The Tin Man: A Parable on Poverty
Robert P. Russo
When the essence of a man is stripped away
the fighter will remain, and the world may scorn him for what he was. However, we are not made to be marionettes,
bouncing to the rhythm of somebody else’s fingers. Neither are we meant to be martinets, marching
in time to the drumbeats of a senseless war, the cause of which has long been
forgotten. We are born out of love, and
love we must be. Nothing else will ever
matter.
Society may never understand that the true
“lost souls” of this earth are bent and broken, dirty and disheveled, poor and
lonely for a particular reason. The
evils of this world do not exist in the next, lest we all rich and poor alike
be torn asunder in an abyss too dark to mention. True justice exists on a plane of vision that
cannot be readily seen. In the parable
of the Tin Man, desire for notoriety leads a woman to a poverty of a spiritual
nature.
* * * *
My mother was quite a character, God rest
her soul. She would be what we would
today call the obsessive-compulsive type, especially when it came to her rock
garden, Christmas decorations, and housecleaning. I could swear that she was responsible for
the spread of the Japanese art of Feng Shui, in this country. In fact, not a month went by in my youth,
when my mother didn’t totally rearrange the furniture in my room. Do you know what it is like to go to the
bathroom in the middle of the night, and bang into a desk that wasn’t there the
day before?
Our family had moved from the rough
streets of the Wakefield section of the Bronx, in the fall of 1968. We had purchased a home in the suburbs of
Manhattan, in a little rural town called North Pelham, New York. During the spring of the following year, my
mother began to develop a rock garden in the side yard, which was adjacent to
the house. I remember each member of the
family digging in the dirt for several weeks, carving out a level surface in
the hillside. My father had gathered
many large stones, and he built a lower retaining wall to further support the
foundation.
My mother had large pieces of slate put
down in her garden, to serve as stepping stones. She planted a large variety of colorful
flowers, and also placed several homemade, ceramic statues in the rock
garden. There were figures of frogs, mushrooms,
squirrels, and dwarves.
People came from all over town to admire
my mother’s rock garden, and she made many new friends that year. My mother’s head swelled with pride, and she
diligently maintained the garden in military fashion for the next five
years. Her dreams would be dashed to
pieces, however, with the arrival of the Tin Man.
Every Easter, television stations in the
metropolitan New York area would air the classic film, “The Wizard of Oz.” On one such holiday, my mother made her
admiration known for the Tin Man. Soon,
the discussion around the dinner table turned to the possibility of
constructing a metal giant, similar to the classic movie figure.
“It will be easy,” my uncle chimed. “We’ll use some of the spare parts that I
have lying around in my tool shed.” My
mother’s eyes lit up, and the legend of the Tin Man was soon to be born.
* * * *
The Tin Man was an awesome spectacle to
behold. He stood about six-feet tall,
and had long metal pipes for arms and legs.
His limbs had been welded to his torso, an old metal milk container
which had once belonged to a dairy farm in Monticello, New York. He had a frying pan for a face, on which were
welded two large wing nuts for eyes. The
Tin Man also had a hat, an aluminum funnel, which was welded to the top of his
head in magnificent splendor.
Once completed, the Tin Man became the
centerpiece of my mother’s rock garden, and that’s when the trouble began. Our neighbors, who didn’t understand that the
statue was meant to be a depiction of my mother’s favorite movie character,
began to complain bitterly about the monstrosity in our backyard.
“How DARE you put something so
evil-looking in your backyard,” went the typical complaint from the
neighbors. We also heard such taunts as,
“Don’t you know that you are frightening the children?”
My mother couldn’t understand why the
neighbors were so upset. She just
assumed that they were jealous of her artistic endeavors, and so she ignored
their caustic advice to take the statue down.
About a week later, my mother’s world came
crashing down. She had received a
registered letter from “Ezra Jones,” the Town Constable, who also happened to
be one of our next door neighbors.
Constable “Jones” advised my mother that
she would have to appear at a town hall meeting, to discuss the numerous
complaints that had recently been lodged regarding the statue. My mother thought that her simple explanation
behind the Tin Man’s existence would be a sufficient response, and that cooler
heads would prevail.
At the town hall meeting, several public
officials grilled my mother. They asked
her why she would permit such trash to accumulate in her backyard. One man even cried out, “Are you running a
junkyard?”
My mother did her best to defend the Tin
Man, but it was to no avail. Despite her
angry protests, it was determined that she had violated a town ordinance, which
specified that any construction over five-feet tall required a permit. My mother was forced to either remove the
statue, or face a fine and possible legal action.
When I returned home from school the next
day, the Tin Man was gone. I asked my
mother where the statue went, and she began to cry. I asked her several times over the next few
years, and she would either quickly change the subject or turn her back to me
and cry softly.
My mother lost all interest in the rock
garden after the demise of the Tin Man. It
seemed as if her spirit had been crushed.
Within a year of his departure, the flowers had all died, and were
replaced by a tangle of weeds. The
lower retaining wall had collapsed under
the weight of heavy rains, creating a mudslide in our once idyllic
backyard. My mother never did seem to
care about anything as much ever again.
* * * *
On a blustery cold Friday in October of
2007, my Wife Patty and I had the glorious occasion to volunteer our services
at a soup kitchen in Toledo, Ohio. We
had partnered with the Altar Sodality ministry of our home parish, and we eagerly
waited to begin serving others.
For five hours, six women and I cooked and
served hotdogs, baked beans, corn, and dessert to the homeless, and those
individuals living in abject poverty. I
was transformed by the experience of serving the less fortunate members of
society. I can only describe the feeling
I received as sheer joy, not joy in the fact that people were in such great
need, but joy in the sense that I was in a place where I belonged, and performing
a corporal work of mercy.
I was struck by the solemnity of the large
crowd, and that many of the homeless people thanked me for my service. This had a profound effect upon me. “Why would anyone thank me,” I thought to
myself, “for the simple act of putting a hotdog in a roll?”
It then occurred to me that we are all
alike in our human nature. We have the
same need to be touched, loved, served, and thanked. This desire transcends poverty, applying to rich
and poor alike. I also came to the
sudden realization that there was very little separating myself from being on
the receiving end of the food line. I
became deeply grateful for the blessings that I had received in this life,
wishing to do more than I had done in the folly of my youth.
A woman in our volunteer group suddenly began
making snide comments about certain members of the homeless group, several of
whom came up for a second or third helping.
“Look at THOSE people,” she crowed with derision. “Why don’t they get JOBS?” This woman would nudge me whenever she
spotted someone coming up for more food.
“That’s his third time up here.
We’re only supposed to serve them ONCE!”
Her rank hypocrisy stung my senses as she
made many more negative remarks. It was
all that I could do to keep from saying something to the ignorant woman, but I
managed to hold my tongue. I went home echoing
the words of St. Paul, exclaiming to my wife that “corporal works of mercy,
performed without love or compassion, is sheer nothingness!”
Dorothy Day once stated that “the mystery
of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for
Him. It is the only way we have of
knowing and believing in our love. The
mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to
others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.” Day would have appreciated my mother’s care
for her rock garden. She would also have
equated my mother’s love for the Tin Man with service to the poor and
marginalized.
However, we must not serve others because
it is the fashionable thing to do, or because we have a lot of free time on our
hands. We must also be careful about the
messages that we are sending to those less fortunate, for there is truth in the
statement that “There but for the grace of God go I.” One never knows when one will be on the other
side of the serving counter.
* * * *
As I drove home from the soup kitchen, I
began to think about the Tin Man, and his sudden “disappearance” from my
life. I sadly recalled the last time
that I ever saw him.
In October of 1997, my Brother Michael passed
away at the young age of thirty-six. My
parents, heartbroken over his tragic loss, began making preparations to sell
our home. They also held an estate sale
the following spring, to rid themselves of thirty years of clutter.
On one of my last visits to my boyhood
home, I discovered the Tin Man propped up against a wall in our basement. He had been locked away in a storage closet,
which was located beneath a basement stairwell, for twenty years.
The Tin Man had been dented beyond
repair. He was rusty, and covered with
motor oil. My Brother Peter had used the
closet as a place to store his old Opel GT engine parts, never daring to grant
the Tin Man safe passage. If my mother
had sold the Tin Man during her estate sale, or simply thrown him away like
yesterday’s garbage, I never knew.
* * * *
In pausing to reflect on the plight of the
Tin Man, it dawns upon me that the people who are homeless and impoverished
really have a lot in common with him.
Although the poor may sometimes seem dirty, wearing clothing that is
tattered and old, there is a precious metal inside of all of them, an utter
desire to be loved completely, which is why the Lord calls us to serve others
with kindness and compassion.
Like the Tin Man, society also tries to
lock the poor and homeless away in a “closet,” because impoverished people are
wrongfully perceived as ugly, or worthless.
However, we must not forget Dorothy Day’s views on the “mystery of
poverty,” and why we are all called to love our neighbors as Jesus commanded.
It
has also been said that God does not make junk and, unlike the Tin Man, there
are no dents, rust, or dirt upon what He has made. The Tin Man may be gone forever, but his
memory haunts me still.
