It was a Monday after work in my first job after college, and just like every Monday, I set up my tent before it got too dark to see. Starving after working all day under the sun, I hauled my cooler out of my car and wondered whether I should make a turkey sandwich or just roast a couple wieners with the guys. In either case, Randy would offer me a few of his Budweisers. He never didn’t have a few to spare; beer was like salt for him - both expendable and essential.
When I interviewed to be a member of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Trail Crew a few months prior, I wore jeans and an oxford shirt and was wildly overdressed. My interviewers wore Carhartt overalls and distressed baseball hats, well before Brooklyn made Carharrt cool and well after Abercrombie made the pre-worn uncool. We sat in an air-conditioned trailer. What a dump! I thought. I wish I’d appreciated how luxe it actually was compared with my “housing” the next few months.
Shockingly, I did get hired. Probably due to my tendency when interviewing anywhere to be overly gung-ho about whatever they say. “She said she loves shovels and eating meals sourced from a gas station? She’s in!” Not like there was much competition for a job that only lasted three months and required you to fix dilapidated hiking trails by day and sleep in a $40 Coleman at night. All at mercy of the weather and other unsavory elements - ticks, spiders, raccoons, drunk people, and sharing a bathroom with all four.
I was late to my first day on the job as I’d graduated the day before and moved out of my dump of a house that morning. Thankfully I’d missed the awkward meet and greet and taco pizza lunch. That evening, I set up my tent and sat inside it, blowing up a twin air mattress with my mouth. Dehydrated from four years of drinking and destroyed after saying goodbye to my friends and officially sanctioned youth, I came frighteningly close to fainting. After 35 minutes of testing my lungs to their full capacity, I lied down and had a “what is my life” moment. At least I was comfortable.
We were a motley crew of around 15, and I was definitely the mottliest in that I was the only one not from a small town in Iowa. I didn’t know the purpose of tractors, couldn’t tell you how many Rascal Flatts there were and referred to my car as a car and not a “vehicle.”
I’ve mentioned Randy, who supplied the Budweiser and his truck when people and their Budweisers wanted to go off-roading. I once watched him get a tick get cut out of his back. Randy was a single Dad.
Tray was a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran who talked so much about his “old lady” that I wondered Why does this tough guy talk about his Mom so much? Until I realized he was talking about his girlfriend. He mentioned he’d wake up in the middle of the night choking her. I know me beating him at ping pong at the local bar did nothing for his PTSD but at least it gave him a fresh enemy. We shared a lot of laughs that summer, but that game was never one of them.
There was a wholesome, eager, fair-haired guy named Sam who had a crush on me but I wasn’t interested as he was wholesome, eager and fair-haired. We began work every morning at 7 AM, when we’d meet at the campfire and decide on jobs for the day - pulling weeds, transplanting native grasses, loading the four wheeler with gravel and sand, filling up rain-worn trenches with gravel and sand, getting the four wheeler stuck in gravel and sand, and picking cigarette butts out of fire pits with a trash grabber. On mornings it rained, we’d all lie in our separate tents as still as possible, collectively hoping that if no one moved, no one would have to get up and work. But Sam ruined it every time. He was always up and at ‘em, rustling around in his poncho making coffee. He had the gall to whistle.
Sally was in her 50s, out of shape, and didn’t have a whole lot going for herself. No one knew why she was there as she certainly had very little to offer in terms of manual labor. She didn’t own a car so she had to get rides everywhere. Can’t think of anything else to say about someone I always felt bad for and still do. If she’s alive, I hope she’s okay.
Stella was insufferable. She’d lecture about healthy eating and had a real bone to pick with the strawberry flavoring at McDonald’s (not real strawberry!). She went so far as to say which fruits and vegetables were bad for you, which if you even know this, means you have an eating disorder. Did the jalapeño Slim Jim I was gnawing on have acceptable levels of potassium and dietary fiber? Stella always said she dreamt of working at a library because it wasn’t for profit. Years later I saw her on Facebook bragging about how she’d produced an ad that would be shown on “the largest jumbotron in the country.” She ended the post with the hands over its eyes monkey emoji. Beware whenever you see this - it is the red flag of a humble brag.
Trent was an adult baby and drank a pint of chocolate milk every evening.
Two of my best friends there had lost their brothers, one in childhood and one more recently. Once in a while they’d talk about them, in the dark when it was quiet. Normal, easy and with no clear pathologies, they were hilarious too, proving me wrong that after college I’d never laugh again.
Marcus was born with muscle. He had big, rough hands and thick, dorky glasses. Unintelligent in an SAT way, he was street smart in a dirt roads way. A few of the guys picked on him incessantly which really worked him up. After one incident, when he was fuming and unwittingly flexing, he told me that they’d better be careful because if he got angry enough, he could really hurt them. “I won’t be able to stop myself,” he said.
No group of individuals in America is complete without a horse girl, and Rebecca was ours. She even had a thick brown ponytail that reached the top of her huge ass. She loved her corn shucking, Tim McGraw, country girl brand which really irritated me because she was super lazy and hardly did any work. Where’s the country song extolling the hardworkin’ suburban girl who isn’t afraid to sweat the cargo shorts her Mom bought her at REI?
The oldest guy, Roy, was a gentle giant who somehow had four kids from six different women. He slept in a trailer, not a tent, which made him CEO. You looked up to him, even though it was clear he was a “still wears shorts in the winter” guy.
The man in charge barely was. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and slept in a van. His white ponytail was the only thing that marked him as our elder; he was as dirty and aimless as the rest of us. Indifferent as to our daily movements, he was acutely aware of the project’s finite funding and that most parkgoers came to Lake of the Three Fires to get buzzed on a lake, not march along a rocky path. But the trail crew pressed on, gunning the engine of the four wheeler into the woods with gallon jugs of well water bouncing on our knees and Randy’s yellow jobsite radio tuned to 101.3 KSIB, “Your Country.” My country, even if I was from Illinois.