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My Friend Joe
My friend died yesterday, his name was Joe.
He was my neighbor on Hurley Hollow Road, in Tennessee, for 15 years or so. He was a quality human being, and the world was a better place with him in it. A lot of things worked, as long as Joe was around. Regardless of how smart, or accomplished, or worldly you think you are, please believe me when I tell you that you could learn a lot from my friend Joe. We all could.
When I moved into Hurley Hollow, I was one of the few people on that hollow that wasn’t related to someone else on that hollow. Joe befriended me, telling me that he wasn’t from around there, either. I asked him where he was from, and he said Estep Hollow. Which is less than three miles down the creek from Hurley Hollow. I was from Ohio. So Joe befriended a fellow foreigner. He never met a stranger. It sounds odd, but in that area, especially 80 years ago, it was a different world. Three miles was a long way.
Electricity was late getting to many of these remote hollows in southern Appalachia. His first job was in elementary school. The teacher would pay him 25 cents a month (or something like that) to show up early, and get a fire going in the woodstove in the one room schoolhouse he attended, before everyone else showed up. He felt wealthy, compared to his friends.
And he shared his wealth throughout his life. He had a large bandsaw, like a small sawmill. He’d cut lumber for people (he called it “Thick & Thin Lumber Company”), and use the excess to heat his house in his wood furnace. He also hauled loads of firewood all over Stoney Creek to old people and widows who couldn’t cut their own firewood. Mrs. Blevins would give him a fruitcake. He’d give her a year’s worth of firewood for her wood furnace.
As far as Joe was concerned, they were even.
But I never felt even with Joe. I always owed him. From my perspective. Which he found ridiculous. Joe always felt wealthy. And he shared his wealth.
He remembers his family farming in the mountains, when he was a young boy. They found a “hogsback” of limestone sticking out of the ground on a ridge. They cut oak trees and kept a fire going on top of it for a couple weeks, tending the fire around the clock. Then they cleared the ashes, collected the dolomized lime, and used it to buffer the acidic mountain soil. They then attempted to raise corn and various other crops up in the mountains using shovels instead of combines. One plant at a time. Between the rocks and the cliffs. They did the best they could, with what they had available.
And Joe learned to do the best he could, with what he had available.
Joe could fix anything, with whatever he had available. He served in the Navy in Korea. He said he joined the Navy to fight communists, but ended up spending several years traveling the globe fixing stuff he’d never seen before. He could fix electrical stuff, plumbing, hydraulics, diesel, plus the various doohickies, whatchamacallits, and gizmoes that he said a battleship is stuffed with. He could fix stuff he didn’t even understand. So he entered as a sailor, but pretty soon he was the guy on the boat that fixed the stuff that broke. Whatever the heck it was.
I asked what his mechanical training was like in the Navy. He said that an officer would say, “Hey Joe. That thing over there doesn’t work. Go fix it.”
And that was his training.
And he learned a lot. As he always did.
So after the war, he got a job in Elizabethton in a factory that made cardboard boxes. Fixing big, complicated machines that don’t have owner’s manuals or spare parts. They would break. And he would fix them. Using whatever he could find laying around the plant. God help whoever took over for him after he retired. There were no blueprints. But everything worked. As long as Joe was around.
He spent his retirement fixing everything on Stoney Creek. There were half-finished jobs laying all around his shop. He called them, “WPA Projects – We Piddle Around.” I even brought him a surgical table that didn’t work, and he fixed the hydraulics. Said he’d never seen anything like it. But it works now. Whatever the heck it is.
“Thanks, Joe.”
“It’s nothing, doc! I can’t thank you enough for taking care of my wife last year.”
In his family, in his church, in his neighborhood, even in his doctor’s office – a lot of things worked. As long as Joe was around.
A lot of houses were warm. A lot of repairs in various churches happened. A lot of people had old cars that actually ran. Even surgical equipment worked better. As long as Joe was around.
He died next to his wife of 60 years, in his small house, next to a small shop full of tools, on a remote dead-end back road, in a place that no one has ever heard of. And he was a great man. An absolutely great man. A hero of mine, actually. One of my very few heroes.
And nobody has ever heard of him. And nobody ever will.
A lot of things worked, as long as Joe was around.
We all have something to learn from Joe.
I miss you, Joe. We all do.
Godspeed, my friend.
Published in General
I have a Joe in my life. I met him five years ago. At the age of 15 my Joe murdered a man and was sentenced to 30 years. He served 15 years. He is now 52 years old. A simple man. He has a odd way of looking at the world. A gentle giant. He lives in one of the worst parts of town in a house that fits the neighborhood. He works on cars, cuts grass, trims and cuts trees, and fixes whatever anyone needs for people who can’t afford to pay anyone else. He sets no price for a job, complains I pay him too much, and often takes things in trade when people insist on paying him for his work, but are short on cash. When he does get paid cash the payer knows that a good portion of the small portion Joe was paid is going to be given to help someone in need. I worry for my Joe’s future, but he doesn’t. He just wants to help out with little concern for making out. Thanks doc for prompting me to refect on my Joe and for reminding me that I to get up from my chair and go open a neighbor’s garage. Joe needs a dry place this morning to work on a friend’s truck.
Dude. See bolded items. Note contrast.
There are many places, like this post, where the self-reference is inappropriate, jarring even. You are justifying all the jokes about atheists/agnostics having to inject their position into everything. As bad as the vegans!
Gramatically, the choice should be: “My friend died yesterday; his name was Joe.” A semicolin is used to separate two otherwise complete sentences that a writer wants to link when a conjunction would be awkward or make the sentence seem run-on. That’s the English major in me coming out; sorry about that.
Sounds like a man with a lot in common with my late father. Thanks for the wonderful tribute to Joe.
What a beautiful eulogy. As several said before me, Joe is now known well beyond the hollow because of your essay. Joe had a good friend in you, too. Thanks, Dr. B., for sharing him with us. He sounds like a gifted man and a good and kind neighbor.
Also, I’m 100% with you on the editing. Editors, especially here, should stick to finding and removing typos and glaring grammatical errors. They certainly should not add them. I’ve made exactly one post in all my time on Ricochet and was also very unhappy to see agrammatical errors added by the editor. This was several years ago and I was able to go in and fix them; is that no longer the case? Incidentally, mine was also written after someone had died and I’d chosen words and their order carefully, to make particular points. Totally not cool!