I recently returned home to Phoenix and discovered urban revitalization has rendered the Valley of the Sun a slow-moving sea of new, flashy cars. I was idling once for nearly twenty minutes in my dad’s 1984 Lincoln Continental, which was named for our 16th president, whose incumbency, by the way, incited America’s dramatic Reconstruction. Which is pleasantly ironic because I was stuck in construction waiting for a cement truck to dump its load at the site of a new open-air mall, which, by the way, was the site of an old open-air mall. But fortunately, little orange men and women (flaggers) direct the ebb and flow of one jam into another. Phoenix is so Post-Post-Post-Reconstruction that an orange-vested-sign-waving-overheated-Abraham-Lincoln of a day worker ushers it in. When it comes to construction, we pledge allegiance to flaggers. And I pulled off the road just long enough for flagger Carlos Medena to tell me why.

Rivet: Who are you?
Carlos Medena: Carlos Medina.
R: Explain Flagging
CM: Flagging is when you control traffic.
R: But you don’t actually use a flag.
CM: Yeah, you do.
R: I mean, you have that sign.
CM: It’s a paddle.
R: Yeah, explain the paddle.
CM: It’s a “stop / slow” paddle.
R: When do you use the flag?
CM: This flag? [gesturing to his red flag] Emergencies. Like when there’s something messed up.
R: Like what?
CM: Like once this guy was hanging a banner from a light post and he fell.
R: So you pointed your flag at him?
CM: Yeah. And the paddle, too. “Stop.” Like that.
R: Why aren’t you called “paddlers?”
CM: [laughing] That sounds funny. [waving his paddle and flag and an oncoming Lincoln Navigator] Ay, man! Slow down!
R: You have to say that a lot throughout your day, huh?
CM: Hold on, I’m working.
R: What’s the one thing you’d like to say to all the drivers?
CM: [again waving his paddle] Slow the fuck down, man!
R: That’s to the point.
CM: Yeah, look, I’m trying to work.
R: I just have one more question.
CM: Get back in your fucking car.
R: Do you dream of waving the checker flag at the Indy 500?
CM: No.
R: Why not?
CM: I don’t like car racing.