I Walked the Line

Labor Day. Ahhhh.

Well, maybe you would have had to work a line in a Detroit (pronounced Dee-troit) auto plant to appreciate it. Maybe you would have to work in the sweltering heat of the plant in summer when a bucket of water poured over your head dried in seconds. Or you could have worked the frozen lines in winter, where walls of windows provided the only light and your constant hard work was your only heat -- don't take a break; you won't live ten minutes if you stop moving.

Of course, you have electric lights nowadays, and a third shift that you work a lot for the overtime, but the line is still moving. Your body aches so much you cannot feel it anymore. Year after year, decade after decade. You are the laborer. You put together every item, can every bite of food, stitch every piece of cloth that touches this nation.

The foreman starts each shift with a quick glance into your eyes -- checking your condition -- will you need extra help today? Are you alert? The shift before yours has hidden the best tools so you are stuck with crap (again) and they didn't leave any start-up parts so you will start your shift trying to catch up. The floors are black concrete from decades of ground in oil and grime.

The line is black from decades of ground in oil and grime. You can't tell what color the walls used to be, but they all just fade into black when the buzzer starts the line up.

Put yourself in automatic mode. Pay attention to each and every bolt you tighten or hole you punch or spot you weld. Be aware of each moment, and yet, not using the usual parts of your brain. Just work and try not to think, try not to feel. Just wait for the bell to sound again, so you can go to lunch.

There is a great rhythm to the line. There is a sense of team work. Each person down the line must perform their little part so that you can perform your little part so that each person up the line can perform his little part. All day long, you ask each other: "Doin' all right?" It's a greeting that workers give, constantly checking on each other, letting you know they can make it and you can make it, too. The roar of the line doesn't let you learn much else about people, what they think or like or hate. But you know the person next to you is a worker, drunk or sober, smiling or grimacing, every day, every shift, and the line rolls on.

Radios blast in intervals up and down the line. Workers bob and sway to the rhythm. Then, suddenly, the line hiccups and stops, as it does from time to time. Bob Seger is singing "just give me some of that old time rock and roll, the kind of music that soothes the soul," and you start tapping your foot and rocking your hip, the next person starts clapping in time and says "Go, Baby," the next starts dancing, and the next is yee-hawing. Everyone starts to dance and sing-along. The Foremen come running out of their offices to see what the ruckus is. Then they start tapping and clapping and smiling, too. We all smile and enjoy that little minute. The line starts back up; we all get back to our jobs. No one says anything; we can't hear each other anyway. But we had a free minute and we shared it. Workers of the world, united in respite.

That is what Labor Day is like. A hiccup in the line. Just for a minute. The line stops. We smile. Then it starts up again.