I am sitting on New Jersey Transit in the middle of the car, going to Spring Lake. I’m close to the car doors and from where I sit, I hear two men talking as they stand. These are your salt of the earth types, one obscured from view as he leans against one side, the other facing me as he leans. He is six feet tall in carpenter jeans, which he uses the slim leg pocket of to hold an orange flashlight. He wears a blue V-neck and a brown leather belt that has a radio clipped to one side and a Leatherman in a black leather case on the other. In one hand he holds a tall boy of Coors Light, in the other his iPhone in a thick black Otter case. He shows the man he is talking to what he texted someone last week; this shows the frequency with which he texts, each message pregnant with significance. He wears jewelry: a black metal watch and a thin gold necklace. His glasses are wire rectangular frames that sit on a broad nose with small nostrils. His frowning, froggy mouth with no lips is the pinnacle of masculinity, Washingtonian, and with his white slicked-back thinning hair above a high, square forehead, like the grass sprouts on a lawn, he looks like a Prussian duke. His beautifully big belly is the kind Bruce Willis’ girl in Pulp Fiction wanted, which he touches occasionally as a form of reassurance before he drinks his water-beaded Silver Bullet.
He’s moved onto his second. He cheerses with his friend, who steps out, wearing bottlethick glasses from the ’80s that magnify his brown eyes, a green Jets shirt, and the same worker’s jeans his friend has on. They are reunited, and from their accents, have lived in Jersey their whole lives. “Goot ta see you, my frien’.” His salt and pepper hair, is parted and long so it hangs over his ears. He is probably the only of the three who has ever experimented with illegal drugs.
The last man they work with watches. He is the youngest, with intelligent blue eyes and a big bald spot, hair combed back, thick-soled synthetic black boots, faded black jeans, a gray polo. He has no accent, and he works with the other two, but in a slightly higher position. He sounds like Steve Buscemi.
It is the man in the Jets shirt who has seen most of the world. He tells his friend and the other man about North Carolina, the tax laws and the frost on your deck that melts by noon by which time it’s sixty-five degrees. The thin-lipped man listens, nodding. The other man holds a handrail, listening, maybe bored.
In their silent lulls I look at the girl who sits catty-corner to me. She is attractive, thin, tan, with a pointy nose and a braided ponytail, hidden in the middle of her back. She wears a collared tie-dyed denim shirt, with metal studs over each breast and white jeans with industry-rips on the front. She has blue eyes, a long dolicocephalic face, a purple Burberry-patterned iPhone case and another iPhone, who knows what for. I imagine she looks boring naked.
The men continue to talk about manly things, the careers of their women, a man they know, their work and hours, which is another way of talking about their pride. Talk about men they’ve worked with who have moved on, who set rules now, gentlemen. They listen to each other, self-important, sons of immigrants who’ve made it, whose children have gone to college, their union rewarding them with enough money for second homes, though they have to fight New York for it after the region’s tragedies—9/11, Sandy, the Recession—became personal.
The train emptied at Aberdeen-Matawan. My man in the Jets shirt got off at Hazlet, a bastardized version of the British Romantic critic’s name. He knew the conductor, patted his fat belly before he said goodbye. The youngest man went to sit by himself in another car, fed up with masculinity. The tight-mouthed man sits by himself, tries to open the bathroom door, finds it locked, grabs the back of his upper thigh with his left hand, sits back down, waits for a Jewish girl with curly black hair and a headscarf to walk out into the next cart. Seeking camaraderie, he would rather talk to the conductor, the only other man in power nearby, the man who his friend knows, so that next time he can pat him on the arm as he walks past. Next time.
Are these people different from the salt of the earth of yore? When we look at Courbet’s salt of the earth, The Peasants of Flagey Returning From Market, they have no chance to become rich, unlike these unionized men who talk about second homes. But Courbet considered moments such as those he painted above as the true events of history. Does the fact that these men, blue-collar though they are, have money, does this signal a change, an emergence of equality and therefore a difference from Courbet’s salt of the earth?
No. Money does not change the fact that these men work for a living, and as I have described them, are living everyday life. The scene I have tried to represent is one that has occurred throughout history, no matter where or how much money is at stake. For that let my description be part of the “procession” of salt of the earth types.
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