Here’s to the workers who build our roads, bridges and more | Opinion
In “Forty Hour Week (For a Livin’),” Alabama’s patriotic tribute to America’s blue-collar workers, the country music band got it exactly right. Our nation is full of hard workers, men and women whose grueling jobs call for a shower after their workday is done rather than before it has begun.
I salute the strong backs and intrepid spirits that made and make this country anew. These stalwart laborers have the right stuff, something I know well because I do not. A drive earlier this summer from my home in Charlotte to visit family in nearby Knoxville, Tenn. made this distinction crystal clear.
As many readers know well, Charlotte roads are under seemingly constant construction of road and wastewater improvement projects undertaken to accommodate our charmed city’s rapid growth. Slowed to a crawl as I exited town by toiling road crews bedecked in orange safety vests, I imagined my life on day-one at the job site with them:
Foreman: “Scores of years ago, trenches were dug, pipes were laid, and an entire city was built above the vast effluent network. Today, we begin tearing up those roads and sidewalks and doing it all over again, only this time with bigger pipes.”
Me: “We begin doing what?”
Sisyphus drew a no-show gig compared to this. I’d fly through the grief cycle’s denial, anger, bargaining and depression before the morning’s first water-break, exiting before acceptance at total despair. Yet hard work and impossible but necessary projects like wastewater improvement get done because tireless American workers don’t quit.
West of Asheville, Interstate 40 is under repair near tunnels that were blasted through the Precambrian rock of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I watched in awe as my truck cruised past brave workers who hail from audacious ancestors. Long ago, a dauntless road engineer charged with building the interstate stared down sheer rockface in his path and bellowed “bring me some TNT,” rather than dusting his hands conclusively and saying “well, that’s that,” as I would have.
His sense of fortitude is alive and well. The maintenance I marveled at continues on dangerous passes near the Tennessee border because a can-do spirit still dwells in the American worker’s heart. Similar thoughts occurred to me as I entered the Volunteer State. From I-40, I gazed down at bridge abutments that plunged deep into the French Broad River, and up at power lines that stretched like boney fingers across the Great Smoky Mountains.
Forget the resolve it first took to clear a path for utilities over highland hill and dale. Just keeping the grass cut under the endless easement seems plenty herculean to me. And the cofferdams that are needed to complete an underwater construction project are even more menacing than their ominous name suggests.
I’ve driven this route countless times, but only when the student is ready will the teacher appear. It’s American workers, past and present, whose courage and grit built the cathedrals of infrastructure that get me where I’m going and give me the comfort I require once there.
A recent road trip through the beautiful Tar Heel state reminded me of not what, but who makes this great country special. Borrowing from Alabama’s tuneful and grateful ode to America’s blue-collar workers, let me thank you for your time.
Mike Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte and a regular contributer to the Opinion pages.
