You Load Sixteen Tons

Patrick Ramsey
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read
Photo by Stephen Philpott on Unsplash

When I was in elementary school, we had these orange books that we used for music class. I do like to sing, so I really enjoyed the class, even if I’m not Bono, Pavarotti, or Adam Levine.

Celebrating my oldest’s 12th birthday, the kids got hyper from sugar intake, and the adults sat at the table in a communal blob of exhausted parenting. My partner began discussing the toll of teaching an online class, and the quintessential song came to my mind that has grown more meaningful to me over time, Sixteen Tons, by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

When I was younger, singing out of the orange books, I sang the song without much thought, but as I’ve grown older, it has merited some thought.

The writer describes working in a coal mine while not making any progress toward a better life. In fact, he owes the mining company money because his salary doesn’t give him a living wage, and he tells St. Peter, who he refers to as the one organizing the circumstances of his death, “…don’t call me cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.”

St. Peter doesn’t answer back in the song, we just see that the man is overworked and underpaid.

The experience of that doesn’t sound line it merely fits coal mining, but increasingly so, the entire middle class.

I sang one line in jest, but the truth is that many of our jobs feel like “sixteen tons” to each of us at times.

To top it off, tonight I could scarcely be more ready for a weekend, even one more full of activities than permits much rest and relaxation, but even in that I have a variety of planned activities.

Saturday I get together with a cross-faction group of Ingress players who all just like the augmented reality game. The players are people from around the Basin area who just enjoy the thrill of the game.

Neck with it, PFLAG, (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) meets to discuss strategy. Students in the area, as well as adults in the area, really need our support. We need to figure out how to make it availble to them. I want students in every middle and high school in the basin to have a place of support they can go to on each campus.

Finally, the West Texas Writer’s group meets tomorrow afternoon. I’m hoping to have a story edited and polished ready to bring to the meeting, but I might just have to put an unpolished one up for scrutiny.

Sunday is a work and catch-up day, and I suppose the same for Monday. It seems like I should have plenty of time to balance priorities, but my experience has been that tasks lists usually take longer than I expect, unforseen problems usually emerge, and time seems to pass more quickly than I would like.

I’ll ask myself what’s working and what’s not, simplify what I can, evaluate my priorities, and waste time as productively as possible. I’ve never experienced self-judgment being helpful, so my evaluative mode will concentrate on what needs to change.

Work, eat, sleep, arise, make a plan, execute, repeat.

Sixteen tons.

St. Peter, let’s see if we can make adjustments!!!


Patrick Ramsey is a therapist and crisis counselor who spends his free time chauffeuring his kids, writing stories and poems, playing Ingress and working with PFLAGG. He competes in NYC Midnight competitions and is currently plotting a novel called The Catcher. You can find him at his website, www.counselingwtx.net,@RamseyCounseling on Facebook and Writer’s Cafe.

Patrick Ramsey

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Writer, therapist, lover of traveling, slave of dark chocolate almonds - pronouns he / him / his - www.counselingwtx.net

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