The Locksmith
Roger sat at his dining room table. and invited me into the room with him. He is hard of hearing, favoring his right ear and crediting the hearing loss in his left, to a stepfather with an overzealous fist. Luckily, he is an easy talker so after a couple repetitions of a first question, he lets loose a torrent of stories. Each one has the sort of grim hardship of an early Disney film.
“I was born here in Fergus Falls in 1936 and my parents had split so we moved around a bit. My mom was a waitress down in Sioux Falls, met my stepfather who was in the service down there and then we moved to Moorhead Minnesota. By about 1944-45, somewhere in there, I caught polio and my mom found a sponsor in the Shrine in Minneapolis. So I went and stayed at the Shriner’s Hospital, I was in there for 7 and a half months because I had a club foot. The doctors ended up doing a couple of operations on me. And of course, the thing is, if I hadn’t of gone and jumped out the window there, they wouldn’t have had to do the surgery all over again.
After surgery, I worked summers with a Carnival traveling around the state for church socials and stuff like that. I met a lot of interesting people but as far as working for the carnival, it was not a good life. We slept in a trailer, we had goofy hours you know, the carnival didn’t close till 1-2 o’clock in the morning then you had to tear it down after that.”
Fergus Falls, Roger's hometown and current home
“I remember growing up on the farm in Downer Minnesota because my mom was an alcoholic and the state took me away from her. I went in and out, around a bunch of foster homes, which some of the people watching me were not good people, they’d beat me not for eating my peas. I hated peas! But I worked on the farm at one place for 3 or 4 years. Learned how to milk cows, clean the chicken coop and the pig pen oh god it was... well I learned a lot in that time about how to take care of myself.
Matter of fact, before the state took me, when my mom was drinking a lot, there was never enough food in the house to eat. So I had a little shoe box and I would go out and shine shoes so I could have enough money to eat. I wouldn’t sleep in my mom’s apartment because I was afraid of the people that came in from the bar next door that my mom owned, so I slept in the hallway in a closet. She would have people overnight and I didn’t like that so I slept in that closet on top of suitcases and stuff. Eventually, my mom and step-father divorced and my step-father wanted me to go with him to Oklahoma City but I refused to leave my mom. So I stayed with her in St. Paul.
When we lived there I hung around with bad people that got into trouble, and of course, I went along with them so I was just as much to blame as they were. We did burglary, we were burglars. Breaking into shops and taking stuff we could sell for some extra money. None of us had money, we didn’t have jobs so we figured we needed to steal and pawn off stolen stuff to get what we wanted. We were on a rampage. That landed me in Boys Totem Town for 6 months for getting caught stealing.
My mom got me a job in a parking lot, which got me out a month early. From there I got into work as a yarnboy at a knitting mill for years until I got to work on a machine. It was going well until my father-in-law asked if I wanted to go on a hunting trip upstate for a week. I asked my supervisor if I could take the time off and he said “sure.” Well, it wasn’t until I got up there that I found out he hadn’t meant it. But I couldn’t get back in time so I lost my job there. That’s around the time the State sent me off to watch making school.”
He is a man of contradictions which he seems to easily make internally consistent. He is an obviously vivacious man but his life has been marred by illness. From polio as a child to COPD today, he has been ridden with physical hardship that seems to ride on his back like a small child on his father, more inconvenience than strain. His career too, wound from watchmaking to lock breaking, as he went from the man that made valuables to be stored in safes, to one whose longest profession as a locksmith consisted mostly of cracking locks that had miscarried their intended purpose.
Roger holds a ring he made long ago, that his wife Sharon now wears
“The State of Minnesota sent me to watch making school specifically because I couldn’t stand for long on account of my polio and surgeries. When I came out though I had a good sense of working with small things.
I worked for a jeweler out in West St. Paul for about 5 years. I loved it. I made a bunch of rings and other jewelry, some of which I still have to this day. At the time I was working there I had Thursdays and Sundays off, and what can you do with one day off. By that time I had a wife and kids and I wanted to take my family on trips sometime. So I asked for one weekend off per month, but of course they wouldn’t give it to me so I put in my notice and sent in my application to Rosemont Engineering where I ended up staying for about 15 years.
From my time jeweling, I learned the skills to work assembling for about a decade. But they sent me off to learn welding for a couple years, they sent me off to learn pattern making, and in the last 5 years I worked back in the model shop. I learned a lot from my time there.
There were two engineers back there with me in the model shop that became friends and mentors. One of them was a bit of a goofball though and he would send cards in with my name on them and send them in. One of them was an application for a locksmith’s license, and that’s how I became a locksmith, from him sending in that card in my name. But it worked out, I’ve been doing locksmithing for about 42 years now, to this day and it’s been a good career for me. I’ve got a toolbox to crack into later today actually.”
His worldview showed the same marks of duality as his physical history. He felt weighed on by fear of just the type of people he once was as a misguided youth.
“Freedom for me is being able to walk the streets without having to worry about getting mugged. It’s ridiculous what goes on today. Even when people didn’t have anything they didn’t go out and destroy other people’s property. ”
I asked him about his stint as a burglar
“We were young, and it was back in the days when hard times was hard times. We didn’t have a lot when I was growing up. We took stuff to eat and such. Everyone today is on social services, getting free money from the government anyway. It’s ridiculous.”
There was an odd tension in this view of the world that seemed drawn differently from different vantage points in his life. Even his view of the American Dream itself felt pulled taught by tensions in his life versus his expectations.
“The American Dream is to have a good life, good health. To be able to do things without worrying if you can afford them sometimes.
I’d like a lot of things but you can dream to the point where you can’t really... Well I really don’t like living in this town, there’s nothing to do. I’d like to be able to go get a good dinner or something good at the store.
I have a good life, to a point. My legs have gone to hell in a handbag. During the course of your life when you’ve done the types of things I’ve done, from inhaling all sorts of chemicals, fumes from work, it got me sick with COPD and that’s limiting. I guess I’m happy to a point though, and I just have to accept that.”
I asked if he had the American Dream for himself
“I don’t know.. I’m happy with what I have with my wife, with my life. I just have to play it day by day, that’s all. I’d like to have a lot of things, things that I imagine would make life better. But money doesn’t buy you your happiness. So I don’t know.”
In a way, he embodies the tension we all feel as we go through life. The challenge of containing and making sense of contradictory multitudes is not often as well managed. That may be our lot as a country as well. Learning to make sense and unity of the same contradictions in our national life.
