Rod Ponton and Jean Malone don’t know one another.
They’ve never met and no one knows if they would become friends, if they did.
Both have one thing in common, however.
They both know what it’s like to be an American worker in transition.
That’s why Ponton felt compelled to tell the judge during that court proceeding in Texas last February that he most definitely was not of the feline persuasion — Honest, Your Honor — despite visual evidence to the contrary.
That’s why Malone recently penned that letter to her granddaughters, telling them that, despite social conventions that might dictate otherwise, they can simply be who they want to be, if they keep at it.
Working.
Keeping at it.
That’s what this story is about. That’s what this day is about.
Today is the national observance of Labor Day 2021, the holiday that honors the people who punch in every day.
Or, as in the case of pandemic-quarantine time, the people who clacked out emails and took part in those once-foreign Zoom meets at home, while comfortably clad in their pajama pants.
But that’s now: Ponton’s time, for better or worse.
Back then was Malone’s time, where there was no better or worse. Just a wrenching, urgent … Now.
‘We can do it’
Malone, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law in Kingwood and is looking forward to her 100th birthday, was a young woman in World War II.
And, like most young women during that titanic clash on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, she punched in … to do a “man’s job.”
She became a Rosie the Riveter.
Rosie: That’s what they called the estimated 16 million members of this feminine workforce that marched through factory doors and shipyard checkpoints to fight the war on the Home Front.
They riveted wings onto fighter planes, muscled tread onto tanks and literally built Jeep tires — one painstaking, finger-bleeding layer at a time — using recycled rubber and surplus wire for the mesh.
Other white-collar Rosies calibrated the Norden bombsights that were so critical to the Allies during the air campaign.
Malone would work as a welder at the Dravo plant on Neville Island in Pittsburgh, putting together the barge-like Landing Ship Tanks made famous during the D-Day Invasion.
In the military’s fondness for acronyms, the crafts were known as “LSTs,” which sailors, floating their trademark penchant for dark humor, said really stood for “Large Slow Targets.”
The Rosies, meanwhile, stood for good, competent work.
A grandmother’s sage advice … and making do with the cat in the court room
Which was the main point of Malone’s letter to her granddaughters. If you’re given a task, she said, you simply rise to it. That’s the point of Labor Day.
“Everyone in our country worked together to win the war,” so reads her letter. “That made us strong. The job I did was hard, but I could do it because I was willing to try very hard. Being strong means being determined.
“The most important thing to remember is that if you are strong and determined, you can do anything. You also need to take time to have fun.”
Back in Texas, Ponton, meanwhile, could only get his paws around fun.
He could either laugh about it, he said, or engage in epic, withering embarrassment.
Besides, the attorney said: There’s no sense in being a scaredy-cat where technology is concerned.
‘I can see that’
In March 2020, everyone was in transition as the pandemic was talking hold.
Technology was even more of a salvation or ban. People were suddenly zipping (or not) around Zoom — even in Presidio County, Texas.
Ponton, a county attorney in Presidio, was taking part in a civil forfeiture case — via Zoom, as per pandemic protocol — that, otherwise, was right of the second year of law school, it was so routine and to the letter.
Until said county attorney was notified by the man in the black robe that something, well, was not quite right.
Judge Roy Ferguson read the verdict on what just might be the ultimate understatement of pandemic-workplace particulars.
“Mr. Ponton,” His Honor intoned, “I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings.”
Ponton, who said he was using the computer of a secretary in his office, agreed.
When he nodded, the sad-eyed, forlorn kitten on the Zoom panel where this face should have been, nodded, too.
The attorney: “I don’t know how to remove it. I’ve got my assistant here and she’s trying to. I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”
The judge: “I can see that.”
After a couple of minutes, somebody figured it out, and Ponton, with his actual face, continued.
Later, when the clip inevitably went viral, the attorney decided he wasn’t going to lose face over what just might be the ultimate pandemic punchline.
“If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these difficult times they’re going through,” he told reporters later, “I’m happy to let them do that at my expense.”
Back home, Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr., tried to marshal the district he oversees in the navigation of similar tech straits — though there were no reports of kitten avatars teaching pre-Calculus.
At least not yet.
The district had to quickly configure itself for total remote learning when Gov. Jim Justice ordered all schools in West Virginia shuttered, as the coronavirus was then nipping at the state’s borders.
“It’s amazing what you can do,” Campbell said, “when you have to.”
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