LeBrae

LeBrae

You won’t find LeBrae’s name on google. Not ever. LeBrae’s name probably means little to anyone still alive. In fact LeBrae’s name probably meant very little to anyone when he was alive.  Yet when I recently thought about some of the most impressive people I have known, up from my memery files came LeBrae. 

That is kind of strange, since I worked alongside LeBrae for several summers as part of a Grounds Crew on college summer breaks, and can’t remember if he was married, if he had any kids, exactly how old he was at the time, any hobbies, or simply much of anything about his personal life. He was always the first one to work, the last to leave, didn’t drive or own a car, never got in any arguments with anyone, and I suppose, on paper was the biggest nobody in town, some kind of total loser with fewer THINGS in his possession than most anyone else. I am guessing he rented a place to live but don’t really know that. 

He was an Italian immigrant but have no idea how long he had been in this country. When he worked he never really paused, maybe when someone was going for coffee break he would order an “Orraanch” soda, gulp it down while standing right where he was working and return to work. This was a grounds crew for a public school system that had maybe 7 schools to grounds keep. It was no profit making slave-driving enterprise in which any pause in work could lead to dismissal. It was difficult to get LeBrae to slow down or stop working—neither hot weather, rain, waiting for equipment or any other situation could cause him to stop. He always found something to do if he had no equipment or whatever the weather. 

His conversation was pretty much reduced to ‘Baccala’ towards someone who threw any comments his way. I didn’t know what the word meant until I just now looked it up on Google. It means smelly vagina in Italian. OK, that’s interesting. He appeared to know little English, but in retrospect I am not sure how true that really was since the foreman or anyone else trying to explain the work he needed to do had any problem with him following directions. I don’t recall him ever missing a day. He never complained about anything to anyone. He never appeared real excited about anything or upset about anything.  Others would horse around in various ways and he would never horse around in any way. He wasn’t hostile to others fooling around, just indifferent. 

He was never the subject of practical jokes or ridicule or taunts, or accused of anything wrong, LeBrae just kept working, impeccably and tirelessly, until it was time to go home and you practically had to pry whatever the working tool was, away from him. Everyone else practically ran to get to their car and go home while LeBrae would just slowly put his tools away and then walked the trek to home.I don’t recall anyone ever giving him a ride home. Or pick him up to get to work. I am sure they probably offered but I am just as sure he didn’t want to put up with the bother—the bother to him that is. LeBrae was not about to race around putting his implements away so he could be quickly in anyone’s car to go home and he would not likely risk being late to work by having someone else pick him up. 

Once in a while the crew would get together for a dinner somewhere and party out in the streets into the evening, but I don’t recall LeBrae ever being present. He didn’t care for boorish ‘foolishness’. I wish now I had pried more into his life and background, but then again I probably would have found out little. After the second question he probably would have said “buccala” and turned away. 

Strange, but retirement to me has been the absence of arguing with anyone about anything, entertaining myself for the most part, enjoying a simple daily routine that I find stress free, relaxing, peaceful, simple, and at whatever pace I feel like going. In short, I am becoming more and more like LeBrae except instead of ‘bacala’ I say ‘the hell with it’. It is rather blissful to be no longer a part of the ‘rat race’. Now I kind of realize LeBrae never joined the ‘rat race’. He was at peace with himself, set a low level for ‘enough is enough’, knew what each day would bring, was content with it, and stuck to his routine.  A simpler, more routine life in retirement has given me more contentment and peace, a much less contentious and stressful existence. 

Perhaps LeBrae was just smarter than I. He figured it out early in life, and I believe he lived to a ripe old age—a wise, productive, closed mouth mysterious figure whose secret for a tranquil life he never shared. I wonder what he did evenings and weekends?  Probably grew a nice vegetable garden and ate the healthy fresh produce. Maybe no “orraanch” soda then, but a cold brew of some sort and a weathered old rocking chair to rest his muscles and renew his spirit for the next day. 

It could have been LeBrae who said (but it wasn’t): “I am richer than E. H. Harriman.  I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.” (John Muir (American Naturalist)

“There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.” Samuel Smiles (Scottish author).

“Voluntary loneliness, isolation from others, is the readiest safeguard against the unhappiness that may arise out of human relations,” Sigmund Freud (Austrian psychologist)

No stress related disorders, personal clashes with others, any remote feeling of "enough is never enough", no competing against others for anything, no meaningless chit-chat, and so on. Maybe he was a genius.