The Zeitgeist Diaries Pt. 1

By: Javan Bair

Somehow, I had managed to feel even more trapped in the day to day grind than I did before the pandemic began. The two major time consumers in my life, work and school had become constant fixtures in my home. MY desk loomed in my bedroom as if to remind me that even in the imminent fall of the world, I was still merely a cog in a profit-driven machine.

A significant number of people loved working from home during the pandemic. Many of them are still doing it to this day. At first, I have to admit that I loved working from home. It was a dream come true to hang out in sweatpants and smoke weed with my dog while pretending my job still had meaning.

But countless hours spent stoned and alone had finally lost their luster, and I decided I needed some kind of alteration in my life’s direction.

I switched all my classes to CU Denver and moved in with a couple of friends that needed a roommate. They had an apartment that was “basically in Denver.” And for the price in rent, I couldn’t believe how affordable this apartment was in the notoriously expensive and saturated Denver market. 

I quickly found out that I was not “basically in Denver. I was in Thornton, which is fine if you are searching for an alternative to everything that makes Denver, Denver. Where Denver is contemporary and creative, Thornton is suburban and purposefully ordinary. The only thing both areas have in common is an absurd number of homeless people.

Classes were supposed to resume in person a couple of days after I moved up there. But COVID had other plans, and classes were once again relegated to zoom meetings and Microsoft office meeting rooms. I was trapped again. The world had briefly reopened, and then the omicron variant came in like Dikembe Mutombo and swatted all our hopes and dream of normalcy into the trashcan. And taking the 20-minute drive from Thornton to downtown was to no avail. Aside from the occasional protest, Denver had very little excitement at the time. Everything was either closed, or you sat outside on picnic tables outside of a microbrewery and drank beer in the frigid cold. I was drinking at one of these urban winter survival courses once and made direct eye contact with a homeless person doing the same thing I was. Except, he was doing it for far less money. The pandemic was nonsensical, monotonous, and downright arduous unless you were homeless. The pandemic was like a never-ending summer camp for them.

Because I hadn’t yet given up on myself enough to forgo my worldly possessions and join the Forever Camp on Colfax Ave. And I couldn’t afford to move out of Thornton, so I was forced to resume our regularly scheduled programming. I was back to smoking weed, hanging out with the dog, doing homework, and working in the form of sending meaningless emails to coworkers day in and day out. New location. Same directionless feeling. 

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My roommate Mike still worked a regular job. He got up at 7:00 every morning and came home at 6:00, a ritual beginning to feel foreign to me. Sure, he still came home with the glaze of the workingman’s dread over his eyes. He would openly vocalize how much he hates work and his co-workers. But I was jealous of him. He was leaving the house every day and somewhat living with some sense of normalcy.  

He worked as the manager of a medium-duty truck salvage yard/dealership in Denver called TTI Trucks. If the term “medium-duty truck salvage yard and dealership” sounds sketchy, that’s because it is. The essential business model of TTI Trucks is to purchase used box trucks at auction and either sell them back to the general public if they run or strip them for parts that they sell back to the general public if they don’t run. It’s kind of like recycling, except more dangerous. These aren’t plastic bags being turned into flimsier bags; these are parts for the big trucks on the highway that you pass on your way to work. Very sketchy.  

So, I was all in when he offered me a part-time job. I grew up in salvage yards. My dad kept our family cars running with parts from U-Pull-And-Pay for most of my life. As a toddler, I used to sit in dilapidated vehicles that had already been ransacked by others while my Dad would pull the parts he needed. Those are some of my fondest memories, sincerely. In addition, my Dad has been a mechanic his whole life, and as a result, I grew up around shops like TTI.

Mike knew this about me, and that’s why he thought I might enjoy working part-time at TTI while I was still in college. In addition, TTI needed help. Unlike most industries in the time of COVID, the trucking industry hit a major boom. The rise of online shopping binges that kept many people tethered to reality during the pandemic caused a subsequent surge in the need to deliver those products. The demand for delivery drivers and transport services went through the roof, and trucks worldwide began clocking in more miles than ever before. But more miles equals more wear, and more wear equals broken and worn-out parts that must be replaced.

Truck drivers are losing money when their trucks are not operating correctly. And just like every other good or service during the pandemic, truck parts were no different. They we limited and challenging to come across. Acquiring new parts in a timely manner became an act of God. And thus, TTI Trucks arose as the prodigal son of the Western Front trucking industry.  

The parts were sold faster than the trucks could be purchased, and TTI needed more help pulling and selling the parts. The manual labor force in this country does not slow down for politics or pandemics. Even in times of chaos, one thing remains true in the United States, wrenches must be turned, and those doing so must be paid. The pandemic was good for TTI and those that worked there.

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“This job is ghetto as hell.” I think to myself as I use one of our jump boxes to try and start a truck that was literally recovered from a highway fire. The jump box I use is a steel furniture dolly with car batteries stacked on top of one another. They are inconveniently heavy and very unsafe. I hook cables to the battery terminal and let this old International 4700  rip. The engine remarkably starts, but the rest of the truck appears unsalvageable. I take pictures of the truck, a video to prove that it does, in fact, run despite looking like it was used on the set of a Michael Bay film, and see what parts are still salvageable and advertise those parts online. It is a very blue-collar job. It’s dirty. My co-workers are dirty. Everything smells like grease, diesel, cigarettes, farts, and Copenhagen. And on a somewhat hereditary level, I like it.

After a couple of months at this job, the world began to open, and some of my classes began occurring in real classrooms again. I began to split my time 50/50 between CU Denver and TTI Trucks. A College of Liberal Arts and a blue-collar mechanic shop and salvage yard. I believe there to be no two more polar opposite locations in the universe. They are the antithesis of one another.  

At CU Denver, the world is viewed through a lens that portrays a myriad of left-leaning agendas common throughout academia. Despite how the media represents the college, it is not just a crash course in communism nor an indoctrination to Antifa. But the tropes and stereotypes do exist. Anti-fascist poetry club posters and Joe Rogan petitions decorate the hallways. At TTI Trucks, the agenda is all over the spectrum of right-wing beliefs, everything from the overtly Christian Conservatives to the heartfelt followers of Qanon. There is no shortage of unfounded conspiratorial beliefs to be heard. 

I existed in both of these places during a time of intense division in this country. I was bounced around between major ideologies like a pinball during COVID,  the protests, the election, the vaccine rollout, the mask mandates, and every other piece of duplicitous chaos that unfolded between 2020 and 2022.

I learned, worked, and lived among the two groups in this country that seem to have the most disdain for one another but spend almost no time commingling. 

I found myself smack dab in the middle of the American Zeitgeist (definition: the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time).  

This isn’t some “take a walk in someone else’s shoes” story or some profound tale of self-discovery and unification in a time of division. Those would both be excellent options, but I fear we have long since departed from being able to digest anything from a central point of view in this country. Instead, I will tell you stories about the last two wild fucking years I have spent among these two vastly different groups, and hopefully, by the end of it, you realize just how ass-backward we have become as a nation. What you choose to do with that information is entirely up to you.

***Part 2 is coming next week***