I carry a pocketknife that belonged to my father. The blade has been sharpened down so many times it is thin as a leaf, and the handle is worn smooth where his thumb used to sit. I have been told I could buy a better one for very little. I would not trade it for anything. A tool that has been used up honorably is a beautiful thing, and you do not insult it by replacing the parts. I thought of that knife last week at the feed store.
The woman at the register taught school in our county for her entire working life. She taught half the men in that store how to read, and probably a few of their fathers. She retired some years back. Now she works the register most mornings, rings up deer corn and fence staples, and goes home at noon. I asked her once why she was still working. She smiled and said the pension did not stretch the way it used to. Then she asked about my wife. I left that store full of admiration, and I want to explain why.
There is a kind of retirement that I think is bad for people. It is the kind where you have more than you need, and you spend your days on cruises and golf, and you forget what work was for. That woman will never have that kind of retirement. She will keep working, keep counting, keep making do. She will stay sharp, the way my father’s knife stayed sharp, because she is being used.
Some people say the state ought to raise teacher pensions, or at least keep them from falling behind what groceries cost. I understand the feeling. But I would ask those people to look at the woman at the feed store and tell me what is wrong with her life. She is useful. She is known. She is humble in a way a comfortable person rarely is. I do not see what more money would add to that, except temptation.
We honor teachers in Texas. We put up signs for them at graduation and thank them from the pulpit every August. That is real honor, and it costs nothing, which is how you know it is sincere. Money is a different thing. Money changes people. I would not want to change her. I will vote for my party’s man for the Senate this fall partly so that it stays that way. I gather the other fellow would like a retired teacher’s pension to keep up with the grocery bill, and I think she is fine as she is.
When I was leaving, she was stacking feed sacks onto a hand truck by herself, and I thought about offering to help. I did not. She seemed to have it under control, and I did not want to take anything away from her.
She has never once complained. I have always taken that as permission.
D. M.