Downshift

Hank Stuever: The General Motors truck assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, outside Dayton, closed a couple of days before Christmas last year, leaving 2,200 workers and 200 managers without jobs. By one calculation in the morose but absorbing documentary "The Last Truck," airing Monday night on HBO, each lost job at the plant caused the loss of five to seven more jobs nearby.



Which, of course, rippled outward to us all. In the days leading up to the shutdown, Paul "Popeye" Hurst, a 53-year-old toolmaker with a ZZ Top beard, drives around the plant's perimeter, forlornly noting the acres of parking lots filled with unsold SUVs: "Makes me sad to see all these vehicles sittin' here."