Our very familiarity with common things often prevents us noticing such treasures as they contain, particularly people treasures. We always underestimate what is always near and familiar. As a great Master once said, “A prophet is nowhere without honor save in his own country.”
I have mentioned the psychological phenomenon of skitoma, a form of blindness that prevents people from seeing what they don't expect. This happens in life as well as art.
The Golconda diamond mine was discovered actually on the property of a man who had studied geology and sold his property so that he could go far away and look for diamonds.
The famous Titusville oil field in Pennsylvania was found on the land of a farmer who studied oil refining and chemistry and moved to Canada to seek his fortune. The new owner noticed that the stream through the property had a plank dam to hold back the sludge so that the cattle could drink from the stream lower down. The sludge was oil. The man whose ingenuity invented the plank dam to hold back the oil slick was off in Canada looking for oil.
A young man in Massachusetts got his degree in mining engineering, sold off his widowed mother’s farm, and went away, hoping to make himself a fortune by finding copper or other metals. The new owner went out to harvest the potatoes still growing in the fields and got a basket of them jammed in a gap in the stone wall round the field.
As he jiggled the basket through the hole he noticed, in the wall, a block of native silver eight inches square on the face. It had been there the whole lifetime of the newly qualified mining engineer.
We all have a tendency to think that our treasure will always be far away in the distance. But as the examples quoted show, it might be very near at hand, but not noticed because of familiarity.
I see things in the stores here labeled as ‘Handcrafted by Old World Artisans.’ I don’t doubt that the same stuff in different packaging is being sold abroad as ‘Computer designed in the USA.’
Distance lends enchantment to the view, say the Elders but don’t let nearness to our treasures blind us to their existence.
A very wise wife of a farmer once put a handful of straw on the plate of the hungry harvesters when they came in for their meal. When they protested she told them that she had never heard any of them say anything that would make her think that it wasn’t straw they had been getting as their meals for the last six years. They got the point.
Let us not forget to appreciate things near and familiar. To a stranger they may appear wonderful and rare.
For instance, when I ran a neighborhood newspaper in Chicago I lived on Burling Street with more than a dozen restaurants within four or five minutes walking distance.
Each had a different ambience and character, different menus and price structures, but they all had one thing in common: waitresses.
I remember being with an ex-colleague from the suburbs, who met me for a catch up lunch at a local restaurant. It was his first time in the area and he showed me some photographs that spanned the years since we had last seen each other.
Every photo had some minor flaw of focus or layout and he complained that he just couldn’t get the hang of his very expensive 35mm camera. I called a waitress over and asked her to help him. She glanced at the pictures and gave him a quick and concise lecture on film speed settings and f stops. I regretted that I didn’t have a camera myself to record his expression.
He hadn’t noticed the girl at all. She was just a waitress, not a person. The possibility that she could do anything except carry omelets to tables just hadn’t occurred to him. Like so many successful business men he had swallowed unthinkingly the deadly concept that what you do is what you are. People of his type have their heart attack six months after retiring because they identified so strongly with their job as who they are.
I know of more than one PhD in England who drives a London bus as his livelihood. They appreciate the comparative ease of the work, the adequate pay and benefits, and the spare time it gives them to do what they want to do. To the business people they ARE bus drivers, or mere bus drivers. It occurs to few that driving a bus is what they do, not what they are.
I had written reviews of every restaurant for a few miles around as one of my hats as the reporter on new and old local restaurants for the paper,under the name of Leon Guerolt, so I knew that the waitress studied photography at the Art Institute and had a formidable portfolio of her own.
That was Sharon. I told him of others who worked in the same restaurant or places nearby. Karen had broken into a male dominated profession. She was a registered clown who waitressed between engagements.
I showed him a photograph, a good one, of Karen visiting my wife’s fourth grade class and explaining to the children what it was like to be a clown. She held the whole class entranced as she told them what happened at her last clown convention, and then she put on her registered clown make-up that no other clown could use.
“When the last lip line goes on,” she said, “I won’t speak any more because my clown person Veronica is a silent clown.”
She became mute as the last line went on, and fascinated the children with her ability at non-verbal communication. Everyone loved her, including the faculty, but to most of her customers she is merely the waitress who brings them their coffee and ribs.
The idea that she may be a talented young woman is blocked by the mental program and belief that people are whatever they are doing, right now.
Nancy from the same restaurant was a weaver of splendid fabrics that she also designed. She worked as a waitress to assemble the money she needed to go to Morocco to learn carpet weaving from the acknowledged masters. Very shortly after my colleague had his lecture in the basics of camera manipulation Nancy did indeed go off to do what she wanted to do. The restaurant had a post card from Morocco.
Bonnie worked in one restaurant and exhibited her paintings in another. When the exhibition opened the place was packed with her friends and those who knew of her work.
Barbara was dark, lithe and elfin, and amazingly graceful, poetry in motion. She taught modern dance and ballet part time in a local studio.
Avena worked in my favorite Greek restaurant and astonished the owners when they found her reading Greek classics in the original Greek on her time off, which was more than they could do. She was MUCH more intelligent than most of the people who didn’t notice her when she was working as a waitress and transporting gyros and fries to the tables.
Pat made her own beautiful paneled skirts and doubled as waitress and folk musician in local clubs.
Lynn drew exquisitely, wrote very good poetry, and loved to do the long form of T’ai Chi among the pines in the Morton Arboretum.
The beautiful Pattie looked a lot like Jeanne Moreau, was a photographer’s model, played the flute and painted feathers as a hobby.
Vickie was very enthusiastic about her hobby, which was collecting first editions of the Wizard of Oz series.
Maneesha gave well-attended lectures to other waitresses on how to deal with sore feet and backache, moved about like a fawn and did jazz dancing as her hobby.
Beckie’s hobby was the history and the mythology of the Arthurian legends.
It was meeting a local waitress who was obviously a most extraordinary person that gave me an introduction to my first Indian guru. I wrote a book of children’s stories dedicated to her baby daughter.
All those mentioned, and more, were within two blocks of my brownstone in the area of the Lincoln, Halsted, Fullerton intersection in Chicago.
Like the nugget of silver in the wall, these ladies, or others like them, were always there, and so were ignored by many people, to their own loss.
Now many of these waitresses you meet are the sole support of their family. Some of them have sick children who they must leave at home to keep their job. Many of them bravely deal with cantankerous customers, manipulating parents and in-laws.
The waitress who gives you a cheery smile, and asks for your order, is quite likely to have sore feet and work longer hours than you do. I remember one who listened patiently to a customer telling her that his political party was responsible for the increase in the number of jobs. She said,“ I know that. I have three of them.”
If you were pleasant, and treated your waitress as a person instead of a food transporting robot you might well find a nugget of silver disguised as a waitress.
After I had finished my little account of some of the waitresses and their interests my colleague commented “You meet a lot of interesting people don’t you?” “Yes, I replied, “and so do you!” And so do you!
