By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
The mountains -- Blue Ridge to the east, Massanutten to the west -- loom over Luray, Va., but their outlines are barely visible in the dark as the men gather in the park-and-ride at 3:50 a.m. The day's driver gets behind the wheel of the van, a nine-year-old Dodge, seven others pile in behind him, and by 4 they're headed up Route 340, the moon still a sharp white wedge and 77 miles of road ahead.
"I don't even know if the deer get up this early," says Jay Lang, peering into the black from the van's middle row.
It has come to this in the Washington region, where an imbalance of housing and jobs produces commutes that stagger the imagination and confound the biological clock: Every weekday, seven vans set off from Luray and six other far-flung locations with 55 passengers bound for a single workplace: the physical plant shop at George Mason University in Fairfax. The college looks so far afield for carpenters and electricians that it has started letting workers use campus vans for the commute.
The 10-seater vans converge from Front Royal, Winchester and Warrenton to the west, Fredericksburg to the south and Fort Washington and Indian Head to the east. The Luray crowd drives the farthest, from the far side of Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah cavern country -- 90 minutes if the weather and traffic cooperate, double that if they don't. Just getting to the park-and-ride means a 25-mile drive for one of the workers, who wakes up at 2:45 a.m. to make it.
George Mason's predawn van pools may seem like just another example of the extreme commutes in a region where roads are illuminated with brake lights well before sunbeams, but they challenge the assumptions behind the trend. The conventional explanation is that people are moving farther out for tranquility and more affordable homes and paying for them with a long commute.
The Luray riders serve as a reminder that there is another dynamic. They are not exurban wanderers but people with lives deeply rooted in towns far away who would have nothing to do with the Washington area if not for this: It's the only place they can find work.
For these workers, the area's boom is a lifesaver, providing jobs at, for example, an expanding university such as George Mason. But there's a steep cost, in the form of a daily schedule that could put a dairy farmer to shame.
"You never really get used to it," says George Mason's carpentry shop supervisor, Sam Dean, who drives the 25 miles from Elkton to meet the van in Luray. "But you go where the money is."
In this case, the goal is a salary of about $33,000 for most of the van's riders, who are all in their thirties and whose work includes patching dorm walls kicked in by drunk students and building oak newspaper racks for the student union. The pay is half of what Fairfax officials report as the minimum needed for a family to get by in the county, but university officials say that is all George Mason can afford.
Providing the vans, along with gas money, is a way to ease the burden, university officials say. Other employers in the area assist workers who have long commutes. The Montgomery County school system, for example, provides bus drivers living in West Virginia with a bus that shuttles them to the school bus depot in Shady Grove. But few have gone to such lengths as George Mason, which is considering adding more vans to the effort.
"The state doesn't pay that well, and this is one way for us to get skilled people who live in the more rural areas to come to work for us," said Larry Spaine, director of the university's physical plant. "They're top-of-the-line guys, and they're dependable. When we get a snow day, they come down from the mountain to help us push the snow."
The pay at George Mason is lower than what six of the men from the Luray van made at their previous jobs, working the presses at a printing plant in Luray. But the plant was shuttered when the company was sold in 2003, leaving 125 workers jobless. That followed the closure of two local jeans factories that employed 600, including one of the van's riders.
The closings have left few options in Page County (population 24,000). The hulking Virginia Oak Tannery, Luray's largest employer for years, was abandoned 25 years ago, and the hilly Main Street is now sustained mainly by antiques shops.
So when a Luray man invited those who were laid off to join him at George Mason, they leapt at the chance.
Page residents have been heading east for work for years -- a few of the van passengers' fathers and grandfathers did construction work in the metropolitan area. But it is a direction being taken by more and more natives of the region's outer rim as their local economies fade, said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason.
"Unless you're retired or a farmer, you have to be linked up to the metro area in some way," he said. "That is the future of these places."
That's why Randy Beahm, in the driver's seat, is unsurprised to see the road filling up before the van reaches Front Royal. He keeps a Fredericksburg country music station on low because some of the men are trying to sleep, curled up with flowery pillows from home. Others banter in the shorthand of men who've known one another since grade school, through softball leagues, hunting trips and layoffs.
They quip darkly about a communications technician at their kids' school who recently fell through the ceiling on a job. "He won't be running no more wire for a while," someone calls from the back. Someone else hollers for more air conditioning. They rib Ronnie Williams Jr. about his fondness for the TV drama "House" and complain about rising gasoline prices. "I put $20 in my truck yesterday, and it didn't even seem like the gauge moved," says Mark Gray, riding shotgun.
They exchange youth baseball scores from the day before -- they have 27 children and stepchildren among them, and most of the men spend their evenings coaching or running between games to watch. (Many games are under the lights, pushing bedtime past 10 p.m.)
And they discuss the issue of the day, immigration, which inspires remarks more rueful than bitter. They suspect that immigrants in the valley have held down wages at the few manufacturers left. They consider that their own jobs are potentially at risk if lawmakers agree on a route to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which could make it easier for them to get state jobs such as those at George Mason.
But they speak well of immigrants who are on campus -- typically employed by contractors with looser hiring rules than the university. Their main competition, they say, has not been immigrants but workers in other countries.
"All the Mexicans want to come here for work, and all the work goes south to Mexico," says Beahm.
"Good ol' free trade," Lang adds.
It's still dark when the van arrives at the campus at 5:30, with a half-hour to spare before work starts. (Their early schedule allows repairs to be made in classrooms before students arrive.) Someone jabs the perpetually drowsy Steve Wright, who requires pork rinds and Mountain Dew to stay awake on the days he drives. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," the dismounting passengers shout.
On campus, the men are marked by their faraway roots. Even Dean, who has worked on Northern Virginia campuses for 17 years, says it's hard to adjust completely to the cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse environment.
"It's a culture shock, it really is," he says. "It's, 'Oh, there's the country boys.' They like to ask about our hunting stories because they don't have any contact with that."
Which is one reason the drive back at 2:30 p.m. is a lot easier than the drive in, even though the traffic's worse. The men are headed home, and their anticipation betrays one explanation for their tolerance of the long ride: Even if they could afford to live closer in, they don't necessarily want to.
Passing by the rows of new townhouses and close-set detached homes along Interstate 66 in western Fairfax and into Prince William County, Lang remarks on how they all look the same. "If you went out to the bar, you'd come back and go into your neighbors' because you'd forget which one is yours," he says.
The van slows for the notorious congestion at the I-66 and Route 29 interchange in Gainesville. (One recent day, the backups were so bad that the drive took three hours, and the men stopped at a 7-Eleven for hot dog dinners.) Beahm is stretching his right arm, warming it up for the batting practice he'll be throwing.
Finally, the van breaks through, and soon it's curving back down Route 340. The sun is out, redbud trees sport lavender blossoms and the mountains rise up on both sides, obscured no longer.
This is the moment Dean looks forward to every day. "It's such a relief when you hit the mountains," he says. "It's like a big pressure lifts off you, and you can relax."
He'll have 10 hours at home until the alarm goes off. Tomorrow, it's his turn to drive.
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