Changing Professions in Arizona

Changing professions is like reincarnating. In an earlier incarnation, I made furniture in the heat in Tucson, Arizona. Lots of it. My shop hummed, howled, buzzed and screeched seven days a week for close to ten hours a day. We took on practically every job that came our way from furniture repair and cabinetmaking to large wholesale furniture orders. Once we even made a missile testing box to the specifications of a local defense contractor. What can I say? We labored desperately. When I say we, I refer to myself and my “employees”. Despite the fact that I was the “proprietor” of the business, it was never clear whether I was in business for myself or for the purpose of keeping others with bread on their tables. It amazes me to this day how so much labor can be expended for so little profit at the end of the day.

Before my woodworking incarnation, I had decided that the Christian ministry was not anything that I could really do despite having spent three years of graduate study for the Master of Divinity degree and having worked in a parish as an assistant minister for young adults. Instead, I needed work that tied me firmly to the earth because I felt like I was drifting off like a loose balloon into ethereal realms. I was (I have since moved on to a third incarnation as a teacher) a self-taught woodworker and worked on my own from the beginning. I started by making guitars in a closet in a Washington DC apartment. I followed the instructions in a book and succeeded in producing a handful of poorly crafted instruments. Then, after moving to Nebraska, I moved out of the closet and into a garage and began working on simple furniture projects that I had a better chance of building well. I apprenticed myself to myself for approximately five years and managed to accumulate a few immensely heavy old tools that I purchased at auction including a cast iron, crescent band-saw with three feet diameter wheels. Then I hauled my life to Arizona in a trailer that I pulled behind a pick-up that I purchased expressly for the move. The trailer was full of very heavy tools and everything we owned. The pick-up labored in low gear over the requisite mountain passes that were on the way to Tucson. I set up my equipment first in and behind my brother’s garage. He helped me by buying thirty cords of mesquite logs that I turned into lumber on my band-saw. With the lumber I started making furniture and cabinets in a Southwestern colonial style. At the time it seemed that everyone was moving to Arizona, and they all wanted to buy furniture with a Southwestern look. So my work began to sell well and soon I was faced with not having enough hours in the day to supply the demand, so I hired help, and my business was launched.

There were six of us: Ignacio and his two sons (Mario and Arturo), Dean, Steve and myself. Dean was the first craftsman I hired. He was a serious, intelligent person but crippled by alcohol. He worked hard every day, but usually he was the last to arrive for work, and typically he was in a bad mood the result of having drunk too much the previous evening. I was never sure what had led to his alcoholism except that his parents were divorced and his father was a psychologist with whom Dean didn’t talk very often. He kept a Norton Commando motorcycle in the living room of his small apartment (one didn’t leave such objects outside in Tucson knowing they would be stolen by morning). Dean was also an avid reader and so he brought intellectual companionship as well as wood-working skill.

Steve was even more of a mystery. He was a Vietnam veteran and clearly had come back with some emotional problems. He fancied himself an artist and sometimes would take forever to finish a piece as if he were putting the finishing touches on the Mona Lisa. He took some ribbing for his dilatory production methods, but it must be said that his work did have a special luster to it as it left the shop. He pretended to know the arcana of French polishes and when someone wanted a piece restored, it went straight to Steve. He lived in a ramshackle building without electricity or running water. Although he was a gentle person, his emotions were obscure, and he seemed unpredictable even if he worked dependably. He talked to himself as he worked. Mario and Arturo thought Steve was a joke and teased him at every opportunity. Steve took it well and only glowered in response.

Ignacio was a native of Nogales, Mexico and had bounced back and forth across the border most of his life. When he worked in my shop, he lived in South Tucson with his fourth common law wife who was less than half his age. He had produced many children in his many marriages; he once confessed that he wasn’t sure of the exact number. His wife used to gift me with green corn tamales the memory of which makes me salivate fifteen years later. Ignacio was raised in a wood shop and had carpentry in his blood. There was no project too sophisticated that he wouldn’t tackle with serene confidence. Once I went to a lady’s house in the foothills to estimate a job. She produced an Architectural Digest and showed me a picture and said she wanted that (pointing at the photograph and then at the wall) there and pointed to a long empty wall. The picture was of a floor to ceiling, white lacquered wall system that included brass screen doors, recessed lighting, three depths, angled end cabinets, drawers, touch latch flush doors and an elaborate crown molding. The wall she wanted to cover was twenty feet long. This project was enough to give any cabinetmaker pause, but I knew Ignacio could handle it (or I was pretty sure he could handle it), so I measured the wall, bid the job and took the magazine back to the shop. I showed Ignacio the picture and gave him the overall dimensions and asked him if he could build it and what the materials would be. He nodded. I expected him to make a drawing and take some time figuring it out, but he knocked on my office door about five minutes later with a list of materials. By the time I had returned from the lumberyard, he was ready to start ripping up the stock. He had done all of the calculations in his head and he started to work without even a sketch or a parts list. Some three weeks later or so he was putting on the finishing touches of white lacquer. He had built it in such a way so that it could be disassembled into sections and reassembled on location without being able to tell that it had a seam. All of us in the shop were excellent woodworkers but Ignacio was of a different order entirely. Mario and Arturo had never worked in a shop, but Ignacio asked me if I would hire them as well and he would train them. Knowing Ignacio’s work, it was an easy decision to take them on. It wasn’t long before they had picked up the trade and were producing work like the rest of us.

It shouldn’t be hard to infer that Ignacio was what we so kindly refer to as an “illegal alien” as if he arrived in a UFO and disguised himself as human in order to takeover our society. As an employer, I didn’t ask. He simply provided me with a social security number that he had picked up somewhere and set to work. Whose account was ultimately credited with Ignacio’s taxes is beyond my knowledge. I’m sure many Mexican workers have been fleeced in this manner, and they regarded it as simply the price they paid to work. The idea that Mexican workers don’t pay taxes and are parasites on our economy simply is untrue as far as I can tell. Instead, they contribute vitality, skill and labor to our economy, not to mention culture and beauty.

Dean and Steve were leery of Ignacio at first because he was so good at what he did. Such talent is inevitably threatening to lesser lights unless they adjust, appreciate and learn. And ultimately we all learned. Having mangled my fingers in various tools, I took particular notice that Ignacio never hurt himself. Once I saw him be annoyed with himself that he had been so careless as to get a splinter in a finger. He worked gracefully and never seemed hurried, and yet he was fabulously productive.

Tucson was hot and it is getting hotter, and there were no summer vacations. The light is so bright that everything appears simultaneously illumined from without and within. Light-drenched. Shade seems mysteriously unavailable as if it were being desiccated by objects that ordinarily should be producing it. We labored desperately and put food on our tables. We went home each day knowing that we had earned our living by the quickly evaporating sweat of our brows and the skill of our hands.

After some years of this incarnation, it was time to turn the wheel of my karma. I sold my tools and went back to school to study philosophy and get certified as a teacher. Ultimately my primary business account was picked up by Ignacio. Some years later, I received a letter from him asking that I might recommend him for citizenship. I did so enthusiastically without hesitation. The last time I ran into him, he had his own shop in Tucson, filled with tools and busy, productive sons. Regrettably I lost track of Dean and Steve. I imagine them, after a long day at work having a drink in a south Tucson bar, but who knows what work they are practicing today.

Check out this great Guthrie song about illegal immigrants titled Deportee.