You Go Crazy For One Dollar

Working in a construction company this summer was what I thought I great job. The pay was really good, rough work, but it was worth for what I got. The experience was nice too, now I can actually fix things around the house, nothing huge but still. Yet, the best part of it all was the workers, men I doubt I will ever forget. It's funny because before a construction site to me was something that ruined a scenery. It's still nothing pretty, it does tend to ruin what could essentially be attractive views, but I know the work that's behind the scenes. Seeing scaffolds set up, like appreciating art, has become a weird fascination for me; setting them up, depending on the size of the job, could take anywhere from a full day to a few days. Walking past the scaffolds, for example, I can't help but see working men setting them up. The company I worked for was made up of mostly central american and Indian workers, all illegal of course. The Indians were a majority, 80 percent I want to say. In my team we were 15 and with the exception of me and another man from Honduras, it was all Indians. Their English was very broken for most, inexistent for others. Communicating at times was frustrating but somehow I managed in the end. All of the men had sneaked into the country. The most shocking example to me was that of Jassi, the capataz of the group, a southern Indian of no more than 30 years old. His trip had cost him some 10,000 dollars and two months of traveling. From India to the Ukraine, then to Morocco, Cuba, Mexico, and eventually the United States. I'm sure the stories of the other men were similar, maybe even much more complicated, but he could speak English well so talking about such topics was not a problem. He had been in the country for ten years, and that was ten years without seeing his family. He still has some ten more years of saving up money. His work day, and work week, were the most shocking to me. He wakes up at 5:00 am every day, gets ready, leaves to pick up all the men spread around Queens, and heads to Long Island to drop off everyone at different construction spots. We usually finished around 4:00 pm, and I got to go home. He had to drive back to Queens, drop off everyone, and then back home. The problem is the traffic: going towards the city at that time is hell. So he didn't get in until at least 7:00, 7:30 sometimes. It all started again at 5:00 in the morning the next day. The work week was from Monday to Saturday, but most Sundays he worked too inspecting certain buildings that had not been properly administered during the week. For the rest of the men it was pretty much the same, except for the driving around and the Sundays. You could see it in their faces very easily, the accumulated tiredness, the destruction their bodies went through everyday, the exponential aging. The most shocking part was the fact that none complained about it, but when talking to me in their broken English, they would mention how lucky they were to have such fortunate jobs. Almost all had families back in India, some had a few children. So working and sending money was something that had to get done no matter what: being sick, having a fever and feeling crappy was certainly not a good excuse to skip work. For me, a 20 year old that at the end of the day got to go home to my family and friends, and had school waiting for him after the summer, it was a destructive job. Sometimes working on the scaffolds or roofs with 90 plus heat grinding the cement from in between bricks sniffing that poisonous dust made me want to kill myself. But they went on, and could go on as long as they were told to. Sometimes they would sing, and it was beautiful listening to them. One would start and slowly the others would pick up, like a chorus. Some would smile and laugh, why I don't know, something about the lyrics I'm sure. But there was one song I did recognize because they would always sing it. I remember we were at a site somewhere in western Nassau, patching up a roof, and some of the other guys were working on the side of the building on a scaffold. During a quick break I leaned over and asked Pamme what the song said. He smiled. "Why do you leave me my love, come back to me...for one dollar you go crazy." I felt this pressure in my throat that burned and pushed. A wife writing to her migrant husband telling him not to worry about money, that all she needs is for him to be there next to her. Those words shook me up inside abruptly. For these men, the "American dream"[?] was surely working at its best.