Dirty Business: Maybe we should respect the people who really do the work

Maybe you have been flipping through the channels on a Tuesday night, and come across a popular Discovery Channel show called "Dirty Jobs."

Reality shows are scattered all over the tube like dandelions in your backyard in May, and I usually don't take much notice of the aging rock stars "dating" a gaggle of skanky post-enhancement surgery chuckleheads and such.

But this "Dirty Jobs" phenomenon made me think.

We have apparently evolved so completely away from having any willingness to get our hands dirty for a day's pay that the very idea of manual labor is eccentric enough to make us sit and watch it all curiously on TV.

Extraordinary. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Most of us parents start scrimping at our children's birth so we can help pay their tuition to college so that they can get what we consider "a good job" - one that has come to mean a six-figure paycheck earned in nifty business casual fashion, with early-outs Friday to bogart the best tee times.

Gosh forbid they end up doing "dirty work."

There is very little desire to work, per say - more to "supervise." Just about anyone who has tried to hire someone to actually perform some work in Storm Lake can tell you that. Even a wet-behind-the-ears kid coming out of college wants to own the shop day one, not work their way up. And forget expecting most job marketeers to do anything that may get dirt under their fingernails, mud on their shoes, or come with a smell, a lack of air conditioned comfort, or "gasp" anything that might cause them to have to exert themselves beyond the hour of 5 p.m., at which moment a bag of designer potato chips and a bottle of designer water in waiting for them as they sprawl on a leather sofa to watch somebody... can you believe it - do actual work, on a TV show.

Believe it or not, young ones, there was a time when work meant opportunity. My first job as a teenager was roofing houses - to be specific, using a wire brush to painstakingly scrub red hot tar as it dripped down the walls. I found dirt in places it shouldn't be physically possible for it to get. I was sweaty, sore, sunburned - and quite content.

Not only did it pay better than fast food, but it came with blue skies and a superb view down on the girls as they strolled past, and if you were made of stern enough stuff to work the long hours that nobody else wanted, you didn't have to worry about where college money would come from.

Things have changed. Physical work is below us now. Heck, we wouldn't even change a tire on our own car, if it meant we might get dust on our expensive "pre-worn" jeans.

Instead of respecting work and those who do it, we have come to view it as unusual and eccentric - good TV.

It is a miracle, I tell you, a miracle that we manage to find enough people who aren't scared of work so that we are able to have food handed to us to eat, our garbage taken away, our street paved and snow cleared for us and so on, while we sit comfortably in our cubicles and whimper about how much it costs us taxpayer.

We probably couldn't survive like our great-grandparents could. Haven't got it in us anymore to do the work we need done, for ourselves. We're allergic to dirt and grease.

That's why a show on doing dirty work can be a hit. Even a generation ago, people would have laughed at a show that packaged doing things like regular stuff like septic tank cleaning, feeding hogs and boning fish (real episodes) as extreme reality entertainment.

And that's why it is so laughable to hear people cry about how immigrants are "taking jobs away" from "real Americans."

Where exactly is this happening?

What is happening, in Storm Lake and I presume elsewhere, is that immigrants from Mexico and other more depressed nations are doing our dirty work - the dirty, sweaty, freezing, smelly jobs that a whole lot of the rest of us couldn't even imagine doing.

Some of them were government officials and even doctors in their native countries - here they work at the meat plant, and I don't hear them complain.

If it came down to it, would we cut hogs or clean out sanitary sewer line to feed our families? Or would we sooner stand on line in our shiny shoes and sweater-vests with out hands out for an unemployment check until something opens up someday befitting of our management potential?

I'm afraid we know the answer to that question, don't we?

A whole lot of people say they wish things would go back to "how they used to be" - and that all the "outsiders" would pack up and go away forever.

Yeah, sure they do.

Fact is, we need the immigrants more than they need us. We need everyone who doesn't mind getting their faces dirty. Firemen, farmers, ditchdiggers, soldiers, shinglers. Their work matters more than mine does, and sure lasts longer.

We have to have people with strong backs and no qualms about doing dirty, unpleasant, hard work for a time to give their families a step up.

Without them, and without an aging stock of good, honest hardworking people who have carried the load for many years in our local hands-on workforce, we would have an awful lot of dirty jobs crying to get done to keep our community and agri-industry working.

And not one of us could afford for it not to be working.

So, while we watch people working for our entertainment, and see our regional development organization collect a couple million more bucks to spend on attracting the "right kind" of people - we might want to take care of the people who still our dirty work for us.

They are the backbone, and a dirty face is worth something more than our entertainment.

Respect them, no matter what language they may speak.