Choosing life skills

Like many children, I grew up striving to be like the patterns closest to me, my older siblings. So, as a country kid, at the age of 10 I was working to perfect my skills at splitting the endless supply of wood required to fire the kitchen stove for three meals a day. Like my older brother, I held a length of wood vertical on the chop-block with my left hand, swung a razor-sharp axe down with my right, and snatched the holding hand out of the way . Over the years, I must have split several trainloads of stove wood this way. Never a scratch.

At eleven I was frequently gearing up and hitching a mule to a farm wagon and hauling various supplies around the area alone. I was quite proud. Pride, it is said, goeth before a fall. I fell off the wagon and knocked myself unconscious. That did not, of course, indicate a lack of skill, just a lack of care.

By age twelve, I was polishing my skill at milking the family cow. This simple-sounding task is not as easy as one might think. It requires hand strength, a rhythmic movement to bring the milk out in a full, pulsing stream, and the ability to withstand being slapped in the face frequently with a coarse, stinging, sometimes wet (or worse) cow’s tail. I got pretty good at all that.

Like teenagers, country-type or otherwise, I yearned to drive. By age sixteen, I was licensed by the state and soon thereafter was driving a school bus. But more than just pride in driving, I took special pride in being able to double-clutch. Older vehicles, and my bus was one, with four forward speeds, had transmissions that were not synchronized. Shifting from lower to higher gears required a double action with the clutch, while shifting from higher to lower required the same action plus goosing the accelerator just the right amount at just the right time in the middle of that double action. This was not something done for fun, but of necessity. Fail to time it just right, and the transmission would snarl angrily and threaten to spit gear teeth through the floor of the vehicle. Damage could be drastic. Even worse, the snarling and scraping screamed “novice” for the world to hear. I, however, could do it all so smoothly that the transmission only whispered to me.

Then my old bus was replaced by a new one. Like all recent models, it had a synchronized transmission. No more double-clutching. In all the decades since, I have never had occasion to drive a vehicle that required the skill I’d honed so carefully and of which I was so proud. Just as I haven’t been called upon to split wood, handle a mule and wagon, or milk a cow.

Listening to political candidates talk about loss of manufacturing jobs in this country and what they plan to do about it, I was reminded of my obsolete talents. Nobody told me that the objects of my skills would be snatched away from me by unseen hands, leaving me knowing how to do quite well some things that no longer needed doing.

Time magazine points out that many manufacturing jobs have been brought back to the U.S. in the last five years, but that we are still far below the number we once claimed. And we’re not going to reach the higher level again, because the world is moving on. Advancing technology and automation are reducing the number of manufacturing jobs and requiring new skills for the jobs that remain.

So it seems to me that instead of encouraging wishful thinking about jobs that will never return, those who aspire to political leadership should be pushing for government leadership in the transformation of the work force. The subject has been mentioned many times, but few seem fully aware that we are on a wave of change that can either propel us forward or drown us. I believe government has a central role in informing its citizens as to what to expect and in planning for training programs and the development and encouragement of new forms of employment.

In the meantime, if you hear of anybody who needs a cow milked, some firewood split, or a truck double-clutched, give them my name.

This story was originally published April 23, 2016 at 11:47 AM with the headline "Choosing life skills."