Nightshift

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Is there such wisdom for those who watch the sun rise after working the night? 

Across America people wake up to work the nightshift.  It is not the sole domain of the blue collar or unskilled laborer. Professionals prowl the hours between 11 pm to seven in the morning.  Doctors make their residencies in ER, airline pilots trek coast to coast on the red eyes.  International business people speak to call centers a dozen time zones away.   IT geeks tweak code; the independent writers type out 500 word articles; DJs on local and national air waves stir tired imaginations with spooky ramblings of international espionages, government conspiracies, UFO kidnappings, the miracle of vitamin power and  the spoils of  Franken foods. With them are the traditional over night workers – the factory employees make, shape and build America.  The nocturnal long-haul truck driver rolls down the center line,  the janitor swabs bathrooms and restocks the paper towels, the garbage collector clangs metal cans at the street-side curb,  the cab driver delivers passengers and the security guard patrols long hallways, and the dark stairways of warehouses, sky scrappers, office buildings, schools, wharfs and barns. (Some barns have hallways and stairways.)

There is a whole industry of night beyond the making of donuts and the printing of newspapers. It is of shipping and hauling product and produce, of unpacking and stocking merchandise, of staging and positioning packages for morning deliveries.  These activities ready the economy for the upcoming day.  Nights make days and it is done by an estimated three million Americans.

   

I’ve never worked a graveyard shift.  I was in sweet dreamland long before the moon rose and red traffic signals glared across the cityscapes with angry fiery eyes like the devil himself.  No one should see creepy shadows run across open fields or lurk at the edges of forest. No one should have to venture into poorly lit alleys or cross a street in the echoes of their own foot steps.  After all, we know the story of Ichabod Crane.  

As a teen I rose early. This might have had something to do with my mom whose trigger finger on a light switch was faster than a bolt of lightening on a golf course. It didn’t matter if it was a 6 am on a school day or a weekend. When the slim thread of light stitched its pattern across the horizon to reveal the green mountains of Vermont it was time to rise and shine. Time to up and at’em. Time to make hay. And at the other end of the day I got between the sheets early too. Even in the summer before the sun sank below the crown of pine on the hill I “hit the hay”.  To go to bed with the chickens.  And chickens never worked the nightshift.

I love the morning. Full of promise.  Long sun rays enrich the landscapes with golden tones first caught on hill tops, then tree crowns and finally open fields. The sounds of crickets and katydids fall silent to the birds’ song that seems to coax the sun into splendor..  In the dips and valleys cooler air settles as if it slept the night away.  There is an anticipation of the morning lingering in the faded shadows of night. Mornings are fresh starts.  They are daily do-overs.

Now I am on nightshift and lost.  My mind and body are confused. It is like having the “sleeping” me on Hawaii Time, but the “waking” me on Eastern.  I wake at ten pm feeling the night, so aware that what is ahead are more hours of darkness.  The crickets’ chirps sound like “sucker, sucker.”  The moths dance in the yellow hues of tungsten. Watching their futile flutter exhausts me. Kamikaze June bugs dive bomb into the side of the guard shack.   The whispered rustling of invisible trees is unsettling.  I feel the burden of summer humidity sink in the low lands – damp and chilled.  There are faint odors of disturbed circumstances: a distant thunderstorm, a nest of skunk, the musky smell of horse and tilled earth on a silent track.

This is where I chose to be.  I traded the fevered excitement of the crowds gathered in the grandstands clutching winning hopes on horses that breezed easily in the soft blue light of dawn two days ago.  Requests to know the whereabouts of the nearest bathroom or ATM have been replaced with friendly “good mornings” exchanged with grooms and exercise riders or semi-polite nods from trainers and owners who flash ID cards with slight annoyance.  The post parade has become a frenzied coordination of horses, bicycles, golf carts, cars, vans and trucks across a busy street.  

And four days on the nightshift and I have not smelled one cheap cigar.  Just one more thing I don’t miss about working days at the Saratoga Race Course.  Wise move.