SO THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY GIRLS

My load’s hotter than your load! My load’s better than yours! My load’s better cause muh dick got no sweater. My load’s better than yours!

God bless Israel and don’t get that ditty stuck in yer head!

My great uncles, a whole scrappy litter of Wolgadeutsche boys who were in their 70’s in the ’80’s, could wreck plenty still, even though to me they were already slow dancing with old scratch.

They were not big guys but had that old country sinewy musculature that could only accrue to those who were intimate with caloric scarcity while continuing to chop wood that need chopping.

They worked in auto shops and machine shops, grain silos, fertilizer plants, tugboats, and farmed wheat like their ancestors.

One of my favorites was a legitimate lumberjack with hands like hickory-smoked catcher’s mitts with a face to match. He also made the best potato sausage, which he would mail to us every autumn.

They were probably quite poor by today’s standards, but it seemed like most people weren’t far on either side of them in that regard. My family included. More than once we would “buy” gas from my uncle’s farm tank to get us on the road for the long stretch through the plateau.

They were kind of scary. Most of them smoked heavily. Some took to the drink a bit much. They were always a little bit grumpy about something. But they also laughed a good bit and would live whatever contentment they could find, as demonstrated by their evening porch sitting with my aunts. A bygone clockwork.

Somehow, they all knew how to grab me by the small of my elbow or the back of my neck, in that affectionate way that you might also snuff out a chicken for dinner, to steer me right or just to say hi.

They always seemed to have the same clothes on. Work shirts that were just shirts worn for work and not the branded chinkarmor of today. Non-ironic overalls with oil stains. They often did not smell good.

When they weren’t tinkering on that damn old chevy while still managing to lip saddle an ash the length of my index finger, they were attending to something else physical. Which would include putting me and my brother and our cousins to task on something similar. Herding chickens. We were the chickens.

I loved those summer visits.

By the time my uncles finally met their maker the softness of progress had metastasized. Whatever was left of the Old Country was like my memories of those moments.

We were soft kids already, in comparison to the olds, but we had a connection to that time and place that forged them. We got some heavy doses of reality along the way. We were taught to value that, to hone ourselves.

Measuring testosterone, the tonic masculinity of Patriarchy, is a lot like measuring any metric of Progress. You just have to add, “…and that is a good thing because…” to keep the Dream alive. The Narrative continues to ignore reality at all costs until some day it costs all.

I remember being on the river with my grandfather running a trap line in the 80’s. He wasn’t a huge man but his strength was awe inspiring to a 14yo boy. He was in his late 60’s then and ALS would cut down the toughest but kindest man I have known at 72.

Weight training causes men to generate testosterone. Ditto for hard labor. Few boys are hitting the weight room or doing physical labor anymore. My own mid-20s son is back in the weight room after many years. He is unhappy with what his work-from-home-at-a-desk job has done to him.

That’s why they look like girl children then.