There are plenty of Shyannes in foxholes

These days, I believe I match the description of the bad father in the old Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue."

I'm 62, and I'm "big, and bent, and gray, and old," as the old man is described in the song.

I'm still Hell in a fight, though.

Laughably described as an "essential employee" by some government somewhere, I do three hours of talk radio a day, which, in radio hours, is equivalent to a day at work.

I stumbled away from the microphone last Thursday, out into the tree-shaded squirrel-scampered radio station parking lot, sucking at the fresh air like a coal miner coming up out of the ground. There is no white-collar workingman who doesn't like to make blue-collar analogies about himself, so I couldn't resist the coal miner comparison. Frankly, half-a-shift in a coal mine would kill me, and might have killed me when I was 35.

I got in my car and went to buy flour. My wife, a newspaper reporter working from home, is on a baking binge. She was planning on making scones. I like scones as much as any hard-workin', gun-totin' cowboy ever did.

In the store, I went masked, like Zorro. I scored one of the store's last two bags of flour. I left the other one for someone less fortunate. Does not Zorro live to help the poor peasants who cannot find flour for their next meal? Si! He does!

It was a heavy bag of flour, maybe a pound, but I one-handed it, in case anyone was watching.

And there she was behind the register. The checkout person. Small and brown-haired. Two gold hoop earrings, one in each ear. She stood behind the clear plastic like a frontier woman staring down a lobo wolf.

I bet her name was Tyais, Meaghan, or maybe Megann. In fact, she could have been named "Alyssa."

And hard as nails.

"Thanks for staying on the job," I said to her, squinting my eyes against the ruthless prairie sun glittering off her nametag, which I could not read. It may have said "Shyanne."

"No problem," she said, looking clear through me and seeing only the young guy in back of me, who had a smear of black grease on his cheek marking him as another one of the essential.

Ah, Shyanne, join hands with me, and the young mechanic, and my late mother, who, in 1944, walked into a gas mask factory, working night shifts to help America win. Join hands with my grandmother, an illiterate immigrant woman who worked a miserable, boiling hot cotton mill job during the First World War, making uniform cloth for the boys overseas.

Join us walking home in the slush on an iron-dark New England day or riding the trolley. Join us on the job, and in the moments of peace at home before being "essential" starts up again the next day.

History will forget you. History forgets everyone who made the short paycheck. History remembers kings, and emperors, and uniforms, and tin medals. History forgets the Shyannes who toil in the darkness of brightly lit grocery stores.

They call you "essential" when they need you, and it doesn't last long.

For now, Shyanne, mount up! Draw your sword! We ride to glory!

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