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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Things that people do all day! Burly ice road truckers, rugged oil drillers and hip lesbian club promoters work it as the cameras roll.
By Heather Havrilesky
Read more: TV, Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, I Like to Watch
June 8, 2008 | The hardworking men and women of America are what make this country great! We'd thank them ourselves, if we knew any. Sadly, all we know are soft-assed nitpickers and middle-managing mouth-breathers and tender-pawed desk ornaments with hair-trigger tempers. But you can be sure that we'd slap a hardworking fella on the back for a job well done -- if we weren't surrounded by overeducated hothouse flowers, lily-livered second-guessers, arrogant pencil pushers and self-proclaimed experts with corn-chip breath.
It wasn't always this way. In the old days, folks had calluses on their hands and dirt under their fingernails. My grandfather was a coal miner in Pennsylvania and his father scraped by in a tiny village in the Carpathian Mountains before making his way to the States. What would they say if they saw me now, reclining on my bed in bare feet with two dogs snoozing by my side? Would they feel shame in their hearts and call me a lazy, dog-loving whore? Would they gasp to see our once-great nation filling up fast with lackadaisical sons of bitches and ill-tempered neurotics who spend their days frowning at their computer screens?
The ghosts of our ancestors should take heart in the fact that, deep inside each of us, the burning desire of a working-class American hero breathes strong. Even after marinating in witty e-mails and alt-rock ballads and triple nonfat cappuccinos for a few decades straight, some small part of each of us wants to put our weak backs and wimpy arms to good use for a change, shoveling soil or hammering nails -- just for a few weeks, of course, or as long as it takes to get ripped abs and two mud-smudged meat Chiclets. And once we look like Marlboro men, we'll get fall-down drunk and stumble home to beat the ever-living crap out of our smartass kids so they won't grow up to be bloviating pudwhackers whose idle lives are made possible by the tedious toiling of working-class Americans!
Don't break the ice!Since most of us have forgotten the meaning of hard work, at least we can watch people work hard on TV. When we see these rough-and-tumble guys enduring dangerous conditions and eating their pride while their supervisors hound them, we're reminded that there are worse things in life than dry eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome and e-mails with an unnervingly passive-aggressive tone to them.
Take Hugh Rowland, aka "Polar Bear," the ill-mannered trucker with the dirty mouth at the center of "Ice Road Truckers" (premieres 9 p.m. EDT Sunday on the History Channel). Hugh's reputation as a curmudgeon precedes him, thanks to the show's first season, but his boss, Kurt Wainman, seems undaunted. "Lot of guys laughed and said, 'Hey, you got the asshole,'" says Kurt in a deadpan voice. "And I said, 'Well, you know, he'll probably fit in here.'"
But when Hugh discovers that his enemy Drew Sherwood will be working with him, he's a little less understated about it. "Holy fuck, you're workin' here, too?" Hugh grumbles. Last season, Hugh fired Drew. Drew thought Hugh shortchanged him on some money when he was fired. But Hugh says he almost hit Drew, who started talking back. "I said you don't say a fuckin' word 'til I'm done talkin'!"
It's not all that difficult to understand why these men might prefer to spend so much of their time alone, in the icy wilderness. This season, Hugh and the other truckers have relocated to Inuvik, a town 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where they'll carry massive loads an additional 100 miles north and over the frozen ocean to a natural gas exploration site.
Kurt has a few words of wisdom to share about Hugh and Drew's feuding: "I know their history -- I guess they don't get along. Like I really give a shit. There's a lotta guys that work here that don't get along. You know, tough it out, be men, take your crybaby shit home if you wanna argue about somethin'." My God, this man should be a management guru!
In fact, all of you One Minute Managers out there should really take a few tips from Kurt, who not only can't remember Drew's name ("What's the other guy's name? Dewey?" he asks the cameraman), but reduces fraught managerial interactions to the fewest words possible. When one guy quits in anger, this is how the exchange goes:
Trucker: I'm gonna love you and leave you. I don't know if it was a test or whatever, but standing around all day, I've got a bad taste in my mouth.Kurt drives off in his truck, and that's that. The Ten-Second Manager rides again!
Despite Kurt's stunning efficiency and similarity to a character from a Coen brothers film, he's got his work cut out for him: Most of the truckers seem to disapprove of one another without much provocation. Trucker Alex Debogorski says of blue-mohawk-sporting fellow trucker Rick Yemm, "You know, teenagers and the odd misled 20-year-old maybe will have blue hair, but if he hadn't used his private parts for toys, he would be a grandfather by now!" Yes, blue hair and casual sex are the markings of a wasted life, as far as Alex is concerned.
