Listener of Stories

I should create a job title for myself, "Listener of Stories," wherein I get to listen to stories that people tell me. It's one of my favorite things, like listening to the father-in-law tell his stories about leaving the farm in Winfred and venturing out on his own, taking off with a group of friends and working building grain bins in Minnesota, or serving in the Marines in 29 Palms, California. Or listening to my friend tell about the vacuum line on his car, how here it does pull, here it doesn't. Or even to a new aquaintance, Leon Saugstad, who came to fix the water softener, how he went to five different schools growing up in the area, some of them now non-existent, as his family rented and farmed one farm after the other. Or another friend tell about cruising up over the Rocky Mountains into Coeur D'Alene or growing up in Bucks County, in eastern Pennsylvania. That's a good day for me, soaking up stories, and telling some of my own.

I actually got a real job yesterday, a strenuous one. But I lost it about three minutes later, so my experience as a fabric layer is still limited to one brief voluntary stint and those three minutes in my imagination, my favorite kind of labor.