One of the most distressing or unusually fascinating aspects of this modern age is how our agrarian existence has all but been immobilized. Referring to the title of this piece, changing a lightbulb in a ceiling or lamp doesn’t exactly scream “agrarian” but you take my point.
When we moved to Pittsburgh from San Francisco in Autumn, 2018 it took us a couple of years to convert our small, gravel-laden parking pad in a community of deep poverty to a small patch of land that actually produced an abundance of vegetables, tomatoes and herbs for us to eat and cook with and even share with our neighbors.
In truth, my husband did all the work and I think it’s that aspect of him that sparked an interest from me, he wasn’t afraid of work and beautifying the world through that work. Modern life seems to have cudgeled this aspect out of our human nature, and out of men in particular. The knowledge it takes to undergo these self-edifying projects, the time and patience it takes to learn about specific types of gardening, for instance, and the rewards that come with the value of personal labor for personal edification are all aspects of humanity that should be brought back into scope. They must be baked backed into our consciousness. Thank goodness my husband is no stranger to any of these.
I am his second wife, this is his third home with years of San Francisco apartments leading up to this point and it was our second cross-country move in five years together as a married couple so I imagine he‘s changed more lightbulbs than most in his lifetime. Most people in his age-bracket and generation have stayed in the same home or the same City for the last 30 years of their life. They haven’t really had to learn a skill in order to make a place their own. And then do it all again, and then again.
His current project at our new home in the Gulf Coast is to remove a heavy porcelain, old-fashioned sink in our guest bathroom that was bolted to our tiled wall and replace it with a more utilitarian, functional sink and vanity system with a smaller footprint. This involves removing bolts from the mid-century tiles that are mounted to cinderblock walls, building the new cabinet/vanity, caulking the sink to it, installing new faucet hardware, attaching the plumbing, checking and re-checking for leaks and mounting the vanity unit into the tiled wall so it remains stable.
Another big project he and I did together with the generous help of our neighbor was that we primed and painted a 200 square foot room in our house including the ceiling. We almost used flat paint but when I casually mentioned on social media that we were in the planning stages of this project, someone recommended in a comment that we use satin paint. He mentioned he did the same project and wished he’d gone with satin. We went with his suggestion and we’re glad we did.
Being able to function with ease in the modern world seems to require the bare minimum: the ability to remember PIN numbers; the understanding of how apps on your phone work; how to communicate via electronics; and the knowledge on how to navigate websites. All of these things can put one in touch with handymen, plumbers, landscapers, drivers, delivery people and you can even see what items are in stock at your store, you then have the choice to have them delivered to you; or, you can buy the item online first and then with your app and a barcode, you can either have it brought out to your car in the parking lot of the store or you can go inside and pick it up at a specified pick-up counter.
As a Generation X, the last independent generation on the planet, yet the first Generation to never really benefit from living in this country and how it operates, this is not how I grew up. When electronics and computers were first introduced to me I was intimidated. I thought you needed to be a math whiz. I didn’t think it needed to be so complicated or scary. I remember the instructor having to turn the computer on for me, and rambling off technical jargon I couldn’t understand. I sat there stupefied, blankly staring at a hazy white computer screen, the cursor mocking me, daring me to strike the first key on the keyboard, just daring me to screw up somehow.
“You can’t make a mistake!” he announced, as if sensing the gripping fear that was slowly shrinking me from the inside out. “It’s like changing a light bulb!” He said excitedly. The instructor was the classic, cliched early tech geek we all envision: long hair, a little bit too knowledgeable about computers and when he wasn’t teaching a bunch of dumb Generation X’ers about the wonders of the modern computer age, when we just wanted to go outside and play, he was probably geeking out on some computer system he was building in his garage.
After my husband and I went to the local farmer’s market this past Saturday and purchased three different types of micro-greens grown by one individual, I imagine in his own greenhouse, then purchased some home made cheddar and jalapeno crisps made by a woman in her own kitchen, then stocked up on fruits and vegetables from local farms (we hope); then grabbed 2 dozen fresh eggs laid by chickens in a nearby farm we headed over to a small health food store to see what they had in stock.
We were greeted by an elderly woman and pleased to find most of the brands we already used anyway neatly stacked on the shelf. She was the proprietor of the store and regaled us for a good 15 or 20 minutes with stories of the shop’s beginnings. The store is surrounded by thick hedges of fresh herbaceous rosemary, which grows prolifically all over San Francisco by the way. But, I was also struck by the stories of her youth. At a time when women allegedly had less rights and were more controlled in society, she seemed to navigate her life and her family’s store exactly how she wanted it. She now runs the operations of the store and I imagine she’s been doing it for at least 40 years.
It’s rare to find handed-down family-run businesses these days, where the children pick up on understanding how to run a business, work with suppliers, staff the business, stock the business and balance the financials in the business all the while keeping a solid customer base. This should be something normal and yet it’s not. After all, one of the criteria among most of my friends who live in Cities when they’re on the hunt for a new space, is how close is the giant corporate supermarket to their apartment building where they currently rent or hope to rent. It’s understandable. My criteria on renting an apartment was always based on how the walkable score to City bus stops, cafes, venues, galleries, grocery markets, restaurants and theaters was.
Renters are a different breed than home owners. I should know. I was one until I was 47 years old. Although I never lived in rental situations where there were handymen or building maintenance guys to fix elevators or change lightbulbs (I always lived in small walkups or brownstones) I know that this is now a crucial part of modern existence for renters. Elevators in big apartment buildings often go out for no apparent reason, light bulbs in hallways need changing, windows need replacing, halls need vacuuming and the list goes on. I’m surprised by how much renters are now dependent on someone else for the most menial tasks.
For instance, if an oven needs replacing they can’t simply replace it then take the cost of the oven out of their rent, I guess. When my husband and I moved to our nearly 100 year old house in Pittsburgh in 2018 we needed a new oven so we bought one from Home Depot and the serviceman who delivered it also installed it and it had some sort of warranty. If there had been an oven to take away, part of the service is they would remove the old one the same day they install the new one. I wonder why renters can’t just do that for anything that needs replacing.
Perhaps one gets accustomed to a mindset in an existence where everything that must be done, must be done with permission.
In the course of the nearly 12 years I’ve been with my husband, he has repaired numerous bicycles, built an entire shelving system converting a small space to a phenomenal storage room, cultivated wasteful land and turned it into lush gardens of flowers and plants as well as a source of food, removed old ceiling fans, rewired and installed new ceiling fans, painted, installed built-ins, add-ons and other functional useful items, removed old faucets in kitchens, installed new upgraded faucets, created a watering system where our dishwater would flow through a tubing system and water our garden (we don’t recommend this) and he installed upgraded lighting throughout an entire 950 square foot apartment that he didn’t even own. He cultivates land and plants all manner of flowers but his favorite are roses.
Many of the upgrades that he made in apartments he simply did on his own, without asking the property owner’s permission. His very existence brought immense value to someone else’s property.
I wonder if the average man or woman possess these very basic qualities or are people just ok with living out their life in a way they don’t deserve, thinking that they don’t have the right to take the initiative to change their life for the better? Perhaps they can’t afford new lighting systems or new refrigerators or ovens or new toilets or sinks. And even if they could afford the materials, not everyone has the money to pay someone to change a lightbulb. But worse yet, some people don’t even know how to go about finding someone to change a lightbulb. So there’s that too.
Which brings me to the next thought and something I’m seeing percolating in conversation here and there. There seems to be this idea that people simply don’t have the intellectual capacity to do the simplest task, like change lightbulbs let alone install new light fixtures, replace drain pipes, change out crucial fixtures, or plant seeds or grow food. I’ll admit I can’t change a tire or change the oil in the car but I am pretty sure I could learn really fast.
My husband says his father started his own handyman business by just changing light bulbs for the old ladies in the neighborhood who could no longer do it for themselves. He started this business late in life and it sustained him and his family and got them through until old age settled in. In fact my husband’s father gave him this giant book, the bible of handyman repair secrets if you will. When our concrete steps leading up to our front door at our previous house in Pittsburgh started to crumble, my husband referenced the book, bought some concrete, mixed it and created a sort of makeshift small mold, and was able to repair the crumbling concrete by himself.
Watching my husband for over a decade just “know how to do stuff” (I always joke and say “Wow you just know stuff.”), I learned how important it is to diversify a portfolio. That’s just a fancy way of saying have a backup plan. If things don’t work out in one area then having a talent to fall back on or even a hobby that one can cultivate into a source of income is always a good thing to have. But even if it doesn’t turn into a source of income, if things get tight I know that the littlle bit of money we might have could go a long way since my husband knows how to grow food. And food is expensive. And, he won’t just feed us. He can feed our neighbors too.
I read a long Twitter post on the X platform recently. This individual went into great detail about how they would go on health binges and then after they felt confident they were healthy enough, they’d slip into occasionally eating junk food or smoking pot, but then found themselves eating nothing but junk food and smoking too much pot. After a little while his body, which had been used to healthy habits, reacted adversely and went into shock. He even talks about how he had a stroke due to lack of oxygen in his brain, most likely due to the pot smoking.
I’m wondering what happened to people, but men in particular. I’m seeing less and less people like my husband, who is always busy with some task or outing or doing something to keep his body moving, when he is not working at his desk job. They seem incapable of taking care of themselves, let alone their homes or apartments or even a family. And, if they do have a family and are the breadwinners like so many men are, they pay others to do something that at one point used to come naturally for men, like changing a lightbulb.
Some people cringe when the word agrarian is brought up. It can mean the redistribution of land and they think it means taking personal property and redistributing it out to the less-deserving. Mostly the term “agrarian” refers to the school calendar which is still based on the old agrarian calendar, when children needed to be off during the summer to help with planting and harvesting. At the farmers market we went to this past Saturday, in early March of this year, we bought some cherries. As we were making lunch today, I listened to a 10 minute diatribe from my husband about how cherries aren’t in season and it didn’t make sense that these delicious cherries were even available for purchase. “But cherries only really start to come into season in June. It’s March. There is nowhere on any of our hemispheres that cherries would be available. This makes no sense! In the Southern Hemisphere they’re getting into Autumn, there are no cherries in Autumn! We live in the Northern Hemisphere and we’re just getting out of Winter and into Spring, where are these cherries coming from dammit!” When our past agrarian methods don’t match up with the sudden appearance of ripe, delicious cherries on the vine in early Spring we might have a problem. Well, he thinks we have a problem.
But it’s not about what I have now ordained “The Mystery of Early Cherries.” It’s about the knowledge of things, and the way the planet and world works. I should know that planting something in late February will produce bloom in April. I should know that cherries are summer fruits and when we eat perfectly ripe cherries in early Spring it should give me pause for thought. We should all know these things, and we should all know a little bit of everything. And, we should know a lot more than we know now.
My husband understands this and holds deep within his being this crucial aspect of humanity. We must impart knowledge to one another. It’s one thing when our neighbors would drive down the alley and slowly stop and gawk at our Pittsburgh garden. They would push the button on the inside of their car and their window would slowly roll down a little bit, “Got any tomatoes today?” “Sure, take what you want.” If they did get out of car, he would always talk to them about the soil, the care of the plants, what tomatoes really liked, when to water and not to water and these people wouldn’t just leave with a bag of tomatoes, but they’d leave with a little bit of extra knowledge about the way the world works.
This is crucial, this sharing of knowledge about how things work and why things are the way they are. It’s the vital force of our human experience. In many cultures, this knowledge is passed down through legend and story telling, which is something Americans don’t really have in our DNA. But there was a time when we harvested and worked within the seasons and traded talents and knowledge, as agrarian communities building something together.
Do you know how to change a lightbulb? You don’t?
Let me explain to you how. First, you find a lightbulb in your closet or drawer or your special stash of spare light bulbs. If you don’t have one, you might have to walk or drive to the store to buy one. If you can’t do that, ask your neighbor if they have a spare lightbulb. Second, if your lightbulb is in a ceiling, you will need a ladder. If you don’t have a ladder and you don’t want to buy one, ask your neighbor if you can borrow theirs. Third, you will have to climb the ladder. If you don’t feel comfortable climbing ladders by yourself ask your neighbor to come over and help. Fourth, you will have to remove whatever is holding your lightbulb in place, usually some kind of glass covering. You can hand that to your neighbor who will hold it for you. Fifth, you unscrew the lightbulb. You put it down safely. Sixth, your neighbor can hand you the new lightbulb or you can take it from a place easily accessible. Seventh, you screw it in. Eighth, your neighbor hands you the outer casing of your light structure and you put it back into place. Last, you and your neighbor hang out a while. That’s how you change a lightbulb.
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