Walkabouters

Chaos struck the Old Port on Presidents Day, which isn't exactly unheard-of. 

The annual Invitational Forklift Criterium seems to attract controversy as efficiently as a Toyota 7FGU35 lifts a three-ton crate of raw aluminum. Seven years ago, a three-way tie prompted a fortnight of unrest amongst rival dock-workers' unions that instigated the first general strike our city has seen since the Fishpicker War of 1967. The average number of hospitalizations on the day of the race is triple the daily rate according to St. Brantleigh's emergency room team, and every other year it seems that at least one missing persons case is directly related to the event. When I was asked to cover the race, I called Legal-Commerce and requested that my life insurance coverage be doubled. I'd been meaning to do that for months, but it felt more appropriate than ever before. 

I have followed the Criterium and its feeder qualification races since I was a boy, so attending the race in a professional context was a great, if potentially lethal, honor. Media passes for the race are only given out in pairs for safety purposes, so I hunted down Mike Hunt, an old college pal who shoots promo reels for ForkliftTrader.com. He was game for covering the race with me, and we decided to make the most of it, securing press credentials for every Criterium-related event and party on Presidents Day. Old G-Money Washington was surely rolling in his grave by the end of it all and I'll do my damnedest to give you the blow by blow. 

9:00 am - The Pre-"Pre-Race Wine and Cheese Reception" Kegger begins with a grungy rendition of "Solidarity Forever" by warehouse rock group Muscle Sprout. They say international trade never ceases, but here at the Port Authority the cranes are silent. Throngs of partiers ebb and flow around stacks of shipping containers, rows of oil drums, carnival games, and union recruiting booths. 

Many here have been at it since Friday night when they clocked out. Those unlucky few who drew short straw for weekend crew are trying their best to catch up, gulping great quantities of domestic light lager from red cups, gallon pitchers, and keg hoses. 

Buffet tables fashioned from pallets are laden with platters of hotdogs and hamburgers, giant pots of chili, and steamed oysters by the dozen, a longstanding Criterium tradition. The wind is a bit sharp out here on the waterfront, but delirious quantities of food and drink keep the mood hot. 

11:00 am - When a ship's horn blows thrice, a braying roar goes up from the roiling crowd of forklift fans. The Pre-Race Wine and Cheese Reception has begun. Instituted in 2018 as a conciliatory collaboration between the United Longshoremen, the Brotherhood of Stevedores, and Seafarers International Union Local 5568, the Pre-Race Wine and Cheese Reception is held in the front yard of the Home for Ailing and Retired Seamen on Front Street. Admittance is $50, and proceeds go to the upkeep of the home itself. 

Mike and I flash our passes and stumble in through the gates, making our way to the bar for our complimentary bottles. The cheese table is in the center of the elliptical lawn, and we mill around it, selecting roughly a pound of dairy each. 

While the event is meant to be a space of atonement, old hatreds die hard. The Longshoremen, Stevedores, and Sixty-Eighties form three tight crowds, with casual attendees, unaffiliated parties, and the press milling about between them. Scuffles break out on the fringes, more often than not the result of infighting regarding the tactics to be used in imagined pitched battles between the groups. The scents of cheese and wine act as a balm over the unsteady truce.

12:00 pm - At the public wharf across the street from the Home for Ailing and Retired Seamen, a stage has been erected, and upon it stands Mr. William "Big Bill" Borden, Port Superintendent and Chairman of the Criterium Committee. He taps a microphone and launches into his welcome speech to cheers of "Big Bill, Big Bill, Big Bill." He really is larger than life. 

"Welcome to the Forty-Fifth Annual Presidents Day Invitational Forklift Criterium! The party is going swell and the competition on the track is set to be fierce. Before I formally begin the program, I would like to invite Lieutenant Charles Harkley of the City Corps of Sewage and Engineering to the podium to give a brief safety update."

Big Bill stands down and waves on a scrawny looking man in fatigues. Chuck Harkley stammers into the microphone to a beer-be-dazed crowd which lost interest in him before he was fully introduced. 

"Good afternoon folks, just a quick word about safety today. It's a beautiful day for the race, but the last week has been awful wet, and several streets on the course have standing water. We're waiting on some final reports, but if it doesn't go down, we may have to postpone the race, or even cancel it."

The crowd tunes back in quick-like when they hear Chuck say the word "cancel." Boos and jeers erupt immediately, and Lieutenant Harkley soon finds his uniform bespeckled by various soft cheeses. Big Bill steps back in to reign in the crowd.

"Now, now, folks let’s be calm. He said they MAY have to postpone, there's no word just yet. In the meantime, let the review of contestants commence!"

12:15 pm - The review of contestants is just an excuse to have a parade, and in February you really do need a good excuse for a parade. The Home for Ailing and Retired Seaman's piccolo band is out in force, following a color guard from the local VFW. Close behind them is a float of United Women Dock Workers throwing out leaflets, condoms, and cans of beer. Then come the forklifts. 

A Flexi MAX 22. A Hoist PV280. A sleek brace of Crown C-5 1000 LPG's in Sixty-Eighties livery. Nearly every model Yale has put out. A miraculously preserved Clark Truclift. There are gasps of admiration when this one trundles by. I see a line of lift-trucks stretching down Front Street into the wintry haze, a cargo army on review. It is awe-inspiring. 

While the crowd watches in rapt attention, cheering on their favorites (forklifts and operators alike), a crackling PA announcement blares over their heads.

12:27 pm - Lt. Chuck is back, and he's sweating. He coughs once, twice, directly into the microphone, eliciting growls and sidelong glares from those near the speakers. He announces the fateful news.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sincere displeasure to inform you that the flooding on the race course has gotten significantly worse in the last few minutes, bad enough that we are considering it a public safety hazard. As such, we are unfortunately going to have to cancel the race."

The parade continues, the piccolo band chirping more and more faintly in the distance. A murmur of disapproval begins to grow amongst the inebriated revelers as they collectively realize what Harkley has said. One incoherent yell breaks the dam, and a flood of profanity and protest swells into a roar of anger. Big Bill shoves Harkley out of the way and takes the stand, raising his arms up to placate the mob.

"Folks, folks, be reasonable! We must not endanger the lives of our racers and their machines. It's for your own safety. The track is too slick to race, and many spectating areas are under six inches of filthy run-off."

Bill's words are reasonable, objectively so, but Mike and I, like the crowd, find no comfort in them. All around us, spectacle-hungry dock workers are screaming for blood. They will certainly have it. 

12:31 pm - The riot begins innocently enough. A loud free agent stupidly shouts that the United Longshoremen have contrived the cancellation for the gain of their team (I'm certain it made sense in his head), without knowing that one of their number is standing two short feet away. The Longshoreman takes issue with the comment and communicates as much with a right hook. Mistaking the mouthy free agent for one of their own, two Sixty-Eighties join the fray against the Longshoremen. Not to be outdone by their rivals, some half dozen Brother Stevedores charge in and scatter the scuffle. Newton's third law comes into play, and then some, and before long, the parade is cutting a rather tidy line through a warring mass of beer and blood. 

Mike and I are swept up with the crowd, taking notes, taking quotes, shooting shaky video. From deeply ingrained experience on picket lines and protests, the brawling workers give way before us, some leaning towards us as they dodge punches to offer commentary.

"The Longshoremen started it, we had nothing to do with it!"

"We're defending our right to organize, see?"

"Tell them what you saw here, tell them you saw solidarity against injustice."

We nod, write, record, and drift on through the mass of bodies along the route of the parade. Someone yells something about going to see what all the fuss is about, see how bad this flooding could really be, and suddenly we are all shambling at a rough jog along the racecourse, an improvisational day drinking marathon of combat. Bottles of wine are passed around or thrown, beers shotgunned or slammed into heads. Tears, vomit, and blood mingle with spilt drinks amid growing puddles of gray water. Time loses meaning and we are all simply rushing forward, overtaking the parade, causing the forklifts to stall, rushing through the geriatric woodwinds. The frontrunners are putting on speed, fleeing rivals who are themselves in flight from Lord knows what. The United Women Dock Workers stand safe atop their float and laugh. We rush on.

Circa 3:30 pm - Somewhere along the line, a footrace has replaced the forklift race, and the violence with which the competition is prosecuted dissuades the officials from stepping in and stopping it. Dizzy skirmishes continue in alleyways and on stoops, drunken fists swinging smoothly as if through deep water. Several forklifts have been repurposed to carry away the limp forms of the passed-out and concussed. 

 5:03 pm - Lap 12. A Brother Stevedore is in the lead, shuffling along at a jog and sipping demurely at a lukewarm can of pilsner. Mike and I are footsore and thirsty, leaning on the gates to the Home for Ailing and Retired Seamen where Big Bill and Lieutenant Harkley have set up an aid station. Their most popular medicines are warm chardonnay and hunks of camembert. 

7:12 pm - As the action settles from rippling rage to a dull hum, the police finally step in and begin taking statements. A detective calls a judge away from his Sunday supper to issue warrants for key instigators. Mike's footage is subpoenaed as evidence. Providentially, they took my shorthand for drunken scrawl and allowed me to keep my notes. Those still running were allowed to continue unmolested. 

9:27 pm - I watch the last racer collapse just short of the finish line, a Sixty-Eighter. No one knows how many laps remain, least of all him. This will almost certainly be a point of contention at next year's race, if the event is allowed to be repeated. Old men watch from the windows of their rooms in the Home. The streets are quiet now, sundry fluids pooling and refuse clumping into piles. The forklifts have been taken home. Happy birthday, President Washington.

To the north of the city lies the vast Unorganized Territories, a wilderness of boggy forest and rocky outcrops bisected by Interstate 372 and riddled with smoldering all-terrain vehicles. At mile marker 141 on the northbound lane, there is an unobtrusive turnout, a washed-in culvert snaking rightwards into an arroyo beyond the embankment through a tangle of blasted guardrail. I signal my turn and steer the bicycle to the shoulder, bumping to gravel, and am off into the brush. I think I know when I will return. I am wrong.  

In the Autumn of last year, I was approached via First Class Mail by one Dr. Martinez VanAndersmint, MD, Assistant Professor of Critical Anthropology at Regency North-Central Polytechnic University. At the time, Dr. Van, as I came to know him, was a rising star among regional social scientists researching diverse and mysterious folk medicine practices of the marginal burroughs of our city: The Pipes, Breakwell Row, Slaughter Town, and of course the Unorganized Territories, or UT. As a proponent of several provocative and inflammatory theories regarding dental sanitation in the further reaches of the UT, Dr. Van was a hotshot for the popular science news and various trade circulars, all of which had been rather dusty as pandemic statistics and the ongoing AI debate quickly became blase. Tuning into his own popularity was Dr. Van's keenest discovery. At the very crest of his viral popularity, Van sent me a formal invitation to join him for a long-weekend research excursion into the UT as a professional witness. I cordially accepted. 

Over the ensuing three months, one week, four days, seven hours, and twenty-eight minutes, Dr. Van and I were to become experts on the status of dental hygiene in the UT, as well as countless other local practices. Our unexpected sojourn among the brave scavengers who roam canals, swamps, and thickets between the drab wall of the Horvath Avenue Promenade and the rising bluffs of the Antal Hills ironically taught us a host of invaluable lessons about our anachronistic city, not to mention about the very spark of humanity. We were also fated to become lovers. This is our story.

Dr. Van's sketched and laminated directions led me down a gentle wash into a tangle of privet, brambleberry, and wild rose. The rumble of traffic faded slowly into the distance behind me, replaced by the whine of crickets and the shuffle of the wind through prickling foliage. I felt the rush of the city drip away from my shoulders, but its leavings were still all about me. Strips of newspaper, plastic sheeting, rubberbands, polyurethane, steel wool, invasive vines, extension cords, oxygen tubing, and reusable shopping bags wound themselves about the tops of buried telephone poles and bicycle racks drowning in Spanish moss and bracken, blown along in the ever-present wind of warm steam blowing inland from the Tel-Fair Nutrients imitation crab factories in the New Port. I dodged a tumbling KFC bucket and rode on. 

Navigating the serpentine flats of the central UT on two wheels is both a matter of possessing great endurance in the membra inferius and the encyclopedic navigational instincts of a bar-tailed godwit. Amongst the rolling berms of gray sand, under knotted canopies of honeysuckle, street tires present a significant technical challenge. As I passed Dr. Van's landmarks one by one (twinned deer skeletons beneath a splintered dogwood, a '78 Dodge Dart on three rotten tires, a hardhat bolted through the brow to a yield sign) I was struck by the ephemeral nature of the landscape. Migratory streams fragment sandy dunelands between ridgelines of ragged shale, transporting whole sheets of scrub-oak supporting loam beds between their various banks. Van warned me that his most recent waymarkers would likely disappear soon after our short excursion ended, but they served me well on my way towards the study site that afternoon.

Van and I would be lodging at an ad hoc research encampment with two other teams, another  anthropological expedition from RNCPU and a crack hydraulic engineering team from the Community College of Beaver County Pennsylvania. I had been told that basecamp was a haphazard affair, but its rippling canvas and splintered pallet walls were positively cozy-looking when I sighted them in the opaque dusk of the swamp. What I would find there, however, was anything but comfortable. 

Part Two forthcoming.

-GD