Breadth of a salesman
Agrizzled New England contractor hired me to help fix old historic buildings. At the Mayflower Society House in Plymouth, my three-foot crowbar pried off wrinkled clapboards and sheathing, kicking up dust and exposing heavily hewn beams. At the Winslow House Museum in Marshfield, doors sagged from centuries of wear. Gravity and subsidence pulled at them until they rubbed against the jambs or shuddered across the floor. Locks and latches had fallen out of alignment. The Louisa May Alcott Orchard House in Concord suffered from damaged plaster, and the Old West Church in Boston from weary window frames.
My framing chisel and cutting tools hacked away damaged sections like a dentist excavating cavities. New wood replaced the old, and intricate carpentry patched the pieces together. A few strategically placed wedges restored old doors to plumb. My wood plane shaved a little off the top and the sides, like a barber, allowing me to adjust the hand-forged hinges so the doors swing cleanly again. I troweled creamy plaster paste across ceilings, spreading it smooth. My work clothes — dusty, tattered, torn — wear the evidence of my efforts. Countless dots of plaster, paint, and other materials assemble into something like a Pointillist painting by George Seurat or a Jackson Pollock abstraction.
I had never planned to fix old houses. For years, I was a salesman.
No 10-year-old boy ever says: “When I grow up, I want to be a dealer marketing services representative!” That kind of job results from a long chain of pragmatic events. Every day, I slid a razor across my face, a daily ritual that grated it raw. A comb neatly aligned the mess of hair on my head, sweeping the strands into place. The collar of my white dress shirt formed crisp triangles. Strategically pinching the shiny silk of my tie produced a perfectly symmetrical dimple in the center. In the financial services industry, it’s important to look trustworthy.
I had grown up building things deep in New England’s sun-scattered forests: crude structures out of fallen branches against a boulder covered with pine boughs, for instance. Friends and I stacked stones to dam brooks, stuffing sticks and twigs into the gaps to create small pools in which to escape the sticky summer heat. From the bank, we dredged silty clay and shaped it into simple bowls. None of these experiences working with minimally processed, natural materials prepared me for a career in the financial sector, but the dreams of childhood often yield to the practicalities of adulthood. That’s how I found myself interviewing at an investment firm.
My entry-level customer service job at a large mutual fund company started on the phone. Corralled into chest-high cubicles, a cluster of young professionals repeated the pleasant cadences of a scripted greeting in endless loops throughout the day. We fielded calls, one after another, like songbirds squawking at the neighborhood cat. We answered all calls the same way. Soon, the same chipper tone infused my voice when I talked to friends and family, as if they, too, were potential customers.
Next came learning how to give proper sales presentations. Our small team of reps gathered in conference rooms that served as sterile appendages to the main sales floor. The fluorescent lights flickered. Vinyl tabletops and polyester carpet emitted the rubbery smell of new plastic. A faint hint of ammonia remained from the janitor’s work the night before.
Low-level managers wearing thin veils of confidence put us on trial. They ordered us to stand before the group and give canned pitches for elaborate financial products. Our hands trembled. Faces turned red. One after another, we sputtered the presentations. On occasion, someone froze, left to sweat it out in uncomfortable silence. Sometimes, a manager rattled a cup of change, calling embarrassing attention to every filler “um” or “uh.”
In this emotional vacuum, we learned how to speak professionally and how to dress for success. Established employees openly ridiculed cheap clothing bought from discount racks, which, on my barely livable salary, I had done.
“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” they repeated in cold, tiny circles, a human manifestation of the polish that I rubbed into my shoes until they gleamed.
Gradually, I began to shine, too. Promotions came slowly, but they came. The role spat me into the field. The never-ending quarterly cycles called for in-person meetings in my assigned territory in the state of Nebraska. Disposable wipes and a tiny vacuum that plugged into the cigarette lighter kept my car spotlessly clean in case I drove a client to lunch.
Years of working in finance came with prosperity but wore me down. Planning sessions, meetings, and recaps filled the days. Spreadsheets of data tracked my efforts and their results. My mind wandered, daydreaming about change. My weekends turned to building projects, transforming raw materials into finished products — real, tangible objects with presence and weight. Looking at them convinced me that the time had come. Deep in my gut, a growing feeling told me to jump.
I walked away from my career in sales. For the first time in years, I felt weightless — free.
But now what?
Memories of those crude, natural constructions from my childhood led me to the world of preservation. Working on old buildings allowed me to relive my childhood on a grander scale. Thinking of those rough leantos in the mountains connected me to my past. These old, imposing structures — monuments that draw a line through time — connect me to a much larger, broader past.
Historic preservation pays a lot less than the money business, but following my instincts felt right: no regimented dress code, no corporate jargon, no nerve-racking pressure to act a certain way. My work spoke for me.
The grizzled contractor and I tackled the bones of these relics, often spongy, rotten, and riddled with holes from busy insects. With the slightest prodding, the wood disintegrates, especially ground-level window sills, which absorb the most moisture, especially near the Atlantic. At the ocean’s edge in Cohasset stands a brick oil house, a shed-size building that once stored fuel and maritime supplies. Its masonry was crumbling into dust. Our chisels and hammers chipped out the decaying mortar. With thin trowels, we filled the gaps with fresh material, strengthening the bonds between the brick layers to withstand whatever the future holds in store.