Nearly every Friday, my father drove my mom and me into the city from our suburban home to visit his mother. Sometimes, one or more of my uncles would visit at the same time. After a few minutes of chatting with my grandmother, the men would adjourn to the front room, leaving the women and children in the kitchen.
When I was old enough to join the men in the front room, I learned some surprising things. Every one of these men had worked—or still worked—on boilers. Boilers were central to our lives. It still astonishes me how much there was to talk about when it came to boilers.
But what really surprised me was the opera music playing continuously on the record player while they discussed boilers. And they didnt just listen passively—they knew opera. They could name the composers, recount the stories, discuss favorite arias, and even sing sections in Italian, despite none of them speaking the language. To my knowledge, none had attended college, much less taken music appreciation courses. Yet they had all worked for years as young men, painting the walls and ceilings at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, while opera rehearsals went on all around them. Without paying for a ticket or ever wearing a tie, they amassed an impressive knowledge of opera.
Though I eventually understood how that happened, I still don’t know how they became so familiar with existential philosophy. But their discussions of philosophy weren’t meant for the real world. The group’s reaction during one of these Friday night Boiler, Opera, Philosophy sessions to my announcing that I was considering becoming a philosophy major was a telling one. It became awkwardly quiet, though no one expressed outrage or offered sarcastic judgment.
The next morning, my favorite uncle showed up at our house and handed me a painting of a bum sitting under a tree, reading a book. He left without a word. There was no lecture about getting a real job or the dangers of dying hungry on the street. There didn’t need to be. It worked. I eventually became a geophysicist working for an oil company.
Over fifty years later, I have that painting hanging in my study.
But I still need to get a boiler!
Bob Marksteiner was born in Chicago and grew up in Franklin Park, Illinois
