Job well done: Hats off to today’s yeomen, who do all the work with little glory

“Wonder Boy Service” was the message on the side of their Enterprise Rental truck. And before they were through, Jason and Marco did prove they were wonders, though certainly not boys.

At precisely 7 a.m., the appointment hour designated, they clomped up our steep front stairs and pushed the bell button, still functional after 60 years in this worn old house.

No waster of words, Marco said: “Got that new dryer for you. First we take out the old one.”

They threaded their way in and steered straight ahead through one 32-inch door with a right turn leading toward a pair of 32 inchers. I remember standing behind the draftsman those 60 years ago as he specified door widths that, these many years later, would make possible today’s Wonder Boy installation.

The boys shut off gas and electricity, then hauled out the machine to unearth 30 years of fluff and dirt, which they soon swept clear. With a sling of heavy canvas, they lugged the old monster out and down the steps to the truck. They returned with the new dryer riding that same sling — 100 hefty pounds, 50 each for Jason and Marco as one followed the other up the stairs.

After 15 minutes, the new dryer rumbled to life in my house. This was their second appliance installation of the day: It took them less than 45 minutes to get the old one out, the new one in. As they drove away, their truck sagged under the weight of our deceased dryer, plus seven more big new appliances they would install that same day.

I think of guys like Jason and Marco, and even our own long-ago house draftsman, as yeomen. They are not the lordly guys (or women) at the top, who think they run the world. Yeomen are the men and women one step down who make it work: secretaries, nurses’ aides, carpenters, plumbers, drivers, pilots, computer geeks, firefighters, cops, practical engineers and many more.

A yeoman’s job by dictionary definition is done in a diligent, loyal and workmanlike manner, especially when it involves much effort or labor. It signifies a job well done, even if it’s not glamorous or highly visible. More romantically, by the late 17th century, yeoman was the rank of chivalry between page and squire. Robin Hood and his merry men were yeomen of the most courageous sort.

My own life as a dismally low-ranking yeoman began just out of high school. I worked for Tulsa’s Percy Blair Construction as a carpenter’s helper, setting up forms to create pre-stressed concrete beams that to this day still support freeway overpass bridges.

Later I worked in a Wonder Bakery on a machine that shot raw bread dough into steel pans: boom! boom! boom! boom! It was exhausting, but at $1.35 an hour, the best-paying college job I ever worked. My first actual journalism job, writing for the weekly West Tulsa News, paid only by making me sell weekly subscriptions door to door for $2.50 a year. They allowed me to keep all the money. Wouldn’t that have made me at the time a yeoman journalist?

Barely a year ago I met my most thrilling yeoman. From the time my wife and I built our house in 1965 we had enjoyed the beauty of two burr oak trees in our backyard. Sixty years later they were huge, nearly 4 feet in diameter at the base. Then, mysteriously, one began losing leaves and simply died. The guy from Elite Tree Service stood stroking his chin as he looked up, assessing the job.

“Four thousand dollars,” he said.

Believe it or not, I sighed with relief. The takedown bill for a huge cottonwood adjacent to a nearby home had been almost $10,000. So this magical guy soon showed up with two helpers. He attacked the tree like a calculating surgeon, swinging on a rope from trunk to branch to the ground and back up again. His helpers scampered around below as he took the tree apart and sent it away, truckload after truckload.

In a final generous gesture, he sliced off a four-inch slab of trunk just for me. I haven’t yet gotten around to counting the myriad rings. But what a guy, that fellow. What a yeoman.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.