handy in a few years as my memory begins to fade. I’d never have learned them if I’d had a nine-to-five desk job. Besides that, I really loved getting out with the intrepid early risers and watching dawn break over Moose Mountain. Even the ice-cold days, difficult as they often seemed, were invigorating, and there was no danger of gaining weight. Coffee time and lunchtime were delightful in the company of electricians, plumbers, painters, and other brothers of the pounded thumb. I loved it! Today I can drive through the old haunts and point to this house or that, and say, “Yep, that’s one of mine,” or, “I put the kitchen in that one, and the deck on the back.” It’s tremendously satisfying.

A recent feature on National Public Radio reported that many recent college graduates, surveying the current calamitous job scene, are dismayed at the lack of employment in their chosen fields. They had expected to move seamlessly and lucratively into them and (I presume) spend their lives climbing the corporate or institutional ladder. Finding themselves temporarily, at least, shut out, they’ve often opted to do nothing: move back in with the ‘rents (without paying any) and keep looking for that desk job. They seem to have no idea what they will be missing.

For many decades our schools have prepared their students for life by separating them according to academic ability. As a result, the students who score highest in schoolwork or scholastic aptitude tests are “fast-tracked” in college preparatory courses, and the rest often assigned to industrial, domestic, or secretarial “arts.” When I taught high school English, many years ago, it was pretty clear to me that the typing, home ec, and shop class schedules were separating students into English classes of clearly different abilities. I found this upsetting, not because I wanted my future local mechanic to spout Shakespeare, but because I wanted him to have had classes in the humanities with some value-teaching content. But the guidance counselor was pushing them this way or that, depending upon his assessment of their abilities and interests.

That’s still happening, as far as I can tell; and as long as the vocational classes include other topics – craftsmanship; financial, business, and essential language skills – I have no quibble with it. What does bother me, however, is the natural inference by the college-bound that their separated classmates are following an inferior path. Somehow we have fostered the notion that a worker in a white shirt and tie (or their female equivalents) is a more valued member of society and therefore deserving of greater status.

Those of you who are churchgoers will recall that our most recent Sunday lesson, from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, very pointedly emphasized the necessity of all the members of a body to function interdependently in order to preserve the health of the whole body. Those of us who aspire to desk jobs – a goal that to me seems bizarre, in spite of the hundreds of hours I spend at my own desk these days – may not realize how much they depend upon lesser creatures for their everyday necessities, and are probably unaware of the tremendous satisfaction others derive from “working with their hands.” A mistaken characterization, by the way; the brain of a remodeling contractor works far harder all day than that of a claims adjuster processing forms at a desk. In addition, he has to be a creative manager of his resources. And his people skills, with both customers and subcontractors, are inevitably reflected in his income.

All the conveniences with which we surround ourselves – roofs that don’t leak, sinks and faucets that do what they’re supposed to do, vehicles that run, electrical appliances – work because of people who know how to make them work. If your toilet is plugged, you don’t call the president of your company or university; you call the plumber (but please, not Joe the Plumber!). He won’t discuss Kierkegaard or Adam Smith with you, but he’ll get your life back on track.

And while you’re enjoying your two-week or one-month vacation in Florida or Arizona, he’ll be working on his retirement home in St. Croix or St. Barts. This winter he may be volunteering in the reconstruction of Haiti. Really good tradespersons – I’ve known many, and in retirement miss them keenly – are as important in their own way as, say, orthopedic surgeons in theirs.

They’re nearly as well compensated, too. Not only (like Tom Lehrer’s famous dope peddler) do they do well by doing good, but the sheer tactile joy of working with your hands to create, and the joy of physical as opposed to mental exhaustion, are two of the great gifts of life.