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When my dad was around ten years old, my Grandpa Don abruptly pulled to the side of the Center Street bridge in Youngstown, Ohio, and told him to get out of the car. Pointing to the roaring steel mill in front of them, my grandfather said, “Son, if you don’t get your grades up, you’ll be stuck working there forever.”
Ever the rebel, my dad—hypnotized by the glimpses of molten steel and gargantuan cranes through the windows—thought that outcome sounded exciting. After all, union steelworkers were some of the best-paid blue-collar workers in the country. And yet, by the time my dad reached adulthood, he didn’t even have the option. Nearly all the mills in the area had closed, alongside many other businesses that were reliant upon the success of the local steel industry. By the time I was a kid, that mill was a decaying, skeletal husk of its former glory.
The above excerpt was originally published in Newsweek.
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