Ralph Rockwell lives in Wolcott with his wife Carol and about 28 tractors. He runs a towing service part time and sells some of the tractors he restores, but he’s 72 and he’s mostly retired from a long career as a mechanic. In this episode of our occasional series "What Class Are You?" Vermont Public producer Erica Heilman sat with Ralph in his shop, next to a tractor he’s working on, and talked about class.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Ralph Rockwell: I just consider myself a working man's class. You know, not highly educated. I quit school when I was 15 and worked every day so far in my life. And I just feel if you got enough money to get by and support your church, things are fine, you know. I believe money can be the root of all evil. It corrupts people. People that are super wealthy, they don't have any respect for the lower class people, the working people. I do believe that people with a lot of money, I think they sin a lot more. Like you take some of the actors or football players, and you hear that all kinds of them are in the drugs and alcoholism, and some of them even fast cars and getting into trouble. Like they say in the Bible, ‘money is the root of all evil’.
Erica Heilman: What are you worried about when you look around at the world?
Ralph Rockwell: To be honest, I don't really worry. The Lord's timing and everything's going to happen the way he wants to happen. And worrying won’t add one moment of time to your life. If anything, it'll shorten it. But we got a thing saying our property taxes are going to be going up. I love Vermont, and I love living in a place where you can drink water out of the tap, and I like fresh air you can breathe, but it's the average person…they're going to price us right out. So it's not going to be affordable to live in Vermont. But I got no desire to live anywhere else. But it may come as time goes on, we have to get off the hill because we're no longer able to plow our own driveway or be safe to get in and out. We may think about moving out of state to where the cost of living is less. I got a letter in the mail the other day saying my insurance, supplemental insurance, is going to go up, and we pay it every quarterly. And it was going up a lot. It was like $373 so we're going like, ‘wow’. And I called the insurance company and they said, ‘Well, sorry but that's the way it is, you know’. You couldn't bargain or nothing. I looked at it. My wife looked at it. My Social Security would just barely cover that.
Erica Heilman: Health insurance?
Ralph Rockwell: Yep.
Erica Heilman: How are you going to pay it?
Ralph Rockwell: We just depend on the Lord, and the Lord provides, you know. A car accident comes along. The car sitting out here, I'm waiting for the insurance company on that one. And get up every day and just make a check mark on the calendar.
I quit school when I was 15 and worked every day so far in my life. And I just feel if you got enough money to get by and support your church, things are fine, you know. I believe money can be the root of all evil. It corrupts people.Ralph Rockwell
Erica Heilman: You've worked every day since you were 15, and yet you're still struggling to pay your property taxes, or you're still wondering whether you can pay your health insurance. What does that say to you?
Ralph Rockwell: It feels like there's something wrong with the system. I don't know how they could fix it or change it, and it seems every year I get older and older, I can do less and less. I've had two heart surgeries, and this second time I went in, they did replace some of the stents again, and I just didn't bounce back like I did the first time, and a year later, I'm still short of breath. Yeah, I got a lot of stuff around. I'll sell something if it comes into hard times, and use that as a source of income. But it is a little bit concerning. As you get older, you can do less, and it seems like everything else is increasing. I just don't know how things are going to go. I'm thinking that I'll pass away and be gone before too many hard times come. We got a little bit of money saved away. So even though, if it’s costing us more the cost of living for taxes and insurance, we'll still be able to have enough money to buy food and pay the bills. But when the money's gone, it's gone.
Erica Heilman: You have worked to support yourself since you were 15 years old. Is there a lot of pride wrapped up in that?
Ralph Rockwell: Yeah, there's pride. I take pride in paying my bills in full and on time. And you can look at everything around here, and we do not have a mortgage on nothing. Everything we got is paid in full.
Erica Heilman: So you think you're going to be here till you die? And do you think you're going to work until you die?
Ralph Rockwell: I pray to work till I die.
Erica Heilman: I mean, you're a person who would probably want to work until you die. But do you have to work until you die?
Ralph Rockwell: Financially to get by? I'd say yes. We've got some money saved, but like, if I stopped working today and just tried to live off our Social Security, I'm not sure that we'd outlive our savings, and then where would we be? Be a burden for our family or be homeless. Something I learned from a very young age is that I don't want charity. I want to be able to support myself and support my family.
