Seaman Family Values

I must have been five or six years old, playing in the front yard of our home in what would best be described as a working class neighborhood. It had been a two bedroom home until my parents added a living room on the front and converted the old living room into a third bedroom. A man approached me and asked if my mother was home. When I said she was, he knocked on the door. He explained to her that he was out of work and was going through the neighborhood hoping to earn some money doing odd jobs. She paused. "Well, we don't pay people to do our work," she said. "We can do our own work. But if you're hungry I'll get you something to eat." He said he was hungry and would really appreciate that. I sat with him under the big old elm tree that dominated our front yard and chatted. Soon my mother returned with BLTs (toasted), potato chips and lemonade for both of us. I don't remember anything we talked about. But I've (obviously) never forgotten what my mother said and did that day. I learned about respect for work, respecting the unemployed and helping those who need it.
I remember being on the roof of that house carrying shingles to my dad while he nailed row after row into place. I don't know how old I was, but we moved from that house when I was eight. I remember my dad putting in a driveway at that house as well as a patio and walkway in the new house we moved to, building shelves for food storage and a small office in the utility room next to the carport and chopping wood in the backyard to burn in our fireplace. I remember his building a "shell" for his 1948 Ford pickup. (It was the first year of the F-Series.) And painting that pickup ... with a brush! "We can do our own work."
I grew up in a labor family. Dad worked for thirty years for Union Pacific Railroad and was an officer in the local B of  RT (Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen). These were proud, hard working people who improved the lives of the union membership in many ways. Valuing work, all kinds of work, became fundamental to my life view.
In Sting's autobiography, Broken Music, he recounts visiting with his dying father:

"I have no idea what to say, so I take his hand in mine and gently massage the soft triangle of flesh between his thumb and his first finger. I haven't held his hand since I was small. They are big square hands, massively knuckled with strong muscular fingers, deeply lined and grooved. My father's hands are not the delicate, expressive hands of an artist, but they have a kind of elegance and so close to death they possess an honest and translucent beauty. They are the hands of a working man."

Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive

I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line ...

But I've got the power, and I've got the will
I'm not a charity case …

Make me an offer that I can't refuse
Make me respectable, man …

So like it or not I'll take those
Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man

“Blue Collar Man”

 by STYX