The View From Planet Kerth: Finding an unexpected pleasure of post-Irma cleanup

My wife and I had lunch with lumberjacks last Sunday!

We had gone to Miller’s Ale House in Naples because local Florida TV doesn’t show Chicago Bears games, and my wife is such a Bears fan she never lets me miss a game, even during the six or seven grim decades that Jay Cutler served as anchor for that proud ship. So, during most of the winter, when we live in Naples, Miller’s is our second living room on Sundays.

We were nicely settled in and had already wolfed down our lunches (she had a dainty Philly cheese steak with fries, while I had a manly chicken Caesar salad), when we noticed two young men walking between the crowded tables, searching for someplace to sit. There were TV’s all around showing every game at the same time, but these two kept glancing at the TV we were watching, where the Bears were struggling against the Packers early in the second quarter.

One of the guys wore a White Sox cap turned backwards, and though my wife and I are Cubs fans and have never been big fans of backwards ball caps, we caught their attention and waved them over.

“Are you looking for the Bears game?” I asked.

“Yeah, but that’s the only TV that shows it,” one of them said, pointing at the TV we were watching from where we sat. He shrugged and looked around at all the crowded tables.

“Hey, you’re welcome to join us,” I said. “But in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that we’re both big Cubs fans.”

“Well, how unfortunate for you,” the guy without the cap said, proof that they were true Chicagoans, unwilling to trade away their honesty just for a place at the table. We pushed the two empty chairs out for them, and they sat down.

They were Tom and Matt, young guys in their mid-20’s, and Matt explained that they worked for a large tree-removal company with offices all throughout the country.

Lumberjacks, I thought! We’re having lunch with lumberjacks!

Though they worked out of the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, they had been dispatched to Florida to help with the cleanup after Hurricane Irma. Matt had been here for more than six weeks already, but Tom had just arrived earlier that day. Tom was scheduled to stay for the next month or so, but Matt would be here until well past New Year’s.

I asked how many of them had been dispatched to this area, and Matt explained that there were eight working in Naples from their Illinois branch, but there had been more than 70 from their company who had come here right after Irma from other places around the country. Many of the others had finished their deployment and gone back, but Matt and some of the others were being held over longer.

Because, I gathered, he was somewhat of a lumberjack specialist, if there is such a thing.

“These guys down here aren’t climbers,” Matt said to Tom, whose first day cutting Florida trees would start the next day. “They hate to climb. Or maybe they can’t.” Tom smiled and nodded, because he was also a climber, just as Matt was. “I’m telling you,” Matt said to Tom, “we’re golden down here.”

Tom smiled and gazed at the Bears game on TV, which was being played in Chicago’s Soldier Field, where the coaches on the sideline wore heavy jackets and hats pulled tight against the wind and freezing rain — a far cry from Miller’s beer garden in Naples, where a gentle 80-degree breeze ruffled the napkins on the table. “Well,” Tom said with a smile, “I wouldn’t mind being held over for a few extra months down here.” I toasted the thought with my beer.

They wolfed down an order of chicken wings, then dived into their jumbo burgers oozing with cheese and grilled onions, fries on the side. I was glad my manly salad had been eaten and cleared away from the table before these lumberjacks joined us.

The Bears managed to lose a close game (despite the fact that Jay Cutler is no longer there to do that for them) and we took a little gentle ribbing from the Packers fans who sat at the table next to us — all except for the mother-in-law who sat with them, a Chicagoan from the South Loop not far from Soldier Field who was visiting just for the week, and who cheered or booed along with my wife and me as the game went along.

As we got up to leave I glanced around the room, where smiling people wore jerseys or hats to declare their diverse allegiances — Browns, Buccaneers, Saints, Patriots — and I thought: Is there anywhere else in the world where you can sit and have an enjoyable lunch with people who celebrate their diversity and wear it so proudly with good-natured joy in each other’s company? Could you sit in a Liverpool pub and cheer for Manchester United, or in a Barcelona bistro cheering for Real Madrid, without getting hurt?

So listen: If you want to renew your love for America, go to a sports bar on a Sunday afternoon, where it’s just business as usual for a pair of old retired Cub-fan teachers to sit smiling through lunch with a couple of young Sox-fan lumberjack strangers they just met.

- - - 

The author splits his time between Southwest Florida and Chicago. Not every day, though. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Why wait a whole week for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Get T.R.'s book, 'Revenge of the Sardines,' available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine online book distributors. His column appears every Saturday.