Latest / I Believe / A Yoke Built for Two | A Dead Hog, a Shovel, and a Fifteen-Year-Old

Transcript

A Yoke Built for Two | A Dead Hog, a Shovel, and a Fifteen-Year-Old · I Believe

0:14
SPEAKER_01: May in Missouri.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Warm, not hot like it will be in July.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: Humidity in the air, mist at the bottom of the hill hiding the green grass, bright white gravel under tires.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: He opens the passenger door.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: He is 15.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: His grandma drove him.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: The Oldsmobile idles behind him until the screen door opens and a man comes out.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Then she pulls away.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: The man is the rancher's son.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: 60 years old, maybe more.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: His truck is running in the yard.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: You eat breakfast, he says.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Then, Dad's in the hospital.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Nursing home after that, probably.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: He won't be coming back to this.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: The house first.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Old white small on top of the hill.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: A garden plot on the side.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: A shotgun sitting by the door nearest the garden.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Dogwoods and oaks, leaves out full now.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: One level, two bedrooms, a kitchen, a sitting room.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Clean.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: The beds made tight with homemade quilts.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Glass jugs on the floor by the kitchen door.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Dad's corn whiskey, the son says.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: The boy can eat luncheon here if he wants.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Running water.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: The well is outside.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: A newspaper picture and a frame on the side table.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Five generations.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: A new baby.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: And a great-great-grandmother still alive to hold him.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: That's my mom, the son says.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Holding the baby, that picture is 10 years old now.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: Then the work.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Build a cattle corral and an alley good enough to back a trailer in and load.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Stay out of the old smokehouse.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: It'll fall down any day now.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: One of those sheds needs knocked down before it falls down.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: You can use the tractor to help.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: The chicken coop needs cleaned out.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Probably hasn't been since mom passed.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Most of the perimeter fence needs checked.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: Water tank's sorted.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: The truck is still running.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: The son looks at his watch.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Plenty to do.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: But there's a job that needs done before all that.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: He points down past the pens to a hog lot at the bottom of the slope.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: There's a dead hog in it.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Drag it down the hill and bury it, he says.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Shovels are in the shed.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Twenty years ago, I'd have dug it myself.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: He shakes the boy's hand.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: The truck backs around and goes down the drive, and the sound of it fades and then it's gone.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Quiet after that.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Wind in the oaks.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: A rooster somewhere below.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to I Believe, where we talk about America.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Act 1.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: The Hog Lot.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't start with the hog.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: He walks the place first, down the hill and through all of it to get eyes on everything.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: The corral isn't started.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: The materials are already there, stacked and waiting.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: Old railroad ties, cattle panels.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: Each tie has a mark on it, showing how deep to set it.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: The smokehouse is tall and narrow.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: He's never seen one before.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: A fire pit dug in the dirt floor with a simple metal ring, chains hanging overhead.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't go in.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: The chicken coop is full of old bedding, grey with dust.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: Hornets have built above the door.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: He'll have to take care of that.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: One of the water tanks is dry.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: Wolf spiders in the bottom, big ones.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: He throws a rock in and they scatter, but they can't jump out of the tank.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: An old blue Ford tractor sits by the shed.
3:40
SPEAKER_02: Small.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have a bucket to dig, and even if it did, he doesn't know how to use it.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: He'll have to learn.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: Shovels inside, and a manual post hole digger leaned in the corner.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: The pigs and chickens are closest to the house.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Cattle beyond.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: The fields run out to meet wooded hills.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: Forty acres.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: A big pond on the far end you can barely see from the house.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: A smaller one tucked in by the woods.
4:10
SPEAKER_02: The cattle are moving through the field toward water, and he watches them go.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: He's put it off as long as he could, and another hour longer.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: He walks to the hog lot, a short metal hog house, small doors on each end.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: The hog is dead in the far corner, big on its side.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: The flies rise off it when he comes near and settle again.
4:34
SPEAKER_02: No mark on it that he can see.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: No telling what killed it.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: The sun didn't say how it died.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: He said, drag it down the hill and bury it.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: He takes hold of a hind leg above the hoof and pulls.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: It moves about a foot across the metal grate floor.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: The hide loose over the bone in his grip.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: He lets go and stands there.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: The air in the hog house is close now.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: He takes hold again.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: It's downhill.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: That's the one thing going for him.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: He pulls and rests and pulls.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: The hog gathers grass and dirt ahead of itself.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: The flies come along.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: When he stops, he can hear them.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: When he pulls, he only hears his breath.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: He drags the hog under the wire fence.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: At the bottom of the hill, he picks a spot away from the ponds where the ground looks soft.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: Nobody said where.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Nobody said how deep.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: The first foot is topsoil and goes easy.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: Then the shovel rings.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: Rock.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: He works around it, pryes it, lifts it out.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: There's another one under it.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: The afternoon goes like that.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: Ring, pry, lift.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: His hands blister.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: He walks up to the well, finds some gloves, has a drink, and comes back down.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: He stands in the hole and thinks about how deep is deep enough.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: Shallow and something digs it up.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: Coyotes or dogs from the next place over.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: Then it's all to do again, and worse.
6:09
SPEAKER_02: He keeps digging.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: The light goes long across the field.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: Whipple wheels call from the trees.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Gravel at the top of the drive.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: Headlights swing across the field and stop.
6:23
SPEAKER_02: The Oldsmobile sits up by the house, lights on, pointed down the hill at him.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: She doesn't honk.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: She waits.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: He drags the hog to the edge and tips it in.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: It lands heavy.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: Filling the hole goes faster than digging it.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: He mounds the dirt over and stands there a minute in what's left of the light.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: Then he carries the shovel up the hill toward the headlights.
6:50
SPEAKER_02: That night there's supper and dishes, and then she asks, What were you doing out there tonight?
6:57
SPEAKER_02: He tells her, Did you bury it deep enough to keep the coyotes off of it?
7:02
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: He says, They never talked about it again.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Act two.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: The next morning he starts on the corral, the railroad ties outweigh him.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: He can't carry one, so he tips them end over end to where they need to go.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: The ground is the same ground he dug the grave in.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Ring, pry, lift.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Each tie has its mark.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: He digs until he thinks it's deep enough, then tips each tie into the hole, lifts it out again, and digs some more until the mark disappears.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: He tamps the dirt back in layers and pulls on the tie with his whole weight.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't move.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: He does the next one.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: Whoever marked the ties isn't there to ask.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: His hands ache and cramp for ten days until they get used to the work.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: He learns the tractor in the yard.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: The throttle is steady, and his foot coming off the clutch is not.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: It lurches and rocks and then it doesn't.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: He cleans the old bedding out of the chicken coop, swinging the spring door open and shut, and a hornet stings him in the ear.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: He buys hornet spray, empties it into the nest, knocks it off the coop with a fence post, and only gets stung the once.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: He cleans the coop down to the boards.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: The shed comes down easy.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: The tractor pushes and the frame lets go at once.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: He drags the boards clear and stacks what's worth keeping.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: It's good work and it goes fast.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: The sun comes out one day and asks what happened.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: It was the wrong shed.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: He spends weeks walking the perimeter fence and fixes what needs fixed.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: At noon he takes his boots off and eats in the kitchen, standing up.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: The house stays clean.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: In late June, he turns 16.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: He passes the test in town, and after that, he drives himself out in the mornings.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: There's a last morning she drives him.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: Neither of them marks it.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: After that, the mornings are his.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: He drives the Oldsmobile out himself, plays Metallica too loud the whole way.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: His grandma hates Metallica.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Some evenings he drives to the next town to see a girl he met.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: Alone, afternoons drift.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: He is 16, he daydreams.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: Some days he gets less done than he should, and nobody says anything about that either.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: The cattle get checked every day.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: By the end of July, the corral stands, ties to the mark, the panels hung, an alley wide enough to back a trailer in.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: He would be home for football camp in August.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: In the fall, they sold the animals.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: The cattle went up the alley the boy built into a trailer and down the drive.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: They leased the ground to a neighbor.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: The boy went home back to school.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: The old man never came home.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Act 3.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: Two summers later.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Jerry and the boy ride in Jerry's F-250 to the local college.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: Jerry is a rancher who needed another ranch hand.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: Jerry is more than a rancher.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: He teaches economics at the college full-time, with summers mostly off, and he lays carpet and linoleum in his spare time.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: He hates the flooring work.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: He does it if the money's good, or if he likes you.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: This job is at the college and the money's good.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: Industrial carpet in a dorm.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Take out the old carpet, scrape and clean the floors, put in the new.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: They set up in the gym.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: Huge rolls of new carpet, and the boy carries them by himself.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: The boy brings in the radio.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: The college cheerleaders come in for practice.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: The Jennies.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: Three of them watch him carry a roll all the way across the gym.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: Then Garth Brooks comes on the radio.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: Call in Baton Rouge.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: And they start dancing.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: And they sing along.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: He's 17.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: The old carpet comes out first.
10:47
SPEAKER_02: The boy cuts it loose and rolls it and carries the rolls out.
10:50
SPEAKER_02: Jerry tells him how the floors go.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Sweep, then sweep a second time.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: Every time you sweep again, you find something you missed.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: The boy sweeps a room and calls it clean.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Jerry sweeps it behind him and holds out his hand.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: Two staples and a chip of tile.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say anything.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: The boy sweeps the next one twice.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: The boy is fast and thorough.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: But Jerry works most jobs with him the first time he does one.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: After a few rooms, they have a system.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: Jerry measures the cleaned rooms and marks the new carpet.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: The boy cuts on the marks, carries the carpet down the hall, and lays it out nearly finished.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: Jerry follows behind and makes the last cuts, and that room is done.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: The last cut at every doorway is Jerry's.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: He kneels at the metal strip, sets the knife, and makes one pass.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: The edge lies flat.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: The boy watches how he holds it, where his weight is, what his offhand does.
11:54
SPEAKER_02: Jerry goes the speed he goes, whether the boy is watching or not.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: The rooms go by.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: Measure, mark, cut, carry, lay, finish.
12:05
SPEAKER_02: Music from the gym comes down the hall all afternoon.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day, Jerry walks every finished room.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: He tows a seam, he presses a corner with his boot.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: He stands in each doorway, looking at the floor.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Good, he says.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: They load the truck in the dark.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: Jerry put him on for as much as he could work.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: Summer and winter both.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: Tomorrow the work is hay and fences.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Postscript.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for spending this time with me today.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: The entire story you just heard is true.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: As close as memory gets.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: The ranch is real.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: 40 acres in Missouri.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: The mist.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: The shotgun by the garden door.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: The corn whiskey by the kitchen door.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: The hog and shovel are real.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: The railroad ties really came with a mark showing how deep.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: The wrong shed really came down.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: The Oldsmobile is real.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: The dancing gennies are real, and so is Colin Baton Rouge.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Jerry's real.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: His name is really Jerry.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Sweep, then sweep a second time.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: That's what he did.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Job after job.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: The five generations picture is real too.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: I never knew who the baby was.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I did omit a key detail.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I was the boy.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: 15, then 16, then 17.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: The old man in the hospital was my great-grandfather.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: He lived to be near 95.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: The man with the running truck was his son, my great uncle.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: My grandpa had passed, so my great uncle paid my wages to my grandma.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And the woman in the Oldsmobile, who waited with her lights on while I finished in the dark, was my grandma.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: I lived with her that summer and took care of the ranch until the family could figure out what to do with it.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: What they figured out was to sell the animals.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: The cattle left through the corral I built.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Years later, when my great-grandfather died, the family offered to sell me the land.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: I was a young man.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the money.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: It sold to someone else and isn't in the family anymore.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: One more thing for the ledger, the whole truth.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: The same summer I buried that hog, I left the ranch for two weeks.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: For some reason I still don't know, the state sent me for Proctered IQ and ACT tests and called me gifted.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And there was a program for kids like that at the University of Missouri, where I'd go to college a few years later.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Make a note of that, not because it's important for me, but because we'll need it in a minute for the philosophy.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Now the question.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: A political philosopher named Michael Walzer wrote a famous book about justice, and in it he took a hard look at the work nobody wants.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Dirty work, degrading.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And he made a claim.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: When people gain the power to refuse that kind of work, that's a sign a society is succeeding.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Somebody complains the welfare state made people unwilling to take certain jobs?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Walzer says good.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: That was the point.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's hear that again.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: His premise regarding work is the power to refuse degrading work is the measure of success.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: I'll be fair to him first.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Some people might refuse the work because they believe a yoke must be difficult, but mostly they refuse because it's hard and it pays badly and nobody thanks them.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: That's not weakness.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: It's just the math.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be fair to the economist too.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: They'll tell you that early hard work doesn't make the man.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: The kid who works young and rises was usually the kid who already had advantages, and the work gets the credit.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Believe them.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: You just heard about my two weeks at the university.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: I was that kid.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: If this story claimed the shovel made me, it would be a lie.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: So what's true?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Nobody told me how deep to bury the hog.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Nobody checked.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I worked on the ranch the rest of the summer and never checked.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to know.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: My grandma asked the only question anyone ever asked about it.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Did you bury it deep enough to keep the coyotes off?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't know.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Thirty some years on, I still don't.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: The railroad ties came with a mark.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Some man who wasn't there set that standard, and it held long after he couldn't come check it.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I learned about marks.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: A mark can tell you how deep.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: It can't show you how.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Alone, a boy guesses.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he guesses right and nobody ever knows.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he knocks down the wrong shed.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Jerry showed me how.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Jerry worked the first day of every new job beside me.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: Jerry marked, and I cut on his marks, and he made the last cut at every doorway, and at the end of the day he walked every room.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think about who Jerry was.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: An economics professor with a ranch of his own.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: The man with the most choices in the county spent his summer days on his knees in a dorm hallway.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: He had every power Walzer measures, every power to refuse.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: He did the work if the money was good, or if he liked you.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: There's another philosopher, John Rawls, and he asked a different question than Walzer did.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Walzer looked at the hard work and asked, who should have to do it, and what we owe the ones who do.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Rawls said, Decide the rules before you know, because time and chance happen to us all.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Decide the rules before you know whether you're born the professor's kid or the kid whose family is selling the ranch.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Then tell me what's fair.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Rawls asked the better question, because you don't know.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: You don't know if you're the boy with the marks or the boy without them.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: And nobody can honestly answer.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Nobody should have to dig.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: The hog doesn't care about our philosophy.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: The hog is dead and somebody has to bury it, and the tractor doesn't have a bucket.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has to dig.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: When we gain the power to refuse the work, the work doesn't disappear.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: It moves to whoever can't refuse it, and we agree not to look.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: So here's my answer, and I don't agree with Walzer.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: The measure of a society isn't how many of us escape the work.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: It's who climbs down into it on purpose and who they bring with them.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Scripture says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Something to note about that verse.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word translated easy does not mean effortless.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: It carries the sense of something kind, good, or useful.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Early Christians described Christ's yoke as one that does not bruise the neck of the person carrying it.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: The burden is still a burden, but the yoke is easy, and the burden is good.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: And a key point, a yoke is built for two.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: For Christians, that might mean the Almighty is on one side of the yoke.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: In old agriculture, you pair a green animal with a seasoned one.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: The seasoned one carries the weight and sets the pace, and the young one learns the pull without being crushed by it.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: The burden never gets lighter, it gets shared.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: I stood in my first yoke alone for a summer.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: It worked out for me.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: You now know some of the reasons why, and they don't have much to do with the shovel.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: For most kids standing alone, the numbers say it doesn't work out.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: So, here's the ask.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Be the one who chooses the work, the dirty job, the hard job, the one you've earned the right to refuse.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Choose it in front of your kids, and teach them to choose it too.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: Not because suffering is holy, but because it's work that needs done, and doing it next to someone is how people get made.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere near you as a green kid, don't wait for a program to save them.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: A program can't hold the other end of a yoke.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Mark the cut.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Stay in the room.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: My great grandfather's ranch is still out there, but it's not in the family anymore.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: The corral, too, as far as I know.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: In the grave?
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I never went back to look.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: It never stank.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: I never saw a coyote.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: But they mostly move at night.
19:50
SPEAKER_03: Everybody's got a story from the truth about the fly.