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JACKSON NEIGHBORS: Cabe knows what’s on the outside counts, too
Mickey Cabe is very busy this week.
“Take a break and talk to this reporter for a minute,” his supervisor told him.
Cabe did stop long enough to talk, but he kept an eye on everything that was going on just a few feet away.
Mickey Cabe believes “there’s something to be said for a job that lets a man get his hands in the dirt every day.”
Cabe is one of several members of the Western Carolina University grounds crew working on last-minute landscaping around the college’s new Fine and Performing Arts Center.
Cabe, a native and lifelong resident of Sylva, has been with Western’s facilities management for 15 years. He started his career working on landscaping for the N.C. Department of Transportation, though.
“He was just walking up the road one day and decided to stop,” one of his co-workers joked.
“I just like being outdoors,” Cabe said.
He always has liked being outside, as long as he can remember, he said. He’s happy he found a job that keeps him close to nature.
“I love this job. It gets real tough in the summer, with the heat and all, and it could pay a little more, like any job, but I love this job,” he said.
The work at the new facility is kind of a rush. The group is hoping to complete the work in only a few weeks.
“We just got done at the Greek Village a couple weeks ago, then we came up here,” Cabe said. “I don’t know if we’ll be done in time, but we’ll be close.”
When Jay Leno and his fans gather at the remarkable new center this weekend to celebrate its opening, most of them will probably be focused more on what’s inside the building. They should know, though, that it’s not always just what’s inside that counts.
“What’s the best part of this job?” Cabe echoed one of the questions posed to him. “Probably that you can go back and look at what you’ve done years later and see how stuff progresses and decide whether or not you did a good job.”
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