Cafe 42 Blog

Had some yard work done that required cutting concrete. My gardener gave me a quote of $150 to do the job. I accepted his bid as fair and equitable, assuming the job would likely take less than 20 minutes, and we agreed on last Sunday for him to do the work.

He arrived promptly 8:30 Sunday morning and began cutting our concrete patio. He used a small electric saw with a 4” blade, which I thought odd, since the last guy I’d seen cut concrete had a major power saw that had to be held with both hands and came with a water supply to keep the blade cool.

Gardener struggled to cut a mere 20” of concrete for over 5 hours. He left once, to buy new blades for his little saw. He did not take a lunch break. In fact, he took no breaks at all.

Ninty-four degrees at mid-day when I brought him some ice water. Sweat dripped down his face and cut brown lines in the concrete chalk covering his skin. He gave me a crooked-tooth grin of thanks, took a long drink then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Caliente!” (Hot!)

I nodded agreement and pointed to his little saw. Pequeño (Small), I said, closing the gap between thumb and forefinger. Why so small? Harder to cut the concrete. I spoke in English, as my Spanish sucks, but he got it.

He laughed. You’re right. Yes! Si! Demasiado pequeño (too small). Herramienta incorrecta (wrong tool). He picked up his tiny cutter. Muy caro! Expensive! $100 for herramienta. $35 for blades. Ay, yi yi!

I’m paying him $150 for the job. He’d just spent over that buying equipment to do the work. I was mind boggled. I assumed he had all he needed to do the job when he gave me his bid. He went back to work and I went inside and got the receipt from the equipment rental place I’d visited the previous week. Only $24.99 to rent a jigsaw for 24 hours! At the time I rented the jigsaw, I inquired about renting a concrete cutter. $59.00 for 24 hours. Why hadn’t my gardener just rented the right equipment? He could have got the job done in half an hour and actually made money.

I took the receipt outside and showed it him. Do you know of this place? Just down the road?

He took the receipt and studied the logo at the top of the paper. His expression brightened. Si! Yes! Alquiler de equipos Rentals. Rents. Yes?

Yes! Concrete saw is $59.00 bucks for the day. Taken you 30 minutes to do the job. Why didn’t you rent a saw? Using hand signals and body gestures I somehow communicated.

Ah. No. No rent. Can’t. No license. No seguro (insurance). Not legal here.

Four years running our gardener’s been coming and he is the best gardener I’ve ever had. More than a gardener, he fixes our watering system, landscapes, trims trees, sets fences. He comes every Tuesday around 9:00am, rain or shine, and is on time, every time. He always smiles and waves when we cross paths. He is a stellar model of a dedicated hard worker for our children, and the community at large.

Yet, he can not get a Green Card.

His company won’t sponsor him. He has no legal relatives here. He is not a refugee. Even if he could get one, the process of applying and then waiting for the Card takes years. My gardener needs, and in fact, has work now. He can’t wait years to get U.S. approval to work for a living.

Why doesn’t he leave his job for Americans and just go back to Mexico?

I had three other bids on the concrete work I needed. A neighborhood contractor quoted me $1,600 to do the job. A mason didn’t want the job because it was 20 miles from his location and not worth the trip. A local handyman quoted $800, but couldn’t start the job for over two months, and required half upfront to hold my time slot. All were licensed, bonded, U.S. citizens.

Until our conversation last Sunday, I had no idea my gardener was here illegally, and driving without a license. The man is probably in his early 30s. He’ll die young from hard labor, lack of medical care, working with poor or improper equipment, like breathing toxic concrete dust without a mask, carcinogenic construction materials, garden poisons. If he is graced with children, and I hope he is, and will pass on his excellent work ethic to them, he still will not be granted U.S. citizenship, and is at risk of deportation. Like many illegals lately, he could end up having to take his American children back to live in the Mexico he left for a ‘better life.’

Sunday alone, our gardener put over $150 into the U.S. economy, counting just his little saw and multiple blades. He will buy his food here, pay for his housing here, his utilities, his fuel costs. He lives here, and contributes to our economy with every dollar he spends. He probably pays taxes, as do many illegals working for large corporations. My gardener is an employee of a huge gardening and landscaping company.

Next time you bite into that peach, remember it only costs 39 cents because illegals planting and picking the fruit are cheap labor. (Your iPhone5 is made in China for the same reason, yet Apple is rewarded with tax breaks instead of being kicked out of the country.) Billions in tax dollars and consumer spending in the U.S. by illegals annually, yet they get none of the protections of our citizens. No medicare. No social security or unemployment benefits. No welfare or government handouts. Illegals are invisible here.

I am privileged by birthright for the lifestyle we live, and can provide for our kids. I haven’t a clue, and never want one, how it feels to be so far from home, without ‘inalienable rights.’ But I know one thing for sure—our gardener deserves the ‘better life’ he sought when moving here, the one [ostensibly] available to most citizens who work hard to prosper.

“I’m educated, but uniformed,” Sheryl said deadpan. “And I want to stay uniformed.”

I laughed.

“Laughing is good,” she said.

But I was laughing at her, and not with happiness, but skin-crawling disgust.

An accountant for over 30 years, at one time running her own firm, Sheryl has an MBA from Wharton, which informed her about the world of finance. Unfortunately, Sheryl’s thirst for knowledge ended as soon as she passed her CPA exam.

To fill the schisms in her understanding of our world beyond her accounting job, she forms her opinions based on interactions with the few family members and neighbors remaining in her tiny, financially depressed Colorado town. They were, and still are angry they lost their coal mining jobs the town of Delta, CO was built on. They blame democrats for closing down their coal mines, though their mines have been closing since the 1990s, with natural gas, as well as renewable energy sources of wind and solar, slowly replacing dirty coal.

“Obama killed this town,” she assured me on the phone last week. “Closing all the mines for no good reason.”

“Well, global warming is a pretty good reason to get rid of coal,” I offered. “Don’t ya think?”

“It sure isn’t doing this town any good,” her retort.

“Yeah, well, it’ll do the planet some good, and the rest of humanity, as without clean air, we all die, even the good folks left in Delta.”

Dead silence on the other end of the line. I waited some time for her to say something, but she didn’t.

“Sher, you do know that burning coal pollutes the air with toxic chemistry like lead, mercury, and other heavy metals, right?”

“All I know is Delta was once vibrant, and now it’s like a ghost town. And that didn’t need to happen.”

“You’re right. It didn’t. Had the town acted, invited other industries to set up shop, or the miners had gone back to school to retrain for thinking jobs, instead of manual labor that a robot can do better…” I let my voice trail off, as I knew I’d lost her.

“Anyway,” she finally offered. “I find talking about stuff like this tedious. It’s so depressing. Friends and family I know have lost their jobs, their homes, which destroyed their marriages, like my sister and her ex-husband.”

Sheryl’s sister married the high school quarterback the day they both graduated because she was pregnant with his baby. He was injured his first year with the Colorado State Rams, quit college shortly thereafter, and has lived on welfare since. He was never a coal miner.

“But you know that burning more coal to generate electricity is bad for the planet, and every living thing on it, right?”

“I don’t know anything but what I see. And the air around where I live looks just fine to me.”

“Be that as it may, the world doesn’t begin and end in Delta, Colorado, Sher,” I reminded her. “Dirty air travels around the planet. Come on, girl, you are highly educated. You know this.”

“I’m educated, but uniformed,” she said. “And I prefer to stay uninformed.

I laughed. Hearing someone tout their ignorance was shocking.

“Laughing is good,” she sighed, with my heavy sigh. “Like I said, talking about all this drama, or reading about it, or even watching the news, is just so tedious.”

I didn’t try to engage her further. I made some excuse about having to go somewhere and hung up, but I still can not get her words out of my head. She proudly proclaimed she’s “uninformed,” and chooses to stay this way.

Sheryl’s brother committed suicide at 45 years old. Why? Her family has no idea. They didn’t, and don’t deal in weighty, “tedious” subjects. Ever. It was so much easier to ignore his depression, keep the conversations light. Makes everyone less uptight.

Sheryl is a Republican. Choosing to remain ignorant to the rise in global temperatures most every scientist in the world now acknowledges is real, she voted for Trump and his band of merry rich men who promised to bring the coal industry back to Delta, CO. This has yet to happen.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. It didn’t help Sheryl’s brother, or her mother who still grieves the loss of her son, or the unemployed coal miners get their jobs back. Ignoring “tedious” issues didn’t serve Sheryl either. Ignorance is corrosive, lazy, self-interested—sticking your head in the sand, or more precisely, up your own ass to live carefree, thoughtlessly, binge watching TV. Choosing to remain “uninformed,” avoiding ‘weighty’ issues to ‘lighter,’ trite exchanges about the latest celebrity gossip, or [scripted] realty TV, serves nobody.

If the human race, and every living thing on this planet is to survive the technology people create, each of us must invest the time and the energy it takes to become “informed” about important local and global issues, as they arise. All of us must work to defeat ignorance, by seeking knowledge from those who share our perspectives, and those who don’t. When we learn to really listen to each other, seek to understand, with empathy, not judgment, exchange informed opinions, and engage in the art of compromise…humanity will thrive. ; }