“They honked when I worked slow. No one slowed down when I fell.”
They used to call me “Patch.”
Not because I wore one, but because I fixed them. Potholes. Cracks. Blacktop buckles that could eat a tire whole. For thirty-eight years, I chased the sun up and down county roads with a shovel in one hand and a bucket of asphalt in the other.
My name’s Alan Rooker. I laid your roads. The ones that wind around the lake up in Dutchess County, the ones that freeze and split in February, the ones folks curse when they hit a bump but forget someone ever smoothed it out in the first place.
I was twenty-one the first time I smelled hot tar on my boots. Back then, the crew was mostly vets and tough sons of coal miners. We started at five, wore bandanas soaked in sweat and diesel, and learned to move like a team. Left, rake, tamp, shovel. Again. And again. Until your back didn’t ache anymore—because it always ached.
We didn’t talk much. We worked. Smoked Marlboros on breaks. Ate bologna sandwiches off the tailgate. Listened to the radio hiss out Springsteen and Merle.
My first foreman, Big Joe, once told me, “You build enough road, son, and people’ll drive right over you like you were never there.”
Didn’t know how right he was.
The accident wasn’t dramatic. Not the kind they make warning videos about.
We were repaving Route 9—summer of ’96. One of those days where the heat shimmers off the blacktop like ghosts. Some kid in a red Pontiac was texting—back when you had to press the buttons three times to get a letter. He didn’t see the cones. Didn’t see me flagging.
Didn’t stop.
He caught me at the hip. I went airborne and landed on my shoulder like a sack of feed. Shattered pelvis, crushed wrist, six ribs snapped like dry twigs.
They medevac’d me, patched me up best they could. But I never walked right again. They offered me early retirement. “Pension’s still yours,” they said. “You earned it.”
Damn right I did.
I live alone now in a one-story house I bought back in ’82 for $43,000. Paid it off slow. That house is my medal. My war trophy. The carpet’s stained and the sink leaks, but it’s mine.
I spend most days in a wheelchair, parked by the window. The same one I used to lean out of on Saturdays to drink a beer and holler at the Yankees on the radio. Now, I watch the news roll on about “infrastructure investment” and “roads in disrepair.”
They show cracks and erosion like it’s new.
Like no one ever tried.
My daughter, Rachel, visits when she can. She works nights at the hospital, raises two boys, and still finds time to check on the old man. Brings me groceries and laughs at the state of my freezer. “You can’t just live off Hot Pockets and instant coffee, Dad.”
But I can.
I tell her stories sometimes. About the time I laid fresh tar in ninety-five-degree heat, and it rained ten minutes later, bubbling the surface like pancake batter. Or when we found a rattlesnake curled in a storm drain. Or that Fourth of July we patched the parade route at dawn so the kids wouldn’t trip.
She listens. Smiles politely. But she doesn’t really see it.
None of them do.
They drive past orange cones now like they’re scenery. Workers in neon vests are just blurs in the rearview. They don’t know that every mile of smooth road came from busted knees and burned necks. From men like Pete McCaffrey who died of heatstroke in ‘89 because the crew was short and he stayed late to finish a section by the school.
There’s no plaque for Pete. Just a name on a union newsletter.
Two weeks ago, they tore up Main Street to run fiber optic cables. Fast internet, they said. Progress.
The boys running the machines were barely twenty-five. Wearing goggles and earbuds, looking more at their phones than the trench they were cutting.
One of them walked too close to the pit and twisted his ankle. I watched it happen from my porch. No one offered a hand—just laughed, said, “He’ll walk it off.”
I wheeled myself inside and turned off the TV.
I miss the smell of it. The grit. The music of metal shovels scraping asphalt. I miss feeling useful.
You get old, and they stop asking you things. Your opinion, your memory, your advice—it’s like radio static to them. You start to fade.
I used to matter.
My work connected towns, linked families, carried semis and school buses and ambulances. I knew every curve in the county. Every mile marker. I knew where the road sank in spring, and where deer crossed at dusk. That was my America—loud, sunburned, and stubborn.
The other day, I fell.
Just trying to get the mail. One wheel caught on the edge of the sidewalk, and I tipped. No slow-motion drama. Just bam—face in the dirt, gasping like a fish.
Cars passed.
They swerved around me.
A kid on a bike sped by, earbuds in, eyes straight ahead.
I waited there. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe twenty.
Finally, old Mr. Talbot from down the block saw me from his porch and came hobbling over with his cane. Took both of us ten minutes to get me upright.
I told him thank you.
He said, “Hell, Patch, you built this whole street. Least I could do was pull you off it.”
We sat there on the curb for a while. Two old men and the ghost of a world we used to believe in.
It’s funny.
They talk about infrastructure like it’s wires and bridges. But it’s more than that. It’s people.
People who stood in the sun and got burned so your tires wouldn’t.
People who patched holes while their backs screamed so your family could get to Thanksgiving dinner.
People who built the veins of this country with their hands and were forgotten the second the pavement cooled.
I’m not angry.
Just tired.
But if you ever drive down Route 9 and wonder why the curve before the lake is so smooth—it’s because I stayed late one night in ’93 with a busted foot and a promise to Big Joe that I’d finish what I started.
You’re welcome.
I gave this country its roads, but in the end, all I wanted was someone to stop.
