Musings on a misty Monday

Today had all the elements of a typical Portland morning. A steady but light rain, and not too cold. I headed out to Oaks Bottom, intending to combine a trail run with a couple of miles on the paved Springwater Trail, but forgot the route was closed because of recent erosion.

Started from a different point near the Sellwood Bridge and had a great experience, running through the residential streets up to the Oaks Bottom parking lot, then over to Milwaukie Avenue. The way back was almost like a postcard, running west along Sellwood Boulevard, peering down at the Oaks Bottom lagoon and across the river to downtown Portland. Just then, "Caring Is Creepy" by The Shins, the Portland-based indie band, came on to my iPod shuffle. Pretty cool timing.

The real highlight of the run, though, came when I paused to tie a shoelace. I found a bright orange fire hydrant to prop my shoe on, looked down at the raised lettering and was pleasantly surprised to read "US PIPE."

That's the name of the foundry my dad worked for when I was a little boy. He'd rise in the early morning darkness, taking along his black metal lunch pail invariably filled with two or three taquitos my mom made, and would come home in the early afternoon to sleep, while my sisters and I were at school.

I've often thought that my soft, callus-free hands are partly the result of my dad working his tail off, at the pipe foundry and other blue-collar jobs, to create better opportunities for his children than he had. I will be eternally grateful for that, as well as his encouragement for me to get a college education.

I can imagine he and his co-workers felt pride in creating something tangible and lasting -- whether it be a hydrant or just varying pieces of iron pipe. How rarely we Americans manufacture anything anymore that is so durable. Our knowledge-based society instead cranks out new apps for iPhones and countless other "products" that seemingly serve only to widen the gap between haves and have-nots. Not to sound like a dinosaur, but I wish we could recapture at least some of the recent past, when less-educated folks could make a decent living manufacturing stuff for the rest of the world.

Funny how the simple act of fastening a shoelace triggered these memories and musings.

Photograph: U.S. Pipe Valve & Hydrant