What About Bob?

What About Bob?

I have now met Bob three times. He is a local electrician who is 62-years old and he has come to the house once to install an outlet in the Master Bath to accommodate a new bidet we wanted to install, once to install nine LED outdoor security lights and today to install a ceiling outlet box for a Big Ass Fan I have bought to put in the study. Bob would just as soon just do what he knows how to do and not fuss with contraptions like the bidet and fan unit. He prefers to do the electrical work and leave me to have Handy Brad do the rest. He works for an electrical servicing company and he bills by the hour, but after forty years of doing electrical work he knows what he likes to do and what he prefers not to do.

I spent two hours sitting in the study today while Bob put the ceiling box in place and then sat with him for another half hour while he replaced a non-functional outdoor GFI outlet on our patio. Where he had cautiously disconnected the power prior to doing the study ceiling work, he was prepared to risk a 120 volt jolt from the GFI outlet. I found his choice of risks interesting, but didn’t feel it was my place to question the actions of a 40-year electrician. There were no sparks flying, but we did have a nice long chat and I learned a thing or two about Bob.

When I asked what Bob did for fun, he told me that his hobby was using a metal-detector to search for treasures buried in the ground. I have certainly heard of this hobby before and find it a perfectly reasonable avocation. Divining what lies beneath is a worthy search. It has all the elements of a good pastime since it involves a specialized piece of equipment that not just anyone owns, it can be done most anywhere, it has the potential for reward if you succeed at it, and mostly, it is a dreamers’ province since it leaves lots of room to wonder about the provenance of each and every find.

Seeing my antiquities sitting in black sand in the glass-top curio table, caused Bob to reach into his pocket and hand me an old bronze coin. He said he had found it over in Del Mar near the Fairchild Ranch and it was just buried down a foot or so in no particularly special spot. He had taken it to a local coin dealer to understand what he had found. There he learned that it was a Roman coin from approximately 300 A.D., or the time of Emperor Constantine, holding court and presumably minting coinage in Byzantium, then known as Constantinople and today called Istanbul. I have a Roman coin or two in my coin collection (all bought here and there and none found as this one had been). I think a found coin or artifact is far more valuable than a purchased one, but that is the amateur archeologist in me talking. This one, belonging to Bob, was thicker and more weighty than the long-worn ones I have from Israel and Morocco, both of which had Roman outposts in Caesaria and Volubilis. He had no idea where it was from, but he was proud of it nonetheless. When I told Bob about my grandfather’s cigar box full of old coins that was given to me by my mother upon his death, he shared that his father had had a similar shoebox full of old coins that he had found and kept.

I think Bob and I bonded in a manner when I showed him the cover of the book I wrote on the death of my mother at 100 years-old. The book was called Mater Gladiatrix and the cover had a matrix of old coins, which sit in a frame on my living room wall. Bob didn’t seem inclined to explore the origins of his particular Roman coin as I might have, but he seemed to appreciate the romance of the piece nonetheless. In numismatic terms, Bob’s coin was barely identifiable. On one side you could see the vague form of some regal head or other (perhaps Constantine) and on the other there was a large number that was most likely a 50. There were no decipherable markings on the edges of either side, which is where most of the origins of any coin are most easily found. Nevertheless, there was something about the heft of this coin that impressed me. It was a coin for Bob to carry in his pocket and not worry about the wear. There was little more of it to wear down. But for that reason, it was not particularly valuable to the coin dealer, who explained that these were not even particularly rare. Bob was left with the impression that it might be worth $50 or so. If I were Bob I wouldn’t have parted with it for anything. It’s value was less numismatic than it was symbolic. It said anyone with an inexpensive metal detector and some spare time could be a romantic.

Bob’s family was from Kansas. His father had been a milkman and had fought in Korea. Bob might have been an electrician, but he was not a union member (I didn’t even know that was possible). We discussed the rugged individualism that was the American way and even discussed why Canadians were more inclined to socialism due to their harsher environment to the north. Bob never declared his political convictions, but he seemed to sense my liberal proclivities. I would say that he felt that Trump was a dolt who was unable to accept responsibility or confess to any weaknesses or mistakes. That did not sit well with Bob. Bob struck me as a man of honor who found honor in his work and joy in his avocation of searching for lost treasure.

I could not do what Bob does. It is less about the knowledge needed to join wires and fit connector boxes into tight spaces. It is about finding pleasure in doing a job that he thoroughly understands and not feeling the need to take on tasks that go beyond those limits. That is less because of inability and more about lack of need. Bob seems to me to be at peace with who he is, where he comes from and where he sees himself going. The next time I need an electrician I will certainly call on my new friend, Bob.