When I first stumbled onto The P.O.D. Kast, a podcast chronicling the genealogy of nu-metal—mostly out of idle curiosity, plus a nostalgic tickle for late-’90s angst—I fully expected to spend the next hour smirking at the fashions, the haircuts, and the half-baked “angst” lyrics (because let’s be honest, that scene has long been dismissed as macho posturing locked in a time capsule). Instead, I wound up listening to Korn’s self-titled debut album at age 30: in one marathon session, I played it twice back to back; then, a few days later, I returned for another session with three complete playthroughs. It hit me like a sonic cattle prod—jagged, loud, unapologetic—yet beneath the distortion and Jonathan Davis’s snarled vocals I heard something I wasn’t prepared for: a call to drop the act, to stop performing fear, to stop hiding behind rehearsed words.
Picture this: senior year of college, late October, when I recorded a video application for a low-level programming job at Dish Network. Imagine a senior (director’s note: I was at the heaviest I’d ever been, fresh off months of compulsive eating after an ill-advised low-weight junior-year stint) sitting in my dorm room under a single desk lamp—so dim that the outlines of my poster-covered walls blurred into shadow. I read from a rigorously scripted rant about the “cutting-edge technological offerings” of satellite TV—complete with forced enthusiasm, the flourishes of memorized hand gestures, and set-piece bullet points. On tape, I sounded almost passionately engaged; in reality, I was terrified: terrified of graduating with nothing secure, terrified that I would disappoint my family, terrified of my own utter lack of conviction.
I sit at my desk with a sense of quiet anticipation, prepared to share with you a piece of writing that means a great deal to me—a piece written by my grandfather, Gordon Alfredson, born on June 26, 1930, in Meriden, Connecticut. His father was an immigrant from the rural area of Västergötland, Sweden, and though the man himself was a man of few words, the legacy he left behind can be felt in every sentence that follows. My grandfather was a man who carried himself with a quiet dignity, an engineer’s meticulous attention to detail, and a love of jazz music that colored his days with notes of improvisation and joy.
Though he never attended college, he was, in his own way, an educated man. He was the sort of man who believed in reading, in the value of civic discussions, and in fixing what needed fixing, both in the world and within himself. He belonged to a generation of working men—he spent his entire career at Ryerson, a steel company in his hometown—who took pride in their work and in the simple act of building something with their own hands.
It occurs to me that in these days, a time so different from his, some may regard men of his background as closed-minded, or even hostile to new ideas. Yet I believe his story shows another side of that world—a time when a man could be blue-collar and still carry a mind open to reflection, curiosity, and growth. My grandfather’s life reminds me that it was not always the case that lines were drawn so sharply between thinking and doing, between working with one’s hands and expanding one’s mind.
