Most people I went to high school with did not go to college. Unless you grew up someplace incredibly wealthy, I bet it’s the same for you. It wasn’t expected of me; it wasn’t even really discussed because the concept was foreign to my family, and I only ended up going full time after a few years of floundering, drinking, and job after job I hated and was miserable doing.

I lost touch with most, but not all, people from high school. But losing touch doesn’t mean not knowing what they’re up to. Many went on to big careers and families, and I’m genuinely happy for them. Many of those careers are in the trades — the kinds of jobs you shower from, not for. If you’ve never had one of those, you’re missing out.

The satisfaction you get from completing a physical task is unmatched in the white-collar world. It’s why so many rich guys play dress-up and hunt, fish, or do some kind of craft involving woodwork. To this day, as I drive through Detroit on visits, I point out, with pride, to my kids the various apartment buildings I helped put roofs on. Naturally, they couldn’t care less — one of the joys of being 9 and 7 is not understanding much about things beyond your friends and toys — but someday in the next decade, if I do my job as a father right, they will.

It will be more difficult for their peers to understand that satisfaction and pride, as the number of those jobs in the physical trades continues to exist, they’re just no longer available to Americans.

In my life, I worked more jobs than most families — upwards of 82 at this point — and among them were roofer, electrician’s assistant for a local IBEW, and concrete work. When I did them in the 1990s, the crews were a rainbow of people that could fill a Benetton ad. We didn’t “celebrate” it; we lived it, and it didn’t matter.

Most importantly, we were all Americans who could communicate with each other, as we all spoke English. Go anywhere near a job site today, or roll down your windows as you crawl through a construction zone now, and you likely won’t hear English spoken. Maybe from the supervisor, if........

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