My blog is not a local blog, a very small fraction of its readers live anywhere near me. The blog has about 400,000 unique visitors and about four million visits a year. And only 2,000 people live in my town, not too many more nearby. But my weekly portraits – Kelly, Scott, and now Bob – have struck a nerve.
Bob Hershey must be a nice guy, about 100 people – many must have been from around here – wrote to tell me so when I put a photo of him up a couple of weeks ago. He works at the town recycling station. He always rushes out to help us pull the garbage out of the SUV, I thought it was because I was getting old, but I see Bob rushes out to help everyone who comes to the dump. It seems to be in his nature.
He is a soft-spoken man, a quiet man with a ready smile and a very polite manner. When I wrote on my blog last summer that I had declared bankruptcy, and was working my way through it, Bob surprised my by coming up to me at the dump and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I saw what you wrote, “he said, “I’ve been there. You’ll get through it.”
Bob understood that even though I knew this trouble was not my fault, I felt badly about it. I never ever thought I would have to declare bankruptcy.
When trouble comes, some people run from it, some people rush towards it. When I got divorced, just about every friend I had in the world melted away into the ether, never to be heard from again.Some people jeer and snarl, some people understand and empathize. Bob is one of the latter.
I call this photo series “The Americans” because it focuses on very real people who would never get their photo in the media, they are not screaming at anybody or insulting any one. They are just living their good lives, working hard and doing good. Like Scott. Like Kelly. Like Bob.
So I thank you for noticing and I will keep posting my portraits and adding some others. My new camera is liking this work. I joked with one of the other dump workers that Bob was a rock star. He smiled. “It’s the beard,” he said. “People love a white beard.”
Bob just laughed.