One Saturday the bean man wasn’t at the farmers’ market, he was always there every week, and I asked the woman who works with him, “Where is he?”
“He just died,” she said. “This morning early. We were getting ready to come to the market and we found him. We called the ambulance. But the truck was already loaded so we just came here.” Other customers came up and said, “where is he?” and she had to tell the story again, over and over. “I’m so sorry, hon,” the customers said. They cried, she cried. The bean man had been there for such a long time, maybe 30 years, always there, every week.
Two things strike me — aside from sadness over that grumpy old bean man who was somehow both private and personal — about that Saturday. One was that the bean man’s co-workers found their old friend dead, did what was necessary for him, then considered the truck loaded with perishable vegetables that had to be sold fast, and did what had to be done and drove to the city from the other side of the Bay, between 2 and 3 hours, I think, in the early morning dark to sell beans, five hours on their feet and grieving, then drove back home. The bean man would have absolutely done the same.
The other thing that struck me was that the bean man had been making this Saturday crack-of-dawn drive, and usually another Sunday drive to another city market, for decades. He was one of the originals still at the market. He was an Eastern Shore truck farmer, he sold the only fresh beans around — cannellini, Navy beans, red beans, black beans, October beans, lima beans, Dixie butter beans, speckled beans, black-eyed peas — and in the spring, oh my goodness, he sold fresh peas. That is, he had something that the Baltimore of all colors and incomes loved, he could make a living at it, it was good to do, he did it, he never stopped.
And what struck me about both these things — these farmers and their hard repetitive lives and their faithfulness — was how they were in it for the long haul, they could be counted on. The bean man was 86 when he died, just beginning to talk retirement. And he wasn’t the only person like this that I know.
I wrote about this before, about these people and the strength they’ve needed to never give up and how I admire that strength and endurance. I’m thinking about Richard Garwin who’s in his 90’s and has been giving his physicist’s advice — generally unasked — to every administration since Eisenhower’s. Or Lois Feinblatt who died at age 100 still working for gender equity; you met her once, you loved her and never stopped. Or John Higham, who retired at age 69 so he could keep writing books about how immigration and nativism (his term) shaped American character and fed racism, and wrote them until just before he died at age 83. Or Grace Brush who started out at age 41 counting pollen grains in Chesapeake Bay sediments until she figured out the 14,000-year history of the bay and at 91, is writing it up for the rest of us. Like, for crying out loud, Elizabeth II of England, and, of course, the bean man.
I understand 100 percent that perseverance is sometimes stupid, sometimes bad for you; that reasons for persevering are sometimes shoddy; that not everything is worth persevering at. I take perseverance with a grain of salt, and I’ve walked out on some good things myself — three jobs, one husband. I also understand that we need the more temporary heroes who sail in splendidly and rescue drowning people, win wars, discover new worlds, start revolutions, and jump-start your car.
But these long-haul people, they find a thing they want to do, that needs doing, that they do well, and they do it for the rest of their lives. We adore our flashing heroes, but these long-haulers we deeply love. I think they seem necessary to our continuance as a society, that human communities are worth the effort. I think they’re necessary to our sense of meaning as humans, that we ourselves are worth the effort. We count on these people, they’re keeping it all going, the only thing stopping them is death.
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Photo by kallerna, via Wikimedia Commons
Hi Ann–Thanks for telling the story of the bean man, and reminding me of the few people in my life who have matched his level of consistency and vigor. Like many, I’ve struggled with some major life changes in the past few years–and I’ve relied on the continuity of the people who appear regularly in my life. When spouses, parents, co-workers, and friends seem fickle, distant, chaotic, or just plain caught up in their own messes, I’ve been grateful for my mailman, the neighbor who stands outside to wait for his son’s bus to arrive, the librarian who never lets me down–people who are always there where I’d expect them to be. People who offer me nothing more than a hello, a smile, a brief chat, and, most importantly, they always meet my eyes while we talk. “You are here,” their eyes say, “and so am I,” their eyes say, day after day after day.
I so agree, Rachel, I wouldn’t like to think of what life would be like without them.
Ah yes, to watch my 9-year old grandson persist at mounting a squash on a branch stump in the tree in my backyard, to feed the birds and squirrels…30-minutes of dedicated effort; to observe the elderly bike-rider neighbor as he patiently worked with a couple of zip-ties to attach a stuffed animal…a bald-eagle…to the handlebars of his bike on the 4th of July…45-minutes of focused work; to listen to my youngest daughter patiently remind me every time I get her friends’ pronouns wrong…sometimes a daily nudge; to open this website every other work-day and marvel at the creative ways you work with common and sometimes rarely used words to always convey a message of fascination with the existence of life in expression…timeless. I reckon perseverance is anywhere one’s perception perseveres.
I’m sorry for the late approval on your lovely comment, David. Yes, you’re right, I agree, and I thank you on behalf of us all.
I appreciated learning about your bean man.
I came across this story: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/man-who-knew-moose-no-other
just after reading yours. Another instance of perseverance throughout a lifetime.
Great post. My father has been a barber now for more than 60 years. For decades, he worked six days a week, ten hour days. In the last few years he’s cut back. He’s now at his shop for only a few hours on Saturdays. My dad went stir crazy during the COVID shut-down. As his 84th birthday fast approaches, there is only a hint that he might finally be thinking of retirement.