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Time to roll up our sleevesThe latest report indicates that in the month of June 2009, 467,000 people became unemployed and now our national unemployment is at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Of course, it is the middle of hay season here at my house and I am sure that for those of you still enjoying wheat harvest the following story will be easy to relate to. I have been struggling this summer to keep tractors, rakes, balers and the mower /conditioner in the field instead of on the disabled list. Kylee Hammond, my local goat buyer, stopped by to look at the kids I need to get sold and summed it all up. "Doesn't seem to matter if you need the washing machine fixed or your tractor--you have to beg the people to do what it is they do for you." Absolutely! That summarizes it so well. Why, if the economy is so bad and employment opportunities are just not available, is there such a long waiting list for repairs to be made? I fully understand that rural America is not feeling the same crunch that our urban cousins may be but I am still convinced that the only economic slow down we feel is in our head. Start with section 350 in the classifieds of the High Plains Journal. It is nearly a full page of help wanted ads. Oh, but wait. There is a problem with those ads. They are all "hands dirty" jobs. I truly believe we do not have a shortage of jobs; we have a shortage of clean jobs. It appears to me that as an American society, we have had it so easy for so long that people would rather be unemployed and clean as opposed to earning a paycheck and dirty. I understand that this may be too much of an oversimplification but, if you look at a person's hands and they show the effects of his/her work, it may be hard to get them to work for you. I have been told that Monster.com is the online search tool for job seekers. I simply put "mechanic" in the search line and 1,020 employment opportunities pop up from Burlington, Kan., to Cherry Point, N.C. Once again I reiterate that I don't think there is an unemployment problem; I think that there is an employment problem on jobs that don't require a lot of work. I just get really tired of people comparing the current state of the economy to the Great Depression. I had the chance to visit with my grandparents and many others who lived through the Great Depression and we are not even close. I don't know anyone who is going to their front lawn every morning looking for dandelions in order to have something to eat for the day. You can still pick out the survivors of the Great Depression because living through those lean years changed their view on waste for the rest of their life. People who lived through the Depression are frugal in every sense of the word. The Depression made a lifetime impression and they don't believe in the throw-away generation we have now. It's not just a perceived lack of jobs. There is a problem in the overall attitude of most employees and even business people. My mother-in-law pointed out a recent experience of the great customer service she had at a local automobile dealership. Have you ever noticed that we notice when we get good service? We really appreciate a great waitress or a friendly cashier. I think that so many people have convinced themselves that their life and their job is so bad that they never have a good thought about it. Consequently, their bad attitude results in pathetic customer service and, potentially, more lost customers. When we are so taken aback by good service, it tells us that we are used to no service at all. Come to think of it, I would be willing to bet that the folks with the most dirt under their fingernails also have the biggest smiles on their face. Honestly, this nation was built to be the global leader, in almost every sense of living as a human being, with hard work and a smile. I do believe it is time to go back to the basics of life and roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. Most importantly, a working man with dirty hands understands that things come and things go and it is up to us to make sure that we come out ahead, not hang around waiting for some government stimulus and bailout money to make it all better. Hard work worked for my grandparents and it can work again! Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com.
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