Stare Masters

A few days ago, Charlie Hurt at the Washington Times wrote with nostalgia about the Washington Post of old, and particularly the “simple stories about mundane life that were so beautifully written. In those days, no one was better at that than the Washington Post.”

One story I recall was about a crew of construction workers taking their lunch break during nice weather. They sat on a wall along a sidewalk and watched all the women professionals in pretty dresses and high heels walk by. My humble description of the story does not do it justice. But in the hands of one of the old giants of The Post’s Style section, it was an absolute masterpiece. It was about human interaction at its most primal. It revealed people’s dreams and imaginations. It was entertaining. Most of all, it was real.

David Von Drehle tracked down the story he was referring to and graciously shared it. It ran on August 11, 1993, a Wednesday. It’s stunning. Take a look.

STARE MASTERS: Every Day at Noon, They Sit And Watch Their Dreams Go By

By Phil McCombs, Washington Post Staff Writer

… I think of all the girls on parade in the city. I don’t know whether it’s something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I’m at a picnic in this city. – Irwin Shaw, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”

– Irwin Shaw, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses”

Every day at noon, the men sit on the wall and watch. They eat, and watch. They talk about Harleys and how much cognac they drank over the weekend and the baseball stats, and women. Mostly they talk about women. Because the women are walking by right in front of them, right down Vermont Avenue, with their heels clicking and their skirts flaring and their ID cards bouncing on their blouses, and they look good. Damn they look good, the big ones and little ones and young ones and old ones and black ones and white ones and ones in between — they all look good, you bet. Because they are a dream, and the men are dreamers, these men who get up at 3 or 4 in the morning somewhere way far out in the counties and saddle up and get in here at 6 to work on this big renovation job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and at noon they get a lunch half-hour and they wipe off the sweat and dust and get a cold drink and sandwich at the concession truck and walk over and sit on the low granite wall across the street and eat, and smoke, and watch.

They watch the women going by and they talk about them because, in the end, a man’s fantasy, his life and his purpose and his dream, comes down somehow to a woman, one way or another. It’s just the way it is.

“Hey, Cat Man!” shouts Soul Train, from down the wall.

“You got it,” says Cat Man, settling with his lunch. “I’m not married yet,” he confides. “I’m looking for a good wife. When I come into my home, I want a woman cooking and cleaning my clothes and cleaning my home good. I’d be happy forever! That’s what I need, a good woman.”

He’s 23 years old, a demolition man named Cesar Andre from the Dominican Republic — a short, smiling guy in dusty faded purple jeans with his work shirt unbuttoned to his belt and a blue hard hat by his side.

Cat Man.

“I’m looking around,” he continues. “It’s nice here. You’re outside, you feel relaxed. You got pretty women coming by every day. Sometimes I try to talk to them. When I talk to a girl, I try to be nice. I say, ‘How do you do?’ Oh yeah, I like pretty women!”

“Tell him, Cat Man,” says Raby Little, an older guy.

“You know, when you work,” Cat Man goes on, “you got everything. You can buy a girl. When you marry, your wife she takes care of your money and she takes care of you. When you don’t have a wife, you spend all your time drinking and dancing.”

Cat Man pauses. A woman in a red skirt walks by.

“Hi, beauty,” he says.

Her eyes flicker toward Cat Man. She’s blond, tall. She keeps going, looking straight ahead, her heels clicking on the pavement.

“She’s wonderful,” says Cat Man, softly. “You know, I’ve never seen so many women as in this country — every kind of nationality! Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian! A lot of women! Wow!” He’s bouncing up and down where he sits, he’s so enthusiastic.

His eyes follow the woman in the red skirt, who’s turning the corner, disappearing.

“Ohhhh,” says Cat Man, “she’s got blue eyes and she’s got a skinny face. I like that.”

And then, after a pause, he says something so improbable, so wonderful, so full of drama and mystery, that it takes your breath away.

“She calls me sometimes,” he says, “at my home. Her name is Katy.”

Love and Marriage Soul Train, 40, looks down at his scruffy work boots. “When the women see these shoes,” he says, “at least they know they work. And women want a workin’ man! There’s so much happening in this city. I can tell you about the women, what they want out here. I can tell you all about it. Suit-and-tie don’t make no money no more. They just want a workin’ man, a man with an honest living, because half of the men are in jail. I’ll tell you something else, there’s a lot of single women in this city. I ain’t giving you my name, because I’m married, but these women, they’re lookin’. They want houses, they want a hubby, oh yeah.”

He lights a cigarette.

“Lemme tell you where the women are,” he continues. “They’re on K Street. You find some of the baddest, finest women in the metropolitan area there, ’cause that’s where the money is. They’re making $ 30,000 and up, and they’re dressed to kill. Right down there on K Street.”

A couple of women walk by.

“Hello hello, ladies,” says Soul Train.

“Hello,” they say, smiling.

“They’re lookin’ for a husband,” says Soul Train. “It ought to be like some of them foreign countries, where you have eight wives.”

A woman walks by.

“Now that’s a fine-looking woman right there,” he says. “Lord ‘a mercy. I like it when they get close to 40.” He smokes. “Career women, you know.”

“I like ‘em any age,” says Phillip Anthony, 32, a demolition man who lives in the District, and who’s a bachelor. “It don’t matter to me.”

“Well, I got a preference,” says Soul Train. “Over 35, they know what’s happening. They know what life is all about. You don’t get that far by being stupid. They’re basically situated. And they understand when you can’t come out and play.”

“I’ve been through some old women,” says Anthony, “and I’ve been through some young women, and I’ve been through some middle-aged women. That’s why I say, I don’t care about their age. Even the older ones, they get dressed up and put on that makeup, they look kind of good.”

Another woman walks by.

“She’s good to look at,” says Anthony.

“You’d get tired of her,” scoffs Soul Train. “I ain’t seen one yet I wouldn’t get tired of.”

Another walks by.

“You can damn near set a beer can on top of that,” says Raby Little, 47, a pipe fitter from Jessup.

The conversation can get plenty graphic, no need to reproduce every word. What the men actually say to the women is more guarded, and the women’s reactions, at least on this stretch of the avenue, range from ignoring the men to a wink or smile in return.

“She does aerobics,” says Soul Train. “You can tell.”

“Make a good wife,” says Anthony.

Soul Train is thoughtful. “People get married for different reasons these days,” he says. “I don’t want no wife. I want a partner. Wife, she sits on her tail all day, drinks Cokes and eats candy and gets fat. Then when you split she wants half. Partner, she goes out and works, and when you split, it’s okay she gets half. Love don’t pay no bills.”

“Hi,” says a woman passerby. Soul Train pays no attention, laughs at Little.

“Ray likes ‘em all, he don’t care what color they are,” he says.

“There’s a lot of white women I wouldn’t go out with, and a lot of black ones I would,” says Little, who is white. “It’s personality that counts.”

“As King would say,” says Soul Train, “don’t judge me by my skin color.”

A woman will do almost anything to get a man, according to Soul Train. “They’ll flatten your tires,” he says. “They’ll knock on your windows.”

“First they come over and stay,” says Little, “then they get their clothes there, then you can’t get rid of ‘em.”

“It’s terrible,” says Soul Train, shaking his head. “Women are taking men right out of prison, did you know that? Lemme tell you about women. You know what women do? Just to say they got a man, they give them their car — just to be able to say to their co-workers they got a man, he comes and picks ‘em up from work.”

A woman walks by.

“You know she wants you to look at her,” says Little.

“She’s got a few miles on her too,” says Soul Train, appreciatively.

A Question of Attitude Mark Johnson is a painter, a single man, a quiet man. He always has a cup of ice cream at lunch. He sits there, taking in the scene. His feet hang, and he bounces them against the wall. “I believe to get respect, you have to give a little,” he says. “You always meet nice people here. I wasn’t raised up to be rowdy. I’m a gentleman. You watch ‘em in the morning, you catch ‘em when they’re fresh, the boss hasn’t jumped on ‘em yet.”

An elevator man who gives only his first name, Calvin, says thoughtfully: “We wear different clothes and we work hard. You got a lot of decent guys out here. I think in D.C., you got a lot of stuck-up women. They seem to be not as friendly as women in other areas where I’ve worked. You get to places like Florida and Georgia, the women seem to be a little friendlier and laid-back. Most guys are just speaking to them out of respect, not to be fresh. Sometimes women can’t distinguish that.”

“You can’t work down here and not watch,” says Mike Troiano, 36, a tile and marble man who’s eating pork rinds from a foil sack. “I’ve been working downtown off and on since I was 16, and not much has changed. But you gotta be careful now. It all depends on how you approach ‘em. It comes down to knowing women, what they like and what they don’t like. I’ll say, ‘You look awful nice today,’ or give a real shallow whistle. It’s polite. A lot of ‘em don’t mind it. They’ll smile at you. They appreciate it sometimes, when you whistle at ‘em or gawk at ‘em. A lot of times they’ll say hi to you. A lot of times they won’t. Pork rind?”

More on Katy and Cat Man “Sometimes when I get out of my job, I pick her up,” says Cat Man. “I tell her, ‘Want to get some dinner?’ ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’ Sometimes she stops and talks to me.”

When she walks by the next day, he says, he’ll introduce us.

But the next day he says, “She’s at home. She’s sick. She called me about 11:30 in the office. Tomorrow we’re going out. Oh, we’ll have a good time, and make good love!”

A woman walks by.

“Hi, sweetie!” he says.

Permission Granted

“Lookin’ doesn’t hurt,” says Pat Hamzik, 30, a marble setter’s helper from Severn. “My wife would understand, even when I’m with her. I’ve been with my wife 11 years, and we’ve been married going on three years. And lookin’ hasn’t caused any problems yet.”

Hamzik is a large man who wears a Harley T-shirt, likes pizza for lunch.

A couple of days later, he cheerfully reports: “I was talking with my wife. The reason it doesn’t bother her that I look at women is, I don’t compare. That’s why it doesn’t bother her.”

American Dream Machine

The concession truck arrives at 11:45 a.m., and departs at 12:07 p.m. — prompt. It is driven by Kim Fields, a blonde with powder-blue eyes. This divorced mother of two is also nice, a considerate and friendly person. A total sweetie. Who seems to have her act incredibly together — off the launching pad at 4 a.m., she makes 15 precisely timed construction stops a day.

“Whadaya think, Kimberly?”

“Hi, Donnie!”

“Have a nice weekend, young lady!” shouts another.

“Ready to go out on the boat?” asks another.

The men supplement their lunches with her Dr Peppers and Tastykakes, boiled eggs and sandwiches, doughnuts and Zingers. Fields, an independent contractor who’s been doing this for three years, stands at a small aluminum table making change.

“From seeing ‘em so long,” she says of the men, “you get to know ‘em on a friendly basis. You know what they want for lunch, and you have certain things on the truck for ‘em.”

One of the men, Scott Faya, says affectionately, “I showed her a picture of my daughter and she said, ‘Oh, I want a little girl like that!’ ”

The men keep an eye out to make sure Fields isn’t bothered by the outsider they’ve come to call The Stalker. For more than two years, she says, he’s tracked her. Long ago, he asked her for dates and she turned him down. Nevertheless, he kept appearing at her stops. “At Postal Square,” she says, “he used to come every afternoon to buy his soda. Then at the World Bank. Then here, but the superintendent ran him off.”

Still, when she drives off at 12:07, she says, he’s waiting around the corner a couple of days a week, and he waves at her.

“There’s something wrong with him,” she says, “but I don’t think he’s any danger. I think maybe he needs something to do with his day, a little part of it, anyway.”

Generation to Generation “I’ve got one kid and that’s it,” says Faya, 30, a tall man with a ponytail who wears a different-colored bandanna tied over his head each day, and who carries a cooler full of sandwiches and snacks with a sticker on it that says, “Lick Bush in ’92. We’re Proud to Be Union.”

A woman walks by.

“Oh, baby!” says Faya.

“Wonder why them women don’t talk to those suit-and-tie guys?” says a man from down the wall, to no one in particular.

“They don’t have to line up to watch ‘em, they see ‘em all the time,” says John McCamley, an elevator mechanic.

“They’re up there chasing ‘em around the desk all day,” says Faya.

“I have 12 grandchildren, five children,” says Eddie Tewell, 53, Faya’s buddy and proud fellow member of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers.

They watch, but carefully.

“Things have definitely changed,” says Tewell, who wears suspenders and a T-shirt that says, “Pushing 50 Is Enough Exercise for Me.” “You can’t even whistle anymore, they’ll get a cop and a lawyer. All you can do is look. It’s women’s lib went haywire. But you can’t blame ‘em, they’re doin’ half the work. Now that is lovely.”

He’s watching a woman pass by. She’s wearing a black dress, and she has auburn hair.

“I tell Eddie that could be somebody’s grandmother that he’s looking at,” says Faya.

Another woman passes.

“That’s a heck of a leg, there,” says Tewell.

“Butt and legs on there won’t quit,” agrees Faya, venturing a little whistle.

Another woman walks by. She is eating an apple.

“Nice-looking apple,” says Faya, fairly loud.

“Nasty look,” notes Tewell. “All you said was ‘nice-looking apple.’ They’ll probably send you to jail.”

Both men say they’re happily married, Tewell for 35 years. To Rita.

“You might not believe it,” he says, “but she’s the only girl I ever had sex with.”

Move Over, Guys

Brenda Lampkin, who works at the VA, stops to chat. She knows the guys.

“I gotta figure out what to have for lunch,” she says.

Soul Train suggests pork. “One pork chop a day keeps the doctor away,” he says. “I was raised on pork. I’m from North Carolina, and we had pork in the morning, pork in the evening. We had pork and beans too.”

Lampkin says the men are “okay. They don’t scare me off. They’re hard-working. They are well behaved, very well behaved. All they’re doing is looking — just the same as if a bunch of women were sitting here and men walked by.”

Where Katy Went

The wall, it seems, is a kind of dividing line in the men’s lives — a time out. They sit there for half an hour a day. That’s it. We know them only in this strange In Between Land, sharing their dreamy thoughts and feelings, not seeing the fullness of their lives at home, not seeing even the reality of their work lives once they disappear, at 12:30 p.m. sharp, back into the depths of the Veterans Affairs building. All well and good — there’s no need to know everything. We can’t, anyway.

Yet in the case of Cat Man and Katy, curiosity overwhelms. What amazing reality, what unguessed truth, can there be in this? Or is it simply a glorious and sustaining fantasy?

She works, he says, in a beauty shop. At such and such a place.

At that place, the receptionist buzzes open the door.

There’s no Katy in sight.

“Is Katy coming in?”

The receptionist looks puzzled. “You mean Karen?”

“Maybe. She’s a tall blonde.”

“No,” the receptionist says with a smile. “There’s no one here like that.”

Ah Cat Man! Ah humanity!