A Frozen Coal Car

Week of March 1

 

In the fall following graduation from high school my best friend since the fifth grade and I decided to climb Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

 

We didn't have any plans beyond high school and were just having fun one day at a time. Then the North Koreans attacked the South Koreans drawing the US into the "conflict."

 

I went to work part time in my step dad's appliance store and my friend enrolled in a post graduate high school program.

 

Christmas week I called my friend and asked if he would help me unload a frozen coal car for my step dad. The rail car was on a siding and had to be unloaded that day. We had no idea the task we were facing together.

 

We had to build small fires under the car to help thaw out its contents. While the fires burned we stood on top of the coal and chopped away with crow bars. It was back breaking labor.

 

By lunch we were exhauster and very little coal had made it down the shoot and into the empty bin. We were both covered with coal dust. We left dark finger prints on our sandwiches.

 

We both decided that day that we didn't want to be day laborers. I enrolled at Wentworth Institute and my friend went to college the following year.

 

I became an engineer with General Electric and my friend was heading a community foundation in Connecticut. He called me one day and said he had hired an assistant  who grew up in a housing project. He asked him what motivated him to leave the project life and obtain two degrees from a university.

 

” It was my uncle. He  asked me to help him unload a frozen coal car. That day I decided to make something out of my life." Go Figure.

 

I haven't seen a manual for dads (or uncles) that says to motivate young men, have them empty a  railroad car full of frozen coal.

 

Come to think of it, Solomon provided guidance when he said: " All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." (Proverbs 14:23)

 

Ken Maymon

Milford, NH