A few years ago I found my self living in Hartford, Ct, Newington to be exact. My wife at the time, whom I won’t mention by name (just S__) because I am sure she would be pissed I am telling this story, and I had just moved there. Life sends me signals and sometimes they accumulate, this accumulation seemed designed to tell me, I was making a mistake. It sucked, we fell broke in Toledo Ohio, a certain source of income fell through, a check wasn’t sent and calls not returned. We were stuck in a motel 6 with a full 26 ft moving truck, a four door Camry in tow and two quite large Iguanas, nasty fucking animals. We wrangled some cash and drove non-stop to Hartford, Newington to be exact.

We arrived around 7 or 8 am. S____ and my mother in law ran out to look at the apartment we were destined to live, while I attempted to sleep. The apartment stank, stank of dogs, S___ was deathly allergic. Hello Newington, we were sharing a two-bedroom condo with mom in law and wife. It was June and we were broke again, turns out the person who hired S___ got fired and didn’t tell anyone she hired her. Monkeys fucking a football, any number of animals could be fucking any kind of sports equipment it still wouldn’t change the fact we were counting pennies and bouncing checks. We were both ready to write the final chapter, the stress unbearable.

At 10 o’clock public television would show two back-to-back episodes of the Red Green Show, I had the television to my self at this hour and kept the volume at the lowest possible level I could hear. I can’t remember how loud my giggling was; I do remember how the pure stupidity of this show was such a relief. Red Green saved my life along with temp labor. Desperate to find a job I was paging through the yellow pages and stumbled across the labor section. Labor Temps was located in the old Colt factory with its blue onion dome.

I called and was told to show up tomorrow at 7. I did, the place was rough, paneled in plywood painted sky blue with two bulletproof sliding windows, crowded with burly men and even burlier women. At the window I was handed a form to fill out and return to the window. A typical application form: skills, references, education and so forth, I finished it and got back in line. I got to the window and was asked by the nice woman if I owned a vehicle, yes, I answered. She slid the window shut and disappeared with my application. She reappeared with gloves, a hard hat and a hi viz vest, and said I would receive a call. Around five the phone rang, land line, I was told to show up at some weird address at 7:30 the next morning.

Being me, I found the place by 6:30 and waited, it was a warehouse, blue. There were five other guys, we all eyed each other up and stuff, shakin’ hands and names, and got to work. Turns out my employer in this instance was a distributer for greenhouse plastics, sheet goods, and they had just received a forty eight foot container of stuff to be unloaded and shelved in the warehouse. This container was packed so tight all six of us had to nurse the first piece of plastic out of the can with our fingertips till we could grip it with our hands then we all grabbed and leaned our weight away from the container, fairly intimate for a bunch a guys you just met. Once we evacuated the first piece of 48ft by 5ft by 1inch plastic out we spaced ourselves evenly along the sheet, swung it over our heads and walked in unison to the storage bay, upon arrival the lead man would flip the edge of the sheet into the proper slot and we would walk the sheet with our hands into the bay, by walk, I mean run. If we lost momentum the plastic would just start to slide back out and we would have to start over with no momentum, our eyes searching each other resentfully for the weak link, fortunately, no one dropped the ball. Repeat for each piece of plastic. There are more painstaking details to this technique; I’ll get them another time.

In Connecticut the Hoagie is called a grinder: hot, or a sub: cold. Round about one o’clock a sales rep showed up with subs all around and a lotto ticket, winnings would be split evenly between the crew. That was nice. We finished after about ten hours and the next day I picked up a check for about forty-five bucks maybe fifty, I don’t really remember what minimum wage was back then. The boss said he’d pay us more if the temp agency didn’t charge an additional five per hour per guy. I was grateful for that check anyway, it represented a reprieve and meant things might improve.

The very same day I picked up my check I got another call, I was to appear in some rural part of Connecticut at 5 am Saturday. It was a boost in pay and overtime on Saturday and Sunday, 10-hour days on the weekend and 6 during the week, big money. I was to be a road crew worker, holding that stop and slow sign, such a position of power. Being my first living experience in New England, I hadn’t really known how affluent the suburbs of Connecticut could be. The job, as you might know, was me and this other guy who had to regulate the traffic on this two lane road down to one lane, we had no radio, so it was important we watch each other closely and keep on eye on the line of cars we were holding back so no one could sneak through and cause trouble. Now, you say; what kind of idiot would do that? We’ve all come upon road construction before, really your powerless, right; all that’s to be done is sit and wait. Wrong, inevitably some guy in a black Mercedes, red Porsche or a woman in a gold Cadillac thought they were important enough to tell you, the dude managing traffic, that because of their exclusionary status they them selves were exempt to your rule. After some experience I’d learn to spot them, they had this look on their face like I had just shit in their corn flakes. I can only assume that their lives were complete shit anyway but my position; standing in front of them with a stop sign, making my measly wage, symbolized a focal point for which to direct their pain. These types would take any chance to get one up on me, the instant I’d start to look toward oncoming traffic for the opening they would edge in on me and at times even start driving into the oncoming traffic starting a chain reaction in the line of cars behind. Then I was forced to be the asshole and step in front this vehicle stare the fucker down and coerce them to pull back over and let traffic through. The shit they would say to me, not to mention the occasional pissant who felt it appropriate to lean on their horn. Certainly it became a battle, not only a challenge of regaining lost territory all the time, but also a metaphor of class warfare. Warfare or not, these people didn’t really get to me, I had a job, making more than I was a week ago, which was nothing, and had a full tank of gas in my truck. It lasted three or four weeks, we paid off some bounced checks and had some money to spare.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I was waiting to start grad school at the end of August, primarily the reason why we were in Ct. My wife and I were to live a long distance relationship, her in Newington and me in Alfred NY. It made sense, if it were easy enough to go crazy in Alfred as a student, it would be so much easier if you weren’t. So at the end of August I left. Was it the right thing to do, probably not? We were divorced by the following August.

Back in the Mid eighties the Post It Note was kind of a new thing, manufactured exclusively by 3M in Saint Paul, Minnesota. During these times I was a managing chef at a restaurant in a little berg just north of St Paul. It was quaint little place, not without its downsides of course, and it did sort of become a family for the employees. Evan, the other kitchen manager and I split our shifts, one would cover days during the week then do a double shift on Sundays, brunch and dinner, the other would cover nights and have Sunday off, rotating the schedule weekly. Both of us had Mondays off, provided we avoided answering the phone when Mark, the owner, called us to cover his Monday shift. Evan and I were also roommates, quite another story, often on Mondays we would sit through twenty or thirty rings then disconnect the phone from the wall. I’ll get to the post it, eventually. Sunday nights started to become a ritual of meeting up at the restaurant around closing, eating dinner, rounding up the various closing staff and head off to the Trolley.

Usually four or five people, Mark would often come, Me, Evan, Lynnette D…ski a kinky haired polish girl from North St Paul, Carol, a kindergarten teacher who picked up weekend shifts waiting tables for pocket money, maybe one of the bus staff Dan a fresh 21, or Shelley our underage but devastatingly cute bus girl. Rog would always come, the dishwasher, descended from Japanese American stock at Two fifty plus pounds it was rumored he had Sumo in his blood. You’ll have to excuse me a bit for prattling on, I’m recollecting fresh memories as I write and of course gaining a sense of sentimentality as these memories refresh. I never really considered this that special of a time in my life, seemed like I was just doing my best to get by, too busy to recognize how we all had become connected.  Seems at that particular point in time we were all struggling, somewhere around ’87. A quick check of Wikipedia tells me Reagan had prostate surgery early in 87 tough enough after 6 years of the guy we all had to deal with his prostate also. Digression. So yeah Sunday night we would all go out, most likely the only place we would see each other outside of that strip mall restaurant.

The Trolley was a strip club in East St. Paul with as many odd eccentricities as our whacky staff. It was not sanitized, the floors were sticky and for some reason the dancers were behind glass, sure some law requiring immorality to have a barrier from the moral, which is which who knows? We would hang out, at times sliding a bill through the crack in the glass for our favorite dancers who after a time we got to know, aside from the glass it was informal, people would just hang out. The pool table was flat and lots of sharp players would swing a stick, even me a time or two, I was no match for the types that brought their own stick. Some times it was just us and the dancers maybe a bouncer and the bartender.

Is any of this that special, maybe not.  As I travel, I see a world so considered in its construction, considered in a way to not offend and to idealize. Safe. Environments so prepossessed about image and presentation that it becomes the character and personality. Much like a person who is so insecure about their faults or weaknesses they become their own presentation instead of personality. It is these various defects, idiosyncrasies, stickiness in a way that slows me down to examine what out of the ordinary, which once was ordinary. Flashing by a world of like textures, pastels and patinas, searching for something beyond the generic.

One Sunday we headed out for our ritual fun, upon entering we were greeted by three sad faces, the bartender, a dancer and the bouncer. Examination of the bar revealed an empty space and random detritus where the glass box used to be. Turns out a faction of the city council felt Jerry Mondeschien’s chain of strip clubs, three to be exact, to be a black mark on the face of St. Paul’s less desirable neighborhoods and revoked his club license. I just did a search for the trolley to confirm the owner’s name maybe some pictures of  the club. Results just showed a bunch of articles about bringing back the trolley system and revitalization of St. Paul’s eastern neighborhoods. Nothing about the place we would all hang about.

3M’s factories were dotted all over the Twin Cities area. The Post it factory, just down the street from The Trolley. On those wet winter nights we would actually park in the empty factory lots. The heavy adhesive smell of post it glue would hang in the air as we walked up the block on 7^th street. I always liked that smell.