3-16: Two Sierras

On the Lives We Almost Lived

I am walking through the aisles of my local Ace hardware store, looking to buy something last minute for a project I am working on. A young man turns the corner wearing a black polo with a small logo on it and I nearly stop in my tracks. The logo is the Sierra Nevada mountains, and it says Sierra Construction next to it. He is about my age, wearing work boots, with a tape measure on his belt. This catches me off guard because my Dad’s construction business back home was called Sierra, and he had a very similar logo and shirts.

I now realize, after doing a few minutes of research, that this “Sierra” existed even before my Dad’s. Either way, it led me to think about a lot of different scenarios. I am normally not one to ever say “could have,” “would have,” or “should have,” but I saw that young man and thought for a second that I could have been him in another life had I taken after my father. Those are phrases of regret, which I do not carry. Regret secretly desires that life, but I only recognized that the life this man has was one of many possible paths. It’s entirely possible that the young man wearing the Sierra shirt did take after his father. Maybe his father even owns the company and he is starting as a laborer, as I would have had I chosen that path.

I only knew of the world where my father’s business held that name, and never thought twice that another company doing the same thing in another place could have the same one. The reality is that neither my father’s company nor the Sierra Construction in Miami owns the Sierra Nevada mountain range from which they and their logos both took inspiration.

Regardless of how strange I thought it was to see his shirt, both he and I walked into that hardware store on the same day, for similar reasons. We both needed something for a project. His was almost certainly professional, and mine personal, and yet we still crossed paths in the same aisle. Every time I walk into a hardware store, I am glad to be reminded of my father and the countless trips we took to our local stores together. I suspect most people have a place like that, somewhere ordinary that is capable of bringing back a flood of memories.