Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
We live in a time when image is more important than substance. At least that’s the world that influencers, advertisers, politicians, and the other leeches would have you believe.
The reality is that competence matters. Actions matter. Results matter. All the hyperbole spewing from Washington, D.C., commercials during a ballgame or those annoying pop-ups that sometimes dominate social media are just attempts to confuse, misdirect, and outright fool their audience.
One of the more ridiculous examples I’ve seen in person of image over substance came one summer in Yellowstone National Park.
The National Park Service was restoring one of its historic buildings, but they weren’t doing it like your local hardworking contractor would. Instead, it was all image and very little substance.
Just looking at the crew they hired told me everything I ever needed to know about the competence of these workers.
No, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a cover that doesn’t contain a book. Yep, these clowns were bookless.
They were all 20-somethings dressed identically. Each one had that perfect Hollywood “four-day shadow” beard. The types that are all the rage on television and in print media.
They all wore white, “wife beater” style t-shirts, with blue jeans, and brand new, unscuffed boots.
Add the cowboy hats, and the bright red scarves tied around their necks, and you get the picture.
I’m sure the teenage girls and the college girls working at the stores in the park took notice. Same here. Only I wanted to puke.
They were working with old logs, replacing them with new logs, freshly stained with dark red, oil-based stain. None of them had the slightest stain on their pants, shirts, or brand-new calf-skinned gloves.
As a guy who has worked a lot with wood stain, hauled logs out of the mountains, and built nearly every conceivable structure from sheds to 4000 square foot homes, I wasn’t buying it.
By 8 am on Monday morning, my crew and I were covered with dirt, sawdust, and whatever chemical we were painting, spraying, or applying. These guys were fresh as daisies.
The difference is that actual construction crews are all about substance; if they’re not, the boss loses the contract, and you lose your job. It’s as simple as that.
It’s a practice that has survived the “kinder,” “gentler”’ modern workplace. You’ll find the same expectations in the oil field, the football fields, factory floors, farms, ranches, and in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. They’re all the final bastions of male society in a rapidly feminized America.
Not that women don’t work hard, they do, often, more than the men around them. But we’ve had two generations now that have tried to take the boy out of young boys. Whether it’s chemically based with Ritalin or behavior-based with constant discipline, it is now a crime to be an active, energetic young man in many school systems.
That brings us back to the red scarf boys “working” near Fishing Bridge.
We were in the park for a few days, so I had a chance to measure their progress. It was a crew of a dozen guys, and in three days, they managed to pull out a six-foot section of one corner of one shed and replace it with a new log.
Twelve workers, eight hours a day for three days, and they were able to complete a job that any three of the guys I’ve worked with over the last 50 years could have accomplished before lunch in a single day.
It was both depressing and hilarious at the same time.
Pathetic effort, but boy, they looked good not doing it.
I’d put a lot of money down on a bet that none of the GQ construction workers from that crew ever went into construction as a career.
As my late friend, and legendary football coach Harold Bailey sometimes said to the boys when they weren’t working hard at practice, “You guys are pretty, you can’t block, tackle, or throw, but boy are you pretty.”
The kids never liked that comment, and it usually brought better effort.
That’s what the intent of it was, not an insult, OK, a little bit of an insult, but more of a prod to be as good as they could be.
My bulletin boards always received low marks. I wasn’t creative, I didn’t put a lot of flashy boundaries around the bulletin boards on the walls of my classroom, and I sure didn’t cut out themed images.
My wife, on the other extreme, had a room that was a showcase of innovative, eye-catching, thought-inducing images.
She taught kindergarten, and I dealt with junior high kids and taught history and math at the high school level. By their late teens, kids need substance, not imagery, and that’s what I tried to supply.
I may not have had creative images, but the front of my room, above the blackboard, was lined with thought-provoking, inspiring quotes.
Some were basic, like one of my favorites, “Don’t wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” That one got me in trouble with a few nervous, overly sensitive, defensive administrators who had their feelings hurt, thinking it was about them. Nope, I never thought about most of you that much.
My favorite quotes came from my equally favorite historical characters, Jefferson, Twain, Nietzsche, and John Wooden.
For youngsters, you can look a long time to find someone more inspiring than the late head coach of the UCLA Bruins, John Wooden.
He lived a life epitomized by the phrases he used.
The first that comes to mind is this: “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”
That’s akin to one on discipline, paraphrased as doing what’s right, when it needs to be done.
My favorite, and the one that fits the image of those fashion models disguised as construction workers in Yellowstone National Park that summer, is this one.
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are”.
Character is what it’s all about. The lack of it is why politicians, advertisers, and influencers are reviled by intelligent, hardworking people.
A final quote I’ve heard on the job site, in the office, the classroom, and on the field. “Do something, even if it’s wrong.”