St. Joseph and Me

St Joseph and me

In my culture, it was common to name a child after a saint. In fact, one might celebrate two birthdays, the date of their birth and the day of the patron saint that they are named after. I like to joke that my father was too cheap to do this and so, named his children after whatever particular saint was being celebrated on our birthday. I am named after Saint Joseph because I was born on May the 1st, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. My brother Patrick was born on Saint Patrick’s Day, my sister Juanita was born on the feast of Saint John and so on. Because of this, there was always a lot of pressure to be good. I can’t imagine what it was like for my dad. His name was Jesús.

The original feast day for Saint Joseph is March 19th and celebrates him as the spouse of Mary, the Mother of God and stepfather of the Christ Child. In Catholic school, the nuns always seemed to want to dimmish my name and birthday. “May 1st is the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker,” they would say as if that diminished who Saint Joseph was. The holiday added to the calendar of saints in 1955 to celebrate Saint Joseph as a carpenter. The church wanted a way to honor workers. The new holiday would also offer an alternative to the communist May Day and International Workers Day celebrations.
Either way, we were all expected to live up to our namesakes. The idea was simple. Our saints were to be role models, someone to look up to and to help us navigate the challenges of our day. Saint Joseph was especially held up to those engaged in daily toil, supporting themselves and their families with dignity and love. I was to be his mirror. As I got older, I failed miserably.

If you recall, in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had nothing to do except run around naked and enjoy paradise. Once they broke God’s only commandment, they were thrown out of the garden and as punishment for their sin, man and woman were forced to work for everything they got. No more free ride. “Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield…working by the sweat of your brow.” Saint Joseph was a skilled laborer. A tradesman. Someone with a valuable, in demand and honorable skill. I, on the other hand, was a dreamer. Work was, well, work. It was distasteful and hard! I lived on a commune that was a working farm for a bit thinking it would be all free love and meditation. Life on the farm was hard. I planted 3000 head of cabbage in one day! This was not for me.

AS kids, we worked hard. My dad saved enough money to buy a couple of acres of land. We farmed, growing beans and corn and almost every other kind of vegetable that would grow in our climate. I spent long hours with my brother cleaning out the irrigation ditch in the spring and days hoeing and weeding the rows and rows of veggies. We raised chickens and ducks and geese and pigs and goats, all of which provided food for our table. When we weren’t tending to the field or the animals, we all pitched in to help dad build what would turn out to be a magnificent home, brick by adobe brick. Mom made sure that we had enough to eat and kept the peace at home.

Dad had a job, but every morning before he left for work and every afternoon when he returned, he would be at work on the house or in the garden and expected us to be there alongside him. Our punishments always involved something to do with moving the home projects forward, like pulling weeds or feeding the pigs. In a mere 10 years, we had a home with indoor plumbing and my dad was making enough money that we no longer had to grow all of our own food.

I got my work ethic from my dad. My first job was as a dishwasher in a small French restaurant with hours from 6 PM to midnight. I remember my mother not wanting me to work such late hours and arguing with my father about it. Dad told her “If he works now, we won’t have to make him get a job later.” Despite having to get up early each day to get ready for work, he would come and pick me up every night that I worked. From there I went on to work in a gas station, a dairy, travel as a roadie for major bands and drive heavy equipment. I worked as a janitor, a hot tar roofer, owned my own construction company and worked in a recording studio. I’ve always played music, but I never really worked hard enough at that to be successful. I was always quitting a job because it was too tedious or just something that didn’t suit me. What I wanted was to get back to the garden of Eden. Just goof off and get people to pay me. And then it happened.

Tired of working for a living and not making enough playing jazz occasionally in a small club, I called the number on a billboard advertising a new Christian radio station. With my recording studio experience, surely they would want me to work for them. I was asked if I had ever worked in radio. When I told them “no”, they politely said no thank you, but that they would keep my name and number on file should they need someone to help with production. Oh well, I would go back to work as the janitor of the Lutheran church. Three weeks later, I got a call from the radio station general manager. Could I start this weekend?

I went to work as an overnight DJ, worked my way up to weekend evenings, weekday afternoons, morning drive and then finally, program director. This was a job I could do. The hardest thing I had to do was to turn the microphone on and say something like “It’s 98 degrees in the Duke City. Try to stay cool out there. Here’s music off of the motion picture soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop.” Over the next 26 years, I worked in radio as an on-air personality, talk show producer, music director, program director, promotions director, sports producer, fleet manager and broadcast engineer. There was a brief stint there working for a record company as an Artist and Recording director and promotions director. As a music and program director, I traveled to music conferences where I was wined and dined by record company promotion people and as a record company promotion guy, I traveled to music conferences and wined and dined music and program directors.

During my stint in media, I married and raised a couple of kids and that’s when things changed. I realized that I had other people to look after. As much as I loved to play and goof off, if I didn’t show up to work every day and do my best, my family would suffer. I also had colleagues at work who relied on me to prepare their programs, set up promotional events and repair equipment. I found myself answering the phone at midnight to solve some problem, working weekends and even traveling to rescue some event. This was becoming work. What would Saint Joseph think of this?

Saint Joseph never considered the ramifications of capitalism, socialism, worker’s rights or even how much he was making. Saint Joseph was a just man, a faithful spouse and father, a hard worker whose primary concern is for his family, a guardian and protector, an obedient servant of God. Like most fathers then and now, he was humble and faithful in all he did. When his job was done, he simply faded away.

These days, I’m retired, but I still have a responsibility to my wife, my children and my extended family. I scrape by as a musician and writer, and I thank God for the opportunities he presents me. Were I more successful, I’m not sure that I would be as low key as I am. I say a prayer every morning to Saint Joseph as part of my daily prayers. I want to emulate him just as my father did, working, taking care of his family and leaving us in good shape when he passed away nearly 30 years ago. Unlike Saint Joseph, we have a rich history of the things my dad did to care for his family. He had his problems, and he wasn’t always a saint, but he was the very spirit of Saint Joseph the Worker. I hope to one day reach that place where I can look back and say that I have lived up to the reputation of my namesake.