The mid-western mentality takes its roots from hard working, labor-intensive work done with a person's hands and backs. Farming, construction, mining, and a host of other fields help develop this nation and specifically the mid-west as the land proved fertile and plentiful. Today that same work ethic is probably exhibited in front of computers; hand tools replaced by a keyboard and mouse and back strain replaced by eye strain and wrist and neck soreness. People today workout to supplant the lack of physical activity they incur during their working hours and the exercise machines of today often seem to imitate the real strenuous jobs of years past.

The hard-working men and women who hoist their families, towns, and country on their backs earn my affection and admiration. In particular I have latched on to the miner as a near perfect symbol of some Romantic ideal from parts of the past two centuries. I wrote a short story about sulfur mining in Indonesia and have read several books on different mining disasters. Along the way I also have managed to gain a healthy admiration for my own family, in particular my grandfather.

Of late I find myself thinking of him more and more, probably because the anniversary of his death is a few weeks away. I attended a wedding the day after his death and I go to another wedding next weekend, so it all turns my attention towards my grandfather and others distantly related to me from northern Wisconsin. Dale Dennis farmed all his life; he rose early and worked late, supporting his family and never seeking more than the animals and land afforded him. He worked with his hands and his back, and his wife often worked at his side when she could, tending to the garden or the cows. Her brother and cousins worked in the mines near Lake Superior and Iron Mountain, mining silver and coal until they sought more consistent mining work in the promising mines of Idaho. My father grew up with this same work ethic instilled in him, though he turned quickly from thoughts of agricultural. Though he chose a different path, the idea that one needs long hours at work to ensure a living without complaint stayed with him and has been passed to me. I have never toiled in a factory, on a farm, or in a mine, but my ability to dedicate myself to the task at hand to reach a goal has never wavered.

Part of me wishes I could devote myself to an employment more inline with physical construction. I have always found great satisfaction in putting things together and the immediate results it affords. My mother's father came from a farming family as well in Russia, and he learned carpentry and gardening along the way.

We honor out bloodline in strange, unexpected ways and I do believe I honor mine by committing myself the way I do to whatever job I have to complete. I picture my father's father in his light blue jeans and flannel shirts milking the cows in the barn, bailing hay into a silo, and finding numerous jokes to tell as he did his work. From the books I read I see these men kiss their wives and children and trudge to the mines, lunch/dinner pails in hand, clean faces soon to resemble the darkness they inhabit each day. They bend over or under, strain to see and strain to lift and strain to breathe. My grandfathers made enough money to live on, and these miners I see make enough, barely enough, to have a home and food and a family. They toil and sweat all day, bodies covered with permanent stench, the serious risk to their lives in the back of their minds every day.

These simple men and women who did and still do this work, this hand driven labor is/was the backbone of this country. Politicians win elections by identifying themselves with these people, be they farmers, miners, fishermen, construction workers, factory workers, or others. They represent a purity in the American consciousness and emit true elements of the human spirit, and the very best of humanity comes out in one of the disasters and always seems to accompany such intense labor situations. Perhaps that is why I can't let go of these miners. How many people still believe with hard work a person can achieve success and accomplish anything? With hard work today one may eek out a living above minimum living standards. But once upon a time people didn't need gyms to work out, they had their jobs for exercise and they had their jobs as their opportunities and the aches and pains and sweat and health problems were the prices paid for advancement and improved living standards. They were all heroes, even the drunks and the liars, in their ways, because they were mostly simple people who didn't have the luxuries of becoming more complicated.

I sit here and I read about the Cherry Mine disaster in 1909 and I regret that I never learned enough to tell my grandfather, Dale Dennis, that he lived an extraordinary life because it was so ordinary, and that I idealized the man for the work he did and the way he went about his life, a man who never needed self-improvement books, talk-show hosts, and shrinks. He didn't have time for a mid-life crisis or complaining...There was probably always too much work to do or family to attend to or church activity to attend.