StoryCorps 526: A Parent’s Job

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Michael Garofalo (MG): Sometimes, it feels like it’s a parent’s job to embarrass their kids.

Charlotte Marboe (CM): You you decided to pick me up in the garbage truck …right in front of my friends.

John Marboe (JM): Uh-huh.

MG: And sometimes, a parent’s actual job is the thing that their children grow up feeling ashamed of.

Muhammad Faridi (MF): I never really liked talking about my family. We don’t come from Park Avenue, and I was embarrassed that… you drove a taxi cab.

MG: But in spite of that, there are still things we can learn from the paths that our parents have chosen.

Patrick Haggerty (PH): He said, “Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.” And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, “Now, how ‘bout you?”

MG: It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. I’m Michael Garofalo, and this week, three stories about the things we learn from our parents’ work. That’s coming up, right after this short break.

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MG: Welcome back. In this episode we’re listening to three conversations about work, between parents and their kids.

What we think of our parents’ job changes over time. When we’re small, anything they do seems impressive and worth bragging about. But then we go to school, we learn that some jobs are considered better than others, that some people have more than we do, and maybe our perception of our parents and what they do when they leave home every morning… maybe that changes for the worse.

And that’s the starting point for the three stories in this episode… and we’ll see if, for the kids in these families, the embarrassment sticks. Or, if it changes into something else.

First up, a guy who performs two very essential but very different jobs. John Marboe is a Lutheran pastor who grew up admiring his local garbage collectors in Alexandria, Minnesota. And when times were lean for his family, he decided to take on some shifts hauling trash.

He sat down for a conversation with his daughter, Charlie, who was 13 at the time, to talk about his work.

John Marboe (JM): I’ve been hauling trash probably since you were about eight years old. And, I brought the truck to your school, didn’t I?

Charlotte Marboe (CM): Yeah. You decided to pick me up in the garbage truck. Then I hopped in, reluctantly. I was kind of like, this is my last day of fifth grade–

JM: Right in front of your friends–

CM: …right in front of my friends.

JM: Uh-huh.

Did I ever tell you the story about when I pulled up to an intersection, and there was a mother and her little children? And her littlest boy just started waving, and I was waving. And the mother looked up at me with this kind of concerned look, and then grabbed her son. It was almost as though, ‘No. That’s not something you’re going to want to be.’

CM: I think, to me, as your kid, I’m not embarrassed when people say, like, ‘Oh, what does your dad do?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s a pastor, he’s a garbage man.’

JM: I keep doing it because it’s — I don’t know if I want to say it’s more important, but it’s differently important. You’re doing something for people. And I think especially I’m aware that when it’s hot out, when it’s really smelly, when there are a lot of maggots. But as a garbage man, I probably know more about people on my route than their pastor does. Because their trash tells a story.

Charlie, do you remember the note that was written on the back of this envelope, ‘I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I just can’t stand the pain anymore.’ I looked at it and I thought, ‘You know what? I’m paid here to take out the trash, not to intervene in people’s lives based on what I find.’ As a pastor, all I could do was say a prayer. It’s similar to the way I feel about doing funerals, though it’s not usually as intense. But it puts me in touch with that side of life which is about loss. That everything is temporary. And… I love remembering the things that you said when you were, like, really little.

CM: [Laughs]

JM: Your first sentence was what?

CM: ‘It all goes.’

JM: ‘It all goes.’ And, to do the trash it’s sort of a reminder that every small thing that we ever do for other people is valuable. Even though it might be really small and unnoticed.

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MG: That’s John Marboe — known to many as Reverend Doctor Garbage Man. He spoke with his daughter, Charlie, in Minneapolis. Their conversation was recorded in partnership with Georgetown University’s American Pilgrimage Project, which gathers stories about the role of faith in everyday life.

So Charlie came around pretty quickly — considering that, at 13 years old, she’s right in the prime time to be embarrassed of her dad.

The son in this next story though, he’s had a harder time…

When Mohammad Ashraf Faridi left Pakistan in the 1980s, he had never driven a car. In fact, his kids tell us that he rode a bike everywhere he went.

Today, he’s a cab driver in New York City. He started doing that in the 1990s… around the time his family — wife and kids — joined him in New York. He often pulled 14 hour days, just to make ends meet.

But for his oldest son, also named Muhammad, being the son of a cab driver didn’t make his transition to a new country any easier.

Muhammad Faridi (MF): You used to go to work and then come back home around 2am. So in the morning you used to send me to go clean your car. I would vacuum, take out the mats, smack them against the pole to get the dust out. And then, I was maybe 14, 15, and I was doing that and a kid from the neighborhood just began making fun of me. “Hey! Cab boy! Taxi boy!” That’s one of those, uh, experiences that made me embarrassed.

Mohammad Ashraf Faridi (MAF): At that time, my financial position was no good.

MF: Mhmm. After your 18th birthday you can get your taxi license.

MAF: So, you said “I want to help you.”

MF: We drove together for a couple of days.

MAF: Right.

MF: You showed me the streets, bridges, everything. And I started college, and went to law school, and I was still working part-time, driving. And then I began working for a federal district court judge. The judge at that time was in his late 80s. So, I used to help him carry his briefcase down. And one day, the judge called for a car service and you came to pick him up.

MAF: Yeah.

MF: I put the briefcase in the car. We waved at each other. And you drove the judge home. The next day the judge and me, we were having lunch. I said, “The driver who picked you up yesterday was my father.” The judge was very upset at me that I didn’t introduce him to you. I, at that point, never really liked talking about my family. We don’t come from Park Avenue and I was embarrassed that you drove a taxicab. But not anymore. As I grew older, I’m proud. You know, I think you’ve done a great job.

MAF: The bottom line is this: I got everything in my life… my friends, my family. I am happy.

MF: And in my life if I can… emulate that by a fraction I would think that I’ve lived a good life.

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MG: That’s Mohammad Ashraf Faridi and his son Muhammad Faridi. The younger Muhammad is now a partner in a New York City law firm. When he needs a ride, he’ll give his dad a call.

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Whether it’s pearls of wisdom from a garbage man, or a tireless work ethic from a cabbie,the people we’ve heard from so far have learned something useful from their parents.

For the kid in our last story, though, the stakes were a bit higher.

Back in the 1950s, Pat Haggerty was a self-described country boy. He grew up on a dairy farm in rural Washington State. And as he hit his teens, he started to understand that he was gay. Pat thought he was hiding it pretty well. But, one day, when Pat was going to perform at a school assembly, he found out that his secret wasn’t so secret after all.

Patrick Haggerty (PH): I’m riding to school with my oldest brother, and on the way to school, I’m putting glitter all over my face. And my brother said, ”What in the hell are you doing?” And I said, ”I’m putting on my costume.” And he said, ”Well, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that.” So, he dropped me off at the school, and he called my dad up, and he said, ”Dad, I think you better get up there. This is not going to look good.” So my dad drove up to the high school. And he had his farmer jeans on and they had cow crap on them, and he had his clodhopper boots on. And when I saw him coming, I ducked around the hall and hid from him. And it wasn’t because of what I was wearing, it was because of what he was wearing. So, the assembly goes well, and I climb in the car and I’m riding home with my father. My father says to me, ”I was walking down the hall this morning, and I saw a kid that looked a lot like you ducking around the hall to avoid his dad. But I know it wasn’t you, cause you would never do that to your dad.” And I squirmed in my seat, and I finally busted out and I said, ”Well Dad, did you have to wear your cow crap jeans to my assembly?”

Robin Bolland (RB): [Laughs]

PH: And he said, “Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.” And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, ”Now, how bout you? When you’re a full-grown man, who are you gonna go out with at night?” And I said, “I don’t know.” And he said, “I think you do know, and it’s not going to be that McLaughlin girl that’s been making goo-goo eyes at you, but you won’t even pick up the damn telephone. Now, I’m gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you’re gonna remember it when you’re an adult: don’t sneak. Because if you sneak, like you did today, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’ll ruin your immortal soul.”

And out of all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son, my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak. My reaction at the time was to get out in the hay field and pretend like I was as much of a man as I could be. And I remember flipping 50-pound bales three feet up into the air going, “I’m not a queer! What’s he talking about?”

RB: [Laughs]

PH: But he knew where I was headed. And he, he knew that humiliating me and making me feel bad about it in any way was the wrong thing to do. I had the patron saint of dads for sissies, and no, I didn’t know it at the time, but I know it now.

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MG: That’s Pat Haggerty remembering his father, Charles Edward Haggerty. He spoke with his daughter, Robin, in Seattle–where they now live.

Pat took his father’s advice and ran with it. See, Pat is something of a country music pioneer. In the early 1970s he formed the band Lavender Country and their self-titled album from 1973 is the first gay themed album in country music history. And, they claim to be the first out gay country band in country music history. So,let’s do the credits with one of their tracks.

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MG: That’s all for this week. The stories in this episode were produced by Liyna Anwar, Aisha Turner, and Nadia Reiman. This episode of the podcast was produced by David Herman, and edited by me. As always you can find out what music we used on our website, storycorps.org. While you’re there, you can find out how to record your own StoryCorps interview and add it to our archive at the Library of Congress. Keep those reviews and ratings coming wherever you download the show, and if there’s anyone on this podcast you ever want to leave a message for, call our voicemail line: it’s 301-744-TALK. That’s 301-744-T-A-L-K. You leave a message, we’ll pass it on, and maybe even feature it here on the show. Until next time, I’m Michael Garofalo, and this has been the StoryCorps podcast. Thanks for listening.