God Bless New Jersey

Sometimes the only thing I remember about a job is the people that I worked with. I had a job years ago, I can scarcely remember the name of the place. I'm not even sure what we did. It involved going through mountains of paper and gleaning key information from documents, then entering it into a database. Whatever that is called, that was my job. It paid the rent but that was it, no health insurance, no vacation days, etc. Just a job.

More than that though I remember working with Kiefer and Freddy. Actually their names were Keith and Fred, but that morphed a bit. Fred hated being called Freddy so that was no problem for me to figure out. Freddy it was! Maybe Freddy got mad and turned it all on poor Keith, because between the two of us we turned him into Kiefer. Then Kiefer-Rico. Then Kiefer-Rico Suave. Then Kiefer-Rico Suave Gonchar Jones. And that was his name thereafter, although we generally shortened it to Kiefer.

Kiefer was a redneck who had somehow been to college, he drove a truck and this was just at the dawn of the SUV years, so that was a big deal. He had a CB radio. And, best of all, he lived in an honest to goodness trailer park. Now Freddy was a black guy from NW DC, couldn't swim, city all the way...he'd never seen a trailer park so he was very curious. I was interested myself. We beat the drum for half the summer.

"C'mon Kiefer, when are we gonna hang out at the trailer?" "Never!" He was very insistent about it.

Kiefer was about my height but he only weighed 100 pounds. He had gone to UNC-Greensboro or somewhere like that. Freddy wound up at UDC, he was normal sized, had the ear ring thing going on and all of that. We all had nothing in common, really. But we had the job in common, and that was enough. We all gave each other grief, just to keep the monotony at bay. I used to go camping alone a lot back in those days, sometimes in West Virginia. I didn't think about it too much at the time, but I realize now I was just trying to get away from my wife as much as anything. She worked there too, but she woudln't sit at the same table with us. "JP, you and those boys! You are like children!" She was right of course. She sat with a bunch of respectable quiet ladies at a separate long table across the room and they would frown at us occasionally. We were all in a big hangar type of building.

I was pretty good about deflecting my share of grief, just by beating them to the punch. "Well I'm back from West Virginia guys. I got sodomized by hillbillies again, so don't bug me, I'm in a foul mood." No wonder the proper people didn't sit at our table.

The drumbeat continued for the trailer visit. "C'mon Kiefer! We'll bring some beer. Whaddaya say?" "No!" Kiefer's voice was very shrill. It was only a matter of time...the documents kept coming, there were millions of pages to go through, so what else was there to do? Freddy and I talked about sports, women, and money, and tortured Kiefer.

"Kiefer-Rico, how did you get that trailer?" "I put it on my credit card! No payments!" This was getting better and better. "Can we drive it around? What color is it? Was it born in West Virginia? Where is the gas pedal?" Finally he caved in and let us come see it, I think just so we'd shut up. He wasn't thinking clearly, but that was OK. We were going to the trailer, and it was only going to cost us a 12 pack of Budweiser and two pizzas, quite a bargain.

We caravaned over there after work, and it was a true trailer park, it even had a name, Mountain View Family Park, or Rustling Pines of America or something. There were no mountains or pine trees around, just lots of trailers, all cheek by jowl and crammed in at whatever angle they seemed to fit. I have actually seen other trailer parks, where the trailers are parallel to each other and there is some order. Not at Rustling Pines. They were all at the oddest angles, and Kiefer's was no exception, we had a hell of a time parking. The colors were appalling, some of the trailers were purple, some were bright red, some were just dirty and caving in. Poor guy, no wonder he didn't want us coming over. On the other hand, I was renting a one bedroom in Arlington for more than half my month's pay, so after seeing the inside and having a few beers I stopped feeling sorry for Kiefer. I figured I would enjoy the trailer park, it was one of the long days of summer, plenty of light left.

We went outside and sat on his little stoop and drank the beers. Freddy started to get drunk. "LOOK HOW FAT THESE PEOPLE ARE!" He was talking too loud. It was true though, they were all huge...except Kiefer of course. Maybe there was some trailer park weight equilibrium ratio at work which would explain it. But nothing would explain the color some of these people had painted those things. I was probably talking too loud about that myself. "WHAT COLOR IS THAT THING KIEFER? THAT IS HEINOUS!"

It got a bit later and I realized Freddy couldn't hold his budweisers very well. "LOOK AT THOSE BIG ONES!" and the family, all 800 pounds of them, were walking right by. People were starting to turn and look at us. I was getting a little nervous. Finally Freddy said "HEY KIEFER WHICH ONE OF THESE IS THE LYNCHIN TREE?!" That was it for the outdoor conversation. We hustled Freddy indoors and sat around waiting for the pizza. It was summertime, there were no good sports on and we didn't have much money so we talked about women, there in the trailer park. We tried to get Kiefer to put on some country music but he wouldn't budge on that one. Probably just as well, now that I think of it.

Kiefer-Rico Suave Gonchar Jones announced that he was taking a second job to help make the credit card payments on the trailer. Security guard in one of the local malls, now this was special. It was hard to picture him intimidating anyone or dissuading anyone from doing anything, really. Maybe he would be good with scaring the kids. One day he showed up to work with his security guard uniform on; he had graudated and was going to the ceremony directly after work, that was the story anyway. I spent half the day in tears, it was hard to concentrate with officer Rico across the table. He had tied a blue ribbon on the antenna of his truck, to signify solidarity with the fallen men and women of law enforcement, to go along with the CB. He was fully blown hick now, and to see him in that uniform, all that could be said was, "Kiefer, they are going to bury you in that some day".

We decided to head up to Atlantic City on Labor Day, do a little gambling. Freddy played with the CB radio on the way up, he was pretty good. He was putting on a show, telling jokes, and he sounded pretty white too. It was hard to tell from the static and pings and all of that but I think the CB community didn't appreciate The Freddy Show so instead we talked about craps and made our way north, although we ran into a lot of traffic when we hit Jersey since everyone was going to the shore.

Freddy and I headed right to the blackjack tables when we got there, Kiefer went to play the slots with the senior citizens. I had brought about $200 with me, and the cheapest table was the $15 one, which is where we were parked. I didn't last too long, maybe 45 minutes. I normally do better than that, and I always sit out a couple of hands here and there, just to keep the cards fresh. It did me no good, I lost two for every one I hit, so wound up broke. Things were going better for Freddy.

He was drinking the "free" drinks and throwing chips around. He even threw me a couple, he didn't care. He was going to be rich. "God bless America," he said. "God bless New Jersey!" I tried to tell him, cash out, let's go spend some of that. He didn't listen.

Twenty minutes later the chips were gone and we were sitting in one of the lounges. Freddy had one hand wrapped around a long island iced tea and the other wrapped around the back of his neck, like he was trying to pull his head forward or it would flop backward into the naugahyde. He was inconsolable. Frank Sinatra was playing, and the waitresses were walking around half naked in the dark. God bless New Jersey. Kiefer-Rico Suave Gonchar Jones came up, grinning like he had eaten the governor. "Look at all these dimes!" He did have a lot of them, in a big plastic tub. How did that happen? It was dark now, so we headed out to the "gentleman's bar". It was the only thing left to do, we couldn't afford the tables anymore and it wasn't even 9:00.

Things began to grow increasingly hazy. Somehow we had to keep running back to the cash machine: Kiefer-Rico Suave had developed a strong appetite for lap dances. I wound up talking to some girl who had a diamond in her mouth. Freddy joined in. "Ooh, have you all been drinking?" she said. I steadfastly denied it. Freddy said "C'mon JP, she has greens stuck on that diamond." I'm not sure about that but I saw his point.

Things got even hazier. It became late and I was carrying Freddy down the sidewalk for some reason. We were all broke. Time to head south...then I woke up, we were in the truck, bouncing over pot holes. I looked around, I knew where we were right away, just not which city. Freddy was knocked out cold. "Kiefer, where are we, still in Atlantic City?" "Yeah..I can't find the expressway" "Man, we're in the ghetto, get us out of here!" "I'm trying, hold on" I slumped over in the back, went back to sleep. Maybe the hoodlums would think he really was a fallen member of law enforcement, come for revenge...

I woke up near Maryland House, on I-95. It was early morning, the sun was up and very bright. I'd be home in an hour. I have a much better job now, but I don't meet people like that at work anymore; we had a lot of fun, between the trailer and the trip to AC. What we should have done was drive the trailer up to AC, park it there on the beach for the whole weekend, I thought, as I drank black hot coffee from the Maryland House. But you never think of those things at the time, it is always in hindsight.