Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you’re enjoying the day away from work and with family and friends. On our semi-secular holiday, we give thanks not only for what we have, but also for the blessings we anticipate in the year to come.
We anticipate blessings, both small and large. Someone in the family may be looking forward to making the basketball team, a promotion at work, an extended vacation or acceptance at a wished-for university. Our baseline wish – perhaps assumption – is that the blessings we enjoy will continue for another year: good health, safety and the level of prosperity to which we have become accustomed.
Because Thanksgiving is an American holiday, we expect new blessings or at least those things will remain as they are. Thanksgiving is a holiday of backward and forward glances; looking to past and future, we see that things are not as they have always been or will be.
My Thanksgiving memories, of the 60s and 70s, are of a family that belonged to the now disappeared “working class middle class.” That class rose after the Second World War and was primarily comprised of factory workers who were either supported by unions or whose companies paid a wage designed to compete with union jobs.
My dad was in the building trades, not the factory, but Rochester was a factory town and the construction industry relied on the steady expansion of the factories and the corollary hospitals and schools and housing developments that we thought would go on forever.
Our house, like many, had one income, my dad’s. Mom stayed home, raised the kids, kept the house. Working class middle class families lived modestly. Second cars, if any, were “beaters.” Vacations meant visits with relatives, camping or a cabin at a lake. Sons and daughters were expected to go to college (as few of our parents had), but few considered the Ivy League.
It was the American dream. Our parents had done better than our Old World-accented grandparents, we expected to do better still. Plentiful manufacturing jobs offered a career’s worth of decent wages and benefits and promised a pension. Once a year, we gave thanks and ate a turkey.
It turned out to be the last – the only, really – generation of that particular American dream. My dad and his peers were the last one to get away with their pensions intact, although some had to take early retirement or a second job for a few years to tide over, but they made it.
The factories in my hometown made products that are all but obsolete – camera film and carburetors. The manufacturing jobs moved south, then offshore. The construction industry in the north stalled when the factories closed.
In my dad’s era, journeymen were local and did skilled work. Apprentices performed the manual labor. They too, were local and hoped to be tomorrow’s journeymen.
I spoke recently with a friend in the modern construction industry. He’s a journeyman, in both the modern and the original sense of the word. He’s a skilled craftsman and to stay employed, he must travel from town to town. He’s paid better than the journeymen of my dad’s generation, but it’s poor compensation for working far from home. All but the most skilled work is done by underpaid, undocumented immigrants who are easily found and easily disposed.
The working class middle class is gone. The middle class is shrinking. Statistics compiled by the federal government show that U.S. wages (adjusted for inflation) peaked at $310.99 per week in 1977, when I was a high school sophomore.
It was wrong, I suppose, for us to think our working class middle class bounty would go on forever. The managers at some companies figured out that the largesse enjoyed by that class could be transferred elsewhere (executive salaries and bonuses, mostly). A few campaign contributions, a few trade agreements and the job was done.
Every year, when I bow my head over the bird, I give thanks I was born when I was, that I had the opportunities I’ve had. If we, who have benefited so much, are truly thankful, then we’ll take action to see that the opportunities we’ve had are passed on to others.
Working Class Middle Class
Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you’re enjoying the day away from work and with family and friends. On our semi-secular holiday, we give thanks not only for what we have, but also for the blessings we anticipate in the year to come.
We anticipate blessings, both small and large. Someone in the family may be looking forward to making the basketball team, a promotion at work, an extended vacation or acceptance at a wished-for university. Our baseline wish – perhaps assumption – is that the blessings we enjoy will continue for another year: good health, safety and the level of prosperity to which we have become accustomed.
Because Thanksgiving is an American holiday, we expect new blessings or at least those things will remain as they are. Thanksgiving is a holiday of backward and forward glances; looking to past and future, we see that things are not as they have always been or will be.
My Thanksgiving memories, of the 60s and 70s, are of a family that belonged to the now disappeared “working class middle class.” That class rose after the Second World War and was primarily comprised of factory workers who were either supported by unions or whose companies paid a wage designed to compete with union jobs.
My dad was in the building trades, not the factory, but Rochester was a factory town and the construction industry relied on the steady expansion of the factories and the corollary hospitals and schools and housing developments that we thought would go on forever.
Our house, like many, had one income, my dad’s. Mom stayed home, raised the kids, kept the house. Working class middle class families lived modestly. Second cars, if any, were “beaters.” Vacations meant visits with relatives, camping or a cabin at a lake. Sons and daughters were expected to go to college (as few of our parents had), but few considered the Ivy League.
It was the American dream. Our parents had done better than our Old World-accented grandparents, we expected to do better still. Plentiful manufacturing jobs offered a career’s worth of decent wages and benefits and promised a pension. Once a year, we gave thanks and ate a turkey.
It turned out to be the last – the only, really – generation of that particular American dream. My dad and his peers were the last one to get away with their pensions intact, although some had to take early retirement or a second job for a few years to tide over, but they made it.
The factories in my hometown made products that are all but obsolete – camera film and carburetors. The manufacturing jobs moved south, then offshore. The construction industry in the north stalled when the factories closed.
In my dad’s era, journeymen were local and did skilled work. Apprentices performed the manual labor. They too, were local and hoped to be tomorrow’s journeymen.
I spoke recently with a friend in the modern construction industry. He’s a journeyman, in both the modern and the original sense of the word. He’s a skilled craftsman and to stay employed, he must travel from town to town. He’s paid better than the journeymen of my dad’s generation, but it’s poor compensation for working far from home. All but the most skilled work is done by underpaid, undocumented immigrants who are easily found and easily disposed.
The working class middle class is gone. The middle class is shrinking. Statistics compiled by the federal government show that U.S. wages (adjusted for inflation) peaked at $310.99 per week in 1977, when I was a high school sophomore.
It was wrong, I suppose, for us to think our working class middle class bounty would go on forever. The managers at some companies figured out that the largesse enjoyed by that class could be transferred elsewhere (executive salaries and bonuses, mostly). A few campaign contributions, a few trade agreements and the job was done.
Every year, when I bow my head over the bird, I give thanks I was born when I was, that I had the opportunities I’ve had. If we, who have benefited so much, are truly thankful, then we’ll take action to see that the opportunities we’ve had are passed on to others.
© Mark Floegel 2007