_________________________________________
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the
chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
As many of you know, I am General Manager at Graber Supply LLC, a pole building supply company located just south of Gap, PA on Hwy 41. I have worked there since March, 2001. Graber sells building materials and complete building packages (retail and wholesale) and also builds post and frame structures throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England areas. We have a very good reputation from South Jersey to the Long Island, NY area. We supply some local builders with their complete packages and supply other independent builders as far away as West Virginia. Last year we built our first barn in North Carolina and will soon ship our first package to Tennessee.
The company as it exists today was the result of the efforts, planning and sweat and blood of one man, the Previous Owner. He had a vision, and he built the business from nothing into a very successful and efficient entity. He hired good people and let them do their work with minimal interference. He paid them well. From the time the company emerged into its current form in the mid to late 1990s, it has worked and scrapped its way into a regional player to be reckoned with in the post and frame construction business. If a structure can be built with poles, Graber Supply can design and build it. www.polebarn.com
Dave Hurst conferring with builder Merv Glick
I worked for the Previous Owner during almost every stage of the company’s early years and was present when Graber moved onto its current location in 1993. At that time, I was in college and worked only in the summer months. I also worked there in during the summer months during my law school education in 1994-95. During my last summer as a law student, I worked for the law firm that would hire me when I graduated.
The last summer I worked for Graber before heading into law full-time, I told my co-workers many times that I couldn’t wait to get out of this blue-collar sweat hole and return to school, then graduate and practice law.
“After I graduate, I will work hard and buy a Lexus,” I said. “Then I’ll drive down Rt. 41 right past here and I won’t even look at you. I won’t even acknowledge you.” They seemed awed.
I was reminded of that wild boast many times in future years. Merv Esh particularly relished relating it with great embellishment to all new workers who started at Graber. The story was part of their initiation. I always told the disbelieving listeners that every word of the story was true. I never did get that Lexus. Maybe some day.
Sadly, in 2000, after working 3-1/2 years for a local law firm in Lancaster, I was not a happy or a fulfilled man. I told my wife that in six months, I would not be practicing law. What I would be doing I didn’t know. I did some research and even had an interview or two. Meanwhile, the Previous Owner heard that I was looking around, and stopped by to see me one night. Would I consider coming back to work for him, this time in the office instead of in the field? He needed good people around him and there would be no one like a lifelong friend who knew and understood him and his goals. We discussed the possibilities for some time that night and continued our discussion throughout the following weeks. An offer was made and it was attractive. So, after some soul-searching and a review of my financial situation, I decided to accept the offer and make the transition, right back into the building field I’d left years before.
It was a bit of a psychological bump, to go from the professional lifestyle and dressing in suit and tie every day to wearing informal jeans and shirt. I also had a lot to learn about the system of quoting, sales, and just dealing with the daily problems that arise in such a setting. But after the first month, I was well on my way. I felt secure and most of all, like I was actually producing something positive for the customer, instead of just dealing with the myriad everyday problems that cause people to call their attorneys. During and after the first year, I commented to Ellen many times that I love my job.
My legal training has been a real asset in a variety of areas in my job, including creating the contracts for the sale of our buildings and also in collections. I never tell customers that I am an attorney; very few ever find out unless they don’t pay, and sometimes not even then. We have a very efficient and computerized collection system introduced and sold to us by Thorne (I highly recommend this system to any company that has problems with collecting payments due). I do maintain my law license and also write wills in my spare time evenings and Saturdays, mostly for the Amish in Lancaster County.
At Graber, I enjoy the work and I like the people I work with. I actually love my job, something that very few people can say. Two people have worked in our office since 1995: Dave Hurst, salesman and all-around building guru, and Rosita Beiler, Office Manager. Merv Esh, of course, was there from the time he graduated from high school until his death last April. The core group in the office is small, but competent, and highly productive. We have about five people working in the yard and as drivers for our trucks. The yard foreman, Eli Esh, has been employed by Graber since he was fifteen years old. Today he is a young married Amishman. All the buildings we sell installed are built by subcontractor crews.
AJ Williams and Eli Esh on the brake.
AJ is a semi-professional rodeo rider and roper.
Morning runs. Trucks waiting for their drivers.
Main driver Kevin Beiler ready to head out.
As with any group that works together closely day after day for years, there is always some friction and/or disagreement, but not much. Overall, I have never been associated with a better group of people. When problems arise, we work through them.
When the “troubles” broke in February and thereafter, I seriously considered moving on to a competitor or perhaps another line of work. But the fact was that I enjoyed my job and felt a close connection to the people I worked with each day. I could see no real reason to walk away from it, at least not unless and until I absolutely had to. Plus, a part of me is stubborn to a fault, and I was going to be darned if I allowed these circumstances to push me from my home or my job, even if my world collapsed in shambles around me. So I slogged on day after day, my work providing my social structure and the needs I had to associate with others. My co-workers could not have been more supportive. They asked no questions (or very few) and provided protection for me from inquisitive locals.
On Friday, June 29, 2007, after a lengthy process involving advisers, Trustees, and attorneys, the Previous Owner relinquished all control of the business. Patrick Miller, a young Ohioan who married Mary June Lantz from Lancaster County, is now our new boss. Patrick had been a self-employed cabinet dealer and installer for some years, so he was familiar with construction. So far, we have been training and teaching him the ropes of the day to day operations. He is learning rapidly. Despite the “troubles” and the resulting upheaval, the transition is moving as smoothly as one could expect. Several employees have moved on and started their own businesses, but that would have happened anyway. Even though the construction industry has slowed and our 2007 sales are a bit off from our record 2006 sales, we look for good things in the future.
For now and for the foreseeable future, I plan to stay with the company that has treated me so well during the last six years. As long as I can get up in the morning and look forward to the day of work, I will do so.
None of us know what tomorrow will bring. Major changes may come and very likely will. It is good that we cannot see into the future, because the strength to face it would fail us. I am glad I didn’t know the future six months ago. I am glad I don’t know it for the next six months. And I am glad just to be alive, to know that good things will come. Although the future remains unknown, I rest upon the quiet confidence that one day a new dawn will break and the sun will pierce through the brooding clouds and chase the shadows from the troubled road I travel. I also trust that the light of that new day will include some small vestiges of joy that have been so absent now for so long. And with that confidence and trust I move on.
JUNE 29th, 2007. A NEW BEGINNING:
Patrick Miller returning for the first time as the new owner
BEING WELCOMED BY:
Rosita Beiler
Elvin Zook
“Big Dave” Hurst
Andy Blank
Ira Wagler
A gift from the General Manager
Celebration with ice cream cake
Patrick, Mary June, Portia, Benjamin and William
Party in the lunch room
YOU ARE WELCOME TO POST A COMMENT ON THE LINK ON THIS PAGE ONLY.
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Your gift looks like a book. My bibliophiliac side wonders about the title. This could be privileged information. But you did choose to post the picture.
Comment by LeRoy Whitman — August 3, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
Indeed, a good book.
Comment by pat — August 3, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
Very interesting “tour” of your daily life. Now names have faces to them..
You are good looking as ever uncle 🙂
Take care Love ya!
Comment by Dorothy — August 3, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
20,000 coming up on your counter gizmo–what a site!!
Comment by Dorothy — August 3, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Ever since you told me 2 weeks ago that this was going to be your subject, I was looking forward to reading it. Be assured that Graber would not be the same without you; after all, if you weren’t there we would all agree on what sports teams to cheer on and who to vote for in the political realm. Sounds like a boring life to me!
Seriously though, your ability to keep going when the going gets tough is admirable and I don’t think there is any employee at Graber that doesn’t enjoy working with you or debating with you (what is the reason Heidi Wheaton didn’t get voted in?) or creating sports related bets with you (tell me again about the Jets and why you like them so much!).
Comment by Rosita — August 4, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Interesting discourse on Pa. business practice & all that you have there. Lots of nice pictures there. Maybe this will bring you’all each a raise? Son Howard & I this past week worked on an elderly widow’s bathroom several days. Between one thirty and three thirty, us, the plumbers, all of us vacated the house because, you see, it was time for her nap. I mentioned this to one of our recent Pa. transplants [one of many, seems like], and he was incredulous. ‘You did that?’ was his response. Of course, she’s been there since ’47, so if it’s nap time, it’s nap time here in S.C. How’s that for service?
Ira’s response: Great service indeed, but wasn’t that your own nap time anyway?
Comment by jess from S.C. — August 4, 2007 @ 8:58 am
Ira,
It is fortunate when you love your career and calling. I find not many people do so. They seem to go to work to earn money so they can do what they really love. Even then, many do not have any activity that engages them, on or after work and they become intellectual zombies, shuffling through life.
I do love my calling. I can’t think of much more that I would want to do than be a HVAC and controls engineer. This is intellectually fascinating work. Unfortunately, not many people understand what I do, including Jean and my parents. Oh well.
(This is Jean, I have to be shown of what he’s doing. Hand-on’s are whole lot more interesting than just hearing words without seeing actual thing).
Ira’s response: I guess I consider the job a career that I love. My calling, on the other hand, is probably writing. And this blog is a step toward that goal. I have never before disciplined myself to write something like this on a weekly schedule.
Comment by Mark Hersch — August 4, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
Ira: A random thought for you. Here in NH and New England in general, license plates (along with Bumoer Stickers) are an art form that continually amuse and delight the observant . Here are a couple seen recently. Can anyone decode them?
1. (for those doing long distance car travel with small kids)
PB4WEGO
2. (Time yourself on this one)
2UKUAYL
MARGARET
Comment by Margaret — August 6, 2007 @ 11:37 am
Interesting description of your job! I think if you are going to be a writer (or any kind of artist) you should have another job or interest that stimulates your mind and gives you good insight into the real world.
To Mark; Thank you for responding to my question. I certainly don’t claim to understand all about the origin of matter, time, and space either, and it’s always interesting to hear what others have to say about it. I’ve always been puzzled by the verse that talks about the spirit of God being on the face of the water- apparently there was something before creation- or what? I do think creation probably did happen in 6 24 hour periods simply because that’s the most grammatically reasonable reading of Genisis 1.
By the way, I think you’re precisely right about the petroleum- it’s gotta go! What do you think about solar power- is it feasible?
Comment by jason yutzy — August 6, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
Good post! Good pics!! ( : Patrick sure loves working with you. Thanks for taking him out last Friday night – he needs that every once in a while! MJ
Comment by Mary June Miller — August 6, 2007 @ 10:01 pm
Jason,
There is the possibility that the six day creation is specific to the earth as we know it today. Namely, that Genesis’s six day creation is a recreation laid over an existing construct whose history is not necessary for us to know in order to understand God’s special relationship to humans. If so, God’s Spirit hovering over the face of the waters could be a reference to that which was in the past before God transformed the earth in six sidereal days into what we experience today. The late J. Vernon McGee taught this interpretation in his five years through the Bible audio series. If recreation is a correct understanding of God’s work, it is a reconcilliation between the apparent age of the universe and the special revelation in Genesis of a six sidereal day work of creation. In the essay that I am now writing, I will make references to events happening in the first five days of creation, indicating they happened before Adam and Eve were present, but if the recreation interpretation is correct, the events happened before the Genesis creation account.
We need petroleum badly. It is incredibly valuable as the base stock of synthetic materials. It is too valuable to burn. The oil shales stand ready to provide us with a huge reserve of petroleum but at maybe 20 times the cost of removing liquid petroleum from a well in Saudi Arabia. The global Hubbard Limit is coming closer every day to make sure that we can’t count on that Saudi well for much longer.
The most interest in using petroleum for burning is in transportation. Petroleum is a high density energy source that is liquid at most temperatures found on earth. This makes it easy to handle and does not take up prohibitive amounts of space or weight on a vehicle. It will be very hard to eliminate petroleum use for combustion. The first step would be plug-in hybrids that use grid electricity for most of their travels but have a liquid fueled sustainer to move them along on the longer trip. The grid electricity is then produced by energy sources other than petroleum, such as nuclear, wind and sequestered coal.
Solar is still expensive to build and needs storage, just like much cheaper wind power, to be a base load power source. Solar has one big advantage over other power sources and that is for shaving demand peaks in electrical distribution systems. The electrical demand spikes when the sun is out on hot days. This is because the air conditioning is running flat out. Since the sun is out, driving up cooling loads, the solar power is at maximum output. This allows solar power located at or near the users’ buildings to carry the peak and not require installing an electrical generation and distribution network that is capable of providing electricity to all users during the worst 15 minutes of the year.
Comment by Mark Hersch — August 7, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
My last long missive was an engineer’s look at the energy crisis that is clearly already at our door. This time, I think I will muse about eschatology, in this case the study of the end of world as the Christian worldview conceives such an event. More specifically, I have been thinking through the first four of the trumpet judgments in chapter eight of the Book of Revelation and how they represent something that humans of 100 AD had no experience with or understanding of but that we now understand. This reinforces my faith and buttresses my understanding that God did write the Bible, not men. I do not expect to ever prove the existence of God, His Nature or that the Christian Bible is His direct revelation. I believe that God is apprehended alone by faith, an irrational experience. Therefore, I cannot use reason to intuit God, only faith. However, I can rejoice whenever the rational world falls in line with God’s Word and reinforces my faith.
I recently responded to Jason Yutzy’s question whether I thought that that heavy metals found in the earth could have come from stars that existed before our sun. I said yes because I see Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 as a revelation of God’s preeminent position as Creator and His progressive creation but not necessarily a time line that says He worked in six sidereal days to work from nothing to an earth with human beings on it. It is also possible that the Genesis account is of an act of recreation, placing humanity on a planet in six days where much had come before that God does not choose to reveal in His special revelation. I believe that in the six days of creation or possibly before, there is great age and also events both on earth and in the universe that may come to plague the earth during the time of the end.
Our solar system is packed with objects. We have eight planets, a few plutons (one of which is the pluton formerly know as the planet Pluto), many moons, many asteroids (mostly found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), rocks and ice balls of many sizes and a whole collection of stuff in the Oort cloud. That is a region that is far from the sun, located maybe up to one light-year from the sun, but still influenced by our sun’s gravity well. All objects in the sun’s gravity well orbit the sun in an elliptical orbit. Some orbits, such as those of the planets, plutons and major asteroids are almost circular (a circle is a special ellipse with a concurrence of both foci at one point). Others are highly elliptical, possibly even running from the Oort cloud to Mercury’s orbit, the extremely long period comets. The highly elliptical objects cut across the orbits of many other objects. Occasionally these objects meet something bigger and experience cataclysmic destruction. Look at the moon with a strong telescope or look in a lunar atlas. The moon has been the stopping place of several REALLY BIG ROCKS. The big rock met the moon at a closing speed of up to 30 miles per second. That is a lot of kinetic energy (energy in the motion of the rock’s mass) that suddenly needs transformed to something else when the rock has a sudden stop relative to the moon. Some of the energy is light and other electromagnetic energy. If we could see one of these collisions in our lifetimes, the night sky would be brilliantly lit for a few seconds. Much of the energy would be transferred to the kinetic energy of moon mass that is blasted out into space. Most of the energy would become heat that would fervently melt the moon’s surface. However, the moon is not the only stopping place of big rocks. Several times during the first five days of creation, the earth was pounded with these kinetic killers from outer space (KKFOS). Giant prairie dogs did not dig meteor crater near Winslow, AZ. In the past five years, satellite images of the old crater have shown that the ELE (extinction level event) impactor suspected since 1980 to have hit what is now the Yucatan peninsula did indeed happen. What is important to note is that while humans have always known that rocks fall out of the sky to earth, giving us meteorites, no KKFOS has hit the earth between the time that Adam and Eve were walking around and John wrote the Revelation, although it is possible that one impacted in 540 AD. All of the meteorites, except for this suspected 540 AD KKFOS, were small and did not cause the effects that KKFOS are now seen to have caused. It required 20th Century science to think about then find the evidence of the consequence of the gigaton (billion) and teraton (trillion) explosions of KKFOS impacts. There are no old stories from our misty past about massive atmospheric shock waves, huge tsunamis, planet wide darkness for months or years and mass die offs of plants and animals. We do have multiple stories from different peoples about a great flood far in the past. These stories are relating the universal deluge that Noah’s family rode out in the ark. The Babylonians produced an epic poem about Gilgemesh, the legendary forerunner of their people. This epic hero relates in the story about his surviving the great flood, his narrative eerily similar to Noah’s. So, any prophecy in Revelation that pointed to a flood or a hurricane or a gigantic tornado could be put down to ancient disaster stories filtering through John’s mind. However, he relates a disaster story about an event that had never happened in human history before his time. A brief aside here. Sometimes skeptics who want the debunk the Hebrew and Christian bibles as simply the work of men with no God behind them will point to the text of Gilgemesh’s epic and say AH AH, see, the old Hebrews cribbed the Babylonian’s story and changed the name to Noah. Why do I never hear, AH AH, those nasty Babylonian’s took Noah and changed him into Gilgemesh so they could increase the prestige of their people through their legendary forefather. To be fair to the Babylonians and their forerunners, the flood story in the Gilgemesh epic may have originally referred to a local river flood and was transformed by meddling mythmakers into a universal deluge, possibly to compete with Noah’s story. OK, enough of that.
Now for a future disaster story, compared to the future disaster prophecy of Revelation 8:7 – 12.
Far out in the Oort cloud, a 20-kilometer diameter (12-mile) ice ball composed of a rocks stuck together in an icy matrix is disturbed in its orbit by the will of God. Perhaps a holy angel slows the comet or the subtle tuck of gravity from an unknown planet past Pluto’s orbit moves it, but it is now dropping in a slow, stately, highly eccentric elliptical plunge towards the inner solar system on its first trip to the sun. This may have already happened several hundred years ago or is yet to happen, but it is timed for the end of history. Over the years, the comet moves deeper into the sun’s gravity well, slowly gaining speed as it spends much lonely time in interplanetary space. The comet is covered with dust and studded with small rocks, making its surface very dark. This low albedo (surface reflectance) is why the astronomers of earth never see the comet as it closes distance with the sun. In the time of the end, the people of earth are afflicted by the war, famine, pestilence and death of the seal judgments and take no notice of the heavens. The comet quietly approaches the sun from the opposite side from where the earth is through space, the sun’s blazing orb not allowing observation of the approaching disaster. As the judgments play out, the comet is now closing rapidly with the sun, an unseen tail spurting away from it while its path grooves through the shortest possible distance in curved space-time, arcing tightly around the sun. The comet’s orbit dips inside the orbit of Mercury, its once stone cold mass now scorched by the blazing light pouring out from the sun’s surface. All along the surface of the comet, vaporizing ice spits rocks out into space, now forming a tight formation of debris flying along the curved path of the central mass. Suddenly, the tidal forces in the horribly steep gravity well, combined with massive explosions inside the comet tear it in two. Soon, the cluster starts to lift out of the depths of the gravity well, hurled back towards the Oort cloud at breath taking velocity. The heat of the sun diminishes with growing distance and the comet has survived to continue on its several hundred-year journey through the solar system. However, that is not to be. In several weeks, the comet will die, utterly destroyed, as its mass is absorbed 93 million miles out system by the third planet. On earth, some still look into the night sky and now see a comet’s tail standing straight out from the sun. A few run the math and suddenly realize that this tail spells doom, a KKFOS incoming. As the freight train of destruction approaches, first come some of the small rocks spewed out of the comet by the heat of the sun. As these rocks plunge through the atmosphere, they heat to white hot incandescence and ignite fires all over the earth (The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. NIV Rev 8:7). In less than a day, the leading half of the sundered comet screeches through the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, impacting the Western Pacific Ocean. A titanic mushroom cloud of sundered earth, water and comet erupts out of the earth’s atmosphere while many cubic miles of water almost instantly vaporize. As the ocean collapses, a tsunami races out from this hell hole at the speed of sound and grows to over 2,000 feet in height as it slams into the land masses of Asia, Australia, North and South America (The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. NIV Rev 8:8, 9). Ten hours later, the second half of the comet describes a blazing trajectory through the atmosphere until it smashes into Eastern Europe, releasing teratons of energy as its motion stops relative to earth and its kinetic energy transforms to light, heat, sound and redirected kinetic energy. Another mushroom cloud erupts, even blasting matter into earth orbit. Much ash falls out of the cloud, polluting both land and water (The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water – the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. NIV Rev 8:10, 11). Now the earth is girded by dust clouds, choking off the sun and moon light, drastically cooling the earth (The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. NIV Rev 8:12).
More of the Revelation speaks of events that could be KKFOS driven, but I concentrate on the arrival of Wormwood. Please tell me how a man in 100 AD described a KKFOS impact event. There had never been one in human history so an ancient story is not drawn upon as the framework of John’s story. If the world’s astro-physicists and geo-physicists of that time were all gathered on Patmos to help John to write the Revelation, they could not summon the theories or evidence to imagine a KKFOS let alone the effects of its impact.
In the end, the apprehension of God’s Word is by the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life but now I have a harder time giving Bible debunkers any hearing until they explain Revelation 8 as other than the direct, special revelation of God to an inspired author.
For those of you who want to read a good hard science fiction account of a KKFOS event, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote Lucifer’s Hammer in 1977. Be warned that this is a very gritty story about earth after the collapse of civilization and nature red in fang and claw as the survivors do anything to live, including a low-tech war against an army of cannibals. For those who watch movies, Deep Impact gives a much kinder story about an ELE KKFOS that is mitigated at the last moment. The science in this movie is fairly accurate. A companion movie about a KKFOS, released in the same year of 1998, Armageddon, does not have good science.
Comment by Mark Hersch — August 7, 2007 @ 11:42 pm