In my mid-twenties, I was a theologian groundskeeper. My first pastorate was a small congregation of 25 souls, and I was the youngest of them by 20 years. I believed I belonged there, so I made it work by mowing grass.
The work was hard but rewarding, and I was good at it. During my seminary years, I had been solely responsible for maintaining 50 acres. I ran a John Deere tractor for the wide-open spaces, but there was plenty of zoysia, which I proceeded to crosscut like a baseball field. When it became apparent that I would need to supplement my ministry income, groundskeeping was just returning to the familiar. There was always something cathartic about the muffled drone of a machine, and neatly patterned grass. The relative lack of human interaction gave me plenty of time to mentally map my sermons. It really wasn’t a bad gig, and I got a nice tan.
I was an outlier at the shop. The foreman was a sullen, profane old man whose hobbies included raccoon hunting and racism. There were four other full-time employees when I signed on. The nepotism was thick around there: three of the four employees were close friends or relatives of the grumpy old man, and they were a close-knit group. They were all members of the same church.
One of them was a loose-lipped grandson of the misanthropic old man. One hot day he blurted out, “Papaw says your church does bad stuff.” I shrugged it off. Genesis records the first murder in human history as a guy killing his own brother in an argument over worship. As long as these guys didn’t outright rise up in the fairway to slay me, I could handle it.
From the start, they made it clear that I wasn’t one of them. They said the quiet part out loud: the business owner had hired me, not the foreman. I was assigned the oldest equipment and worst duties on the place. I didn’t complain. After all, I was the new guy. I rolled with it. I knew I wouldn’t be there forever anyway.
In the hot summer months, we began work at 6 a.m. With a morning break and half-hour lunch, we wrapped up each workday before the most oppressive heat. I know how to cut grass. I also know how to read a room… or a shop. On the very first day, I realized that I was not alone in my aloneness. While the inner circle cussed and spat in the shop, I noticed a quiet Hispanic guy sitting alone, outside under a tree. I grabbed my lunch and joined him. I was seceding from the secessionists, as it were. My outcast status was solidified. And in my exodus, I found a friend.
By the time I came along, Pete (name changed to protect his privacy) had already worked there for several years. His English was better than my Spanish, but we made liberal use of both. Anytime there was a lousy job that required two people, it was going to be Pete and me. About 15 years my senior, Pete had a family: a wife and young children.
He talked about his coming to America. Pete was a naturalized citizen. He talked about their long trips to the immigration office, and the years, paperwork, and expense of becoming a citizen. When the rednecks would crank up about politics and race, I would smile, maliciously daydreaming about administering a civics pop quiz in the shop. Pete vs. the rednecks, and the winner gets to use the newer equipment and work in the shade.
The business owner who hired me would occasionally come to check on me. He had been the heir to a prominent business. About 10 years before he hired me, he had left that family business to pursue his lifelong dream of building a golf course. We had some great talks at the end of long afternoons, looking out over his fulfilled dream.
In one of those talks, he asked how I liked working there. I told him I had enjoyed getting to know Pete. The owner perked up: “Did he tell you about his house? Oh I’ve got to tell you this story.” When Pete first came to the states, he needed a job and a place to stay. The owner provided both. For the next several years, Pete lived in a camper behind the shop. After some time had passed, the owner suggested that Pete start looking for a place of his own.
The conversation went something like this:
Well Pete, have you been saving some money?
-Yes, I have about thirty…
You have $30,000 in the bank?!
-No, it’s in a bag in the trailer.
Needless to say, Pete got a bank account that day.
Later that month, Pete paid cash for a small house on a plot of land.
One day Pete’s truck was down, so I gave him a ride home. I got to see his place and meet his family. Pete had overcome great odds to build an enviable, simple, full life.
On another hot afternoon, the business owner and I stood and looked across a pond at the beautiful homes people had built along his course. Neither of us spoke for a minute. Eventually he asked, “Can you even imagine the place God has ready for us?” For decades, he taught Sunday school at the kind of church that genuinely loved people… and stayed out of the business of other churches.
Only two years after that conversation, he passed away at his home. I am jealous of the unimaginable beauty he now enjoys. It is not wasted on him. I’m thankful for his life, for the beauty he curated, and for introducing me to a guy named Pete.
I look back on those days through the haze of almost 20 years of intervening life. I reflect on the great mystery of how lives intersect. I think about how we sometimes meet unforgettable people who change us for the better, and how I’ve met a lot of people I wish I could forget. I think about ignorance and hate, and how pride is a satisfying but corrosive drug.
One thing I know is that Pete is not an outlier. To the extent that America is great, it is great because of people like Pete. His story is wonderful, but not unique among people like him. They really get what America can be, and America is better because of them.
I’ve also met plenty of ignorant people full of hate. On my worst days, I doubt their ability to ever outgrow it. Addiction to ignorance is strong. In a world full of Cains, be an Abel.
On my best days, I hope that somebody else from that shop decided to go sit with Pete… not because Pete needed them, but because they needed Pete.
Jason Carlton 