When my now husband, Tony, and I moved to Charlotte from West Virginia in 2001, our moving truck broke down on the way. It took us two extra days to arrive to one of the hottest Mays in history. After carrying box after box up flights of stairs under an unrelenting Carolina sun, one of the movers threw up all over our new bathroom.
We didn’t have jobs lined up, but we had the kind of confidence and optimism that only unemployed 22-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees from a state school and a whopping $3,000 in savings can enjoy.
Tony found a job one day after we arrived. Despite having a bachelor’s degree in psychology, he decided to skip the entry level cubicle and went straight into the red-clay fields where he did dirty, physically demanding work. Tony has been with the same company for the past 19 years. He has dedicated himself to becoming extremely skilled in an in-demand trade and he has continually risen through the ranks of his company.
It took me a couple of months to find my first job and in the first five years of living here, I bounced around to different jobs. Of course, because we live in Charlotte, I eventually landed at a bank. I was an AVP and the corporate event planner. I had an office, a company credit card and I got to fly around the country throwing big parties at swanky resorts.
By the standard definition, I was viewed as the more traditionally successful person in our relationship. My co-workers would often do a double take when I would tell them that my husband was a plumbing contractor.
They would ask questions like, Didn’t you go to college together? Doesn’t he have a degree? It was as if they couldn’t believe that he simply chose to do a more blue collar job.
One of my mother-in-law’s friends once said to her, “Well, it’s a good thing Tony has a wife who can support them.” [The whereabouts of this woman are still unknown.]
However, after I had our daughter and surprised everyone by suddenly announcing that I would not be going back to work, it was Tony’s job that supported us. My collars may have been white, but he had made more than me for most of our professional lives.
Charlotte’s construction demands means that my husband, especially in the summer months, is extremely busy. He often laments that they simply can’t find enough people to do the work. According to a survey by the Associated General Contractors, his company is definitely not the only one. Of the 1,459 contractors surveyed, 69 percent reported that they were having difficulty finding workers to fill hourly trade positions.
According to Nicholas Wyman’s 2015 Forbes article, Why We Desperately Need To Bring Back Vocational Training In Schools, trades were taught alongside academics until the 1950s. During that time the theory that students should follow educational tracks more suited to their ability emerged. Essentially, college bound students were placed in advanced academic courses and offered no vocational training, while those who were not planning to go to college would take more basic academic courses and “shop”. Eventually, the vocational classes were viewed as a remedial track.
This pushed more and more people into wanting to go to college and helped perpetrate an absurd stigma surrounding learning a trade rather than earning a degree. And, there is definitely one thing that those performing manual labor jobs don’t have…a stifling amount of student loan debt. According to a Zack Friedman’s Forbes’ article, Student Loan Debt Statistics In 2019: A $1.5 Trillion Crisis, in 2017, the average borrower owes $28,650 in student loans.
And, since it is where we started our life together, I will be forever grateful that Tony went to college. However, I didn’t fall in love with his degree.
I fell in love with the person who was not afraid of the sharp edges of my broken pieces. The one who grows delicious tomatoes, who can fix anything, who loves to fish.
My husband is so sweet and tender to our girl that it makes me weak in the knees. He can tie about 387 different kinds of knots. He looks damn good in a pair of Levi’s and he can “suit up” with the best of them. His eyes have these dancing lines that sprout out when he laughs. He makes me belly laugh daily. Tony grills like a man possessed. He supports all of my insane undertakings.
He adores me and I him. When the zombie apocalypse hits, he is who you want by your side.
My husband is very good at his job and his job has allowed me to be a stay-at-home mom and writer. It has afforded us family vacations and a comfortable life.
But, Tony, just like the rest of us, is so much more than his job.
And, as we face the unprecedented territory of COVID-19, Tony still rises every morning before dawn and goes into work because he is deemed essential. However, I knew this long ago.
He is essential to every facet of my life.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
