How Deindustrialization Shaped My Working-Class Family

Dad stood at the edge of the shore, witnessing the ocean for the first time, at 40. His green eyes peered into the horizon, unstirred by the waves that crashed into his bare feet, liberated from the weight of his factory boots.

“Whatever, I’ve seen large bodies of water before,” he scoffed.

Of course, he had, spending most of his life in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio — states enveloped by the Great Lakes. But even as his words dismissed the ocean, his eyes refused to look away.

Maybe he didn’t want to admit it, but he knew the ocean held more significance than a lake. It stretched to lands beyond the paper map that navigated us here, from the icy roads of Ohio to the warm beaches of South Carolina. I plopped down on the shore beside Dad, removing my pink Barbie flip-flops so I could dig my feet into the gritty sand, a welcome distraction as I grappled with an uncomfortable truth.

I was only 12, but I had seen the ocean before Dad, invited on a trip to South Carolina the year before by my best friend and her family. All I could feel was the bite of shame and the stir of confusion with this flipped situation of experience and knowledge. I was used to living a separate routine from Dad, each of us immersing ourselves in our own worlds of school and work and school and work. But now, it seemed as if our lives were edging toward separate realities.

Dad worked as a warehouse distribution manager at a beverage bottling factory near Cincinnati for what seemed like most of my life. But his career didn’t start in a factory; it started on a golf course. From 13 to 17, Dad worked as a caddy at the prestigious Midlothian Country Club near Chicago, the kind of place that Al Capone built his house near. ​“I lived at that place,” Dad recalled. From sunrise to sundown, he carried the golf bags of powerful white men: doctors and lawyers, CEOs and senators, athletes and celebrities. He never let me forget about the time he met renowned golfer Arnold Palmer. ​“Could I have one more autograph please, Mr. Palmer?”

“Of course, good going, son.”

I didn’t know a lot about Dad’s father, only that he worked at a factory, too. Dad preferred to tell stories about the ​“fathers” at the golf course and the wisdom they shared. ​“They taught me how to dress, how to talk and how to golf. They told me to go to college, get an education, get a job, buy a car, buy a house. They said to keep working hard and not lose sight of my goals.”

And so he did. At 18, he left the golf course and entered college to study operations management. Although he failed his first year, he eventually graduated. He often spoke of this with pride: ​“At the end of the day, I never lost sight of gaining a college education.”

By 1985, Dad found work at the bottling factory in Flint, Mich., dispensing sugar water into glass bottles.

A few years later, he met Mom, became a father and bought a new Buick from General Motors. The Buick was a big deal, a car that protected Dad and Mom from the relentless bullying of previous car purchases, like an Italian Fiat.

“They had a special deal on the Fiat,” Mom said, “$99 down, $99 a month.”

But to friends and family, the Fiat wasn’t a deal but a betrayal. ​“What the fuck are you driving a Fiat for?” they barked. ​“Buy American.”

The Buick wasn’t merely a new car, but a declaration of loyalty. Loyalty seemed important to Dad, a requirement for reaching the destination that the fathers from the golf course had mapped out for him.

But glass bottles were already being replaced by plastic bottles, considered lightweight, safer and cheaper. ​“This plant is closing down. I can feel it,” he affirmed. And it did. Manufacturing jobs in Flint were becoming harder to find, as nearby GM facilities were also closing, a move to cut costs and regain a competitive edge against domestic and foreign competitors who were building new plants in the United States.

We packed our bags and moved to southwest Ohio, where Dad found a new job at a chemical distribution plant. Mom worked from home as a call center representative for a nonprofit. I was only four, but everything about Ohio seemed fresh, from the new roads to the new technology.

Mom and Dad bought their first home — split-level, mustard yellow, trimmed with cherry red window shutters — the kind of house that stuck out among the brown tree hills and green cornfields that surrounded us. But the most memorable part of the house was the above-ground swimming pool in the backyard. The pool was far from perfect, leaky with holes from rocks that pierced through the bottom lining. But I didn’t care about the holes. I floated through the water on my back, looking up at the airplanes that flew above me.

“Watch out for the waves,” Dad would shout as he jumped into the water, pretending the pool was an ocean. Inside the pool, Dad was a carefree kid with a laugh that echoed across the neighborhood. Outside the pool, Dad was a worried adult, punctuated by his factory boots that stomped into the living room carpet, releasing a swell of frustration that rippled throughout the house, rattling the picture frames on the walls.

Soon after moving to Ohio, Dad’s new job at the chemical distribution plant vanished, as the company sold this part of the business to focus on a more profitable sector — oil and gas. He found another new job at a family-owned glass distribution plant, but a year later, that job vanished, too; the plant struggled to keep pace with the competition and became acquired — alongside similar glass distribution plants across the United States — by a larger Japanese company. Ohio was no longer an escape from the shifting economy in Michigan, but part of it.

“We got to start livin’ on savings,” Mom said. She wore an exquisite armor of resourcefulness, no matter what battle came our way. First, she canceled the cable, then the newspaper. I grieved the loss of the Disney Channel. Knowledge and connection to the outside world were privileges we could no longer afford.

As the savings drained, losing the house and the swimming pool was imminent. Mom found a second job at the local McDonald’s and Dad found work as a food delivery driver. I peered out the window and watched Dad pull the Buick away from the driveway, stopping at the edge of the street to place the taxi sign at the top of the car. ​“I don’t want the neighbors to know where I work,” he said.

By the end of 1994, Dad found employment again at the beverage bottling factory, this time in Cincinnati — dispensing sugar water into plastic bottles. It served as a stable source of income as I graduated from elementary to middle school. But Dad struggled to shake off the anxiety that rippled through him. ​“No matter what, I can never lose sight of this house,” he repeated, a daily affirmation that cemented his loyalty to the sugar water.

Although Dad and I lived in the same house, we were never there at the same time. At the start of the new millennium, I turned 12, hustling through a crammed schedule of basketball, dance, piano or after-school practice for the next standardized test.

When my best friend asked me if I wanted to go on a vacation to South Carolina, a chance to escape school and see the ocean for the first time, I immediately accepted her offer, asking Mom and Dad for forgiveness rather than permission. At the beach, I learned how the rising tide could wash my beach towel away, how the undertow could toss my body back into the waves like a washing machine, how the saltwater could parch my mouth.

“What time does the ocean close?” I asked my friend, revealing the depths of my naivete.

“What?” She giggled. ​“You can’t close the ocean.”

There was a lot I didn’t know, but it wasn’t until I returned from the trip that I realized I was beginning to gain experiences Dad hadn’t.

Dad spent his days at the bottling factory — 14 hours a day, six days a week. His grueling schedule was getting worse, as he started to slip away into the midnight shifts at the factory and the daylight hustle of going back to school to become a teacher. I couldn’t understand why Dad wanted to become a teacher, as it seemed like a daunting career path that left so many of my own teachers exhausted and overwhelmed. But Dad held onto the hope that switching careers ​“might let me see my kids from time to time.”

Days, weeks, sometimes months went by before I saw Dad again. He was like Big Foot, leaving traces throughout the house but never found in plain sight. I saw him in the jacket he draped over the dining room chair, reserving his place at the table. I saw him in the potato chip crumbs that he left at the kitchen counter after scarfing down a meal before driving 95 miles between the factory and the university. I saw him in the pencil markings he drew on my algebra homework that he left outside my bedroom door. Although I couldn’t see him, I could feel his longing for home.

But the more that Dad drifted away from the house, the more the sugar water moved into the house. Its logo swirled across Dad’s shirts, pants, jackets, hats, socks, sunglasses, handkerchiefs and turtlenecks. It swirled across the shelves in the refrigerator, the clocks that fastened onto the wall and the ornaments that hung on the Christmas tree. It swirled across my lunch boxes, mugs, notebooks, frisbees and water bottles. It swirled across my school as Mom and I carried cases of its sticky sludge into the classroom to keep my classmates energized for the next standardized test. The logo had even appropriated itself onto my basketball, converting the orange rubber sphere into the swirl. This wasn’t merely sugar water, or a brand obsession, or a place where Dad worked. It was a place where he lived, where we all lived, an omnipotent presence that governed our daily lives.