Middlefocus

In 1967 when I had just turned 16, I got a summer job working in a fabric shop where my aunt was manager. It was a store selling dressmaking cottons and curtain material and my job was to brush and vacuum the floors. Before leaving to resume school I made it to the sales counter. After those first pay packets I thought I was "landed" - indispensable maybe? The workers there took me under their wings and I fondly remember one old gentleman who must have had a theatrical bent as he would share lines of poetry and plays with me. One day he declaimed the poem below. I can see him still, sure he was giving me a life lesson. I loved it and learning the words from him, I too committed it to memory.  Over the years since I have remembered its key moral message about indispensability.  I had occasion to recall the words recently and typed them in to a search engine. The result flashed back instantaneously. And there was the the poem at the top of the search and importantly the name o...