MY VIEW
Shannon Welty: Economic downturn suddenly hits home
When my mother called, she had that tone of voice we Italians get when somebody has died. So when she told me my father’s factory was closing, I was relieved.
My father started working at Pfeiffer Foods, the salad dressing manufacturer in Wilson, right after high school graduation. He sometimes worried about how he would support his growing family, but he advanced and the job always provided for our needs — all the way through college for my younger brother and me. Dad was even able to purchase land in the Adirondacks to build a cabin.
As a child, I would greet my father at our front door. “Daddy’s home!” was the refrain through the house. As I hugged him, my nose wrinkled at the strong scent of oil, vinegar, mustard and seasonings clinging to his uniform.
Dad wanted me to be proud of him, and I always was. Especially when I’d see those shiny dressing bottles neatly lined up on the grocery shelves. My dad helped make those.
When he had to work the night shift, mom would occasionally take us to visit on his lunch break. I sat in his office chair, played with Post-its and laughed at how funny he looked wearing a hair net. The most exciting part was when he would give us coins from his desk and take us to the vending machines to buy a snack.
Sometimes dad would bring home an empty 55-gallon drum. He’d clean out any remnant of ingredients and turn it into our latest toy chest. He once cut a blue plastic barrel in half the long way. My brother and I each took one of the halves with us as we stumbled along the fields to the creek behind our house. We floated down and around the bends like daring sailors in our new boats.
Though my brother and I have families of our own now, my parents still like to shower us with Christmas presents. But this year, mom said there probably won’t be any. Before the news, it had been easy for me to ignore our failing economy. But now, as my parents discuss canceling their land line and Netflix and other ways to tighten their budget, the headlines have become personal.
As I contemplate the plant closing’s likely domino effect, I can appreciate the frugal ways of my grandparents’ generation and am much more thankful for what I have.
The plant closing came as a shock. Still, I am excited about what this change will mean for my father. This could be the hard thing in life that brings about the better thing — his dream of renting out cabins in the Adirondacks. For the past several years, he has used most of his vacation time to cut his own lumber and build a cabin he designed himself. And now it is nearly complete.
In fact, the weekend before the news hit, my husband and I were the first to stay in the cabin with our 3-month-old daughter. We secretly stapled a dollar bill to one of the rough-honed beams in the tradition of first customers. Just a couple of days later, my father was hard at work on the cabin when he learned that his employer of the past 34 years would be closing its doors due to “consolidation.” At that moment, I’d like to think that our dollar became a signpost.
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