March 2009

The Monaco coach RV factory in Wakarusa, Indiana, is a low-slung beige complex surrounded by a gigantic parking lot and a chain-link fence topped with three strands of outward-slanted barbed wire. With the exception of a trimmed lawn and scattered trees in front, its utilitarian structure implies nothing about the beauties that workers make, or rather used to make, inside. Day in and day out for decades, they came here to recreate the luxuries of home for the open road.

One of Monaco's models was the Diplomat, which was about the size of a motorized sperm whale, furnished with floral-print sofas, hardwood cabinets, built-in flat-screen TVs, a refrigerator, a microwave, a king bed, and a ceramic-tile kitchen, all balanced on six wheels and complete with safety features like antilock brakes.

All of this required skilled workers. Mechanics to build the chassis. Seamstresses to sew the seat fabrics. electricians. Graphic designers. Woodworkers to saw and mold the cabinets. People like Ed Neufeldt.

On July 17, 2008, a Thursday, Neufeldt woke up at 4:00 a.m. as he always did to fit in a two- to three-mile run before his shift. He drove his white Chevy S-10 pickup to the plant and pulled into the parking lot. His wife, Marianne, didn't like him jogging on the road in the dark, now that they had seven kids. So he ran the perimeter of the parking lot. Rumors had been flying around the plant for weeks that a group of Monaco executives from Oregon were coming to Wakarusa today for a big meeting. Gas prices had been stuck at $4 a gallon for months and it was no secret that people weren't buying RVs.

Would it be a layoff? A cutback in production? Neufeldt wondered as he jogged in the dark before sunrise. Like many companies in the RV industry, Monaco had always experienced swings in production, laying off a couple hundred employees one year, hiring a couple hundred the next. In 2007, Monaco shuttered its Elkhart plant and workers like Neufeldt were moved to Wakarusa. By the spring, other RV companies in the area, Travel Supreme, Newmar, coachmen, all had announced layoffs, cut shifts, or consolidated operations. Neufeldt had been laid off before for a couple of months in 1978 and managed to get by until orders picked back up and he was called back to work. But now he was sixty-two. If he could just tough it out a few more years, he'd have it made. Nah, he thought. He'd had the same boss for he didn't know how long. Plus, he hadn't missed a day of work in twenty-seven years.

After the run, Neufeldt went up to the break room and fixed himself a cup of coffee and ate a Little Debbie Nutty Bar as he read through some psalms in his bible as he always did. The shift started at 6:00 a.m., and Neufeldt headed to the mill room where he operated the saws cutting wood for cabinets. It was almost break time when the foreman was called into a meeting. The meeting didn't last very long. But when he came out, Neufeldt noticed he had tears in his eyes.

The foreman called the fifty to sixty workers together. Then, he shook his head.

"It's not a layoff," he told them. "We're closing the doors."

Up to this point in his life, Neufeldt seemed to be living the American Dream. Despite having only three years of college, he had worked in the RV industry for thirty-six years, earning $21 an hour, roughly $40,000 a year. it wasn't easy street, but it was enough.

After workers asked some questions, which the foreman didn't have answers to, they were dismissed for the day. By now, the heat had reached the mid eighties and was heading for a near record ninety-one degrees. Neufeldt got back in his Chevy S-10 and drove home on County Road 42. After a few miles, he turned right on County Road 1, driving past the corn and soybean fields where his father-in-law had settled generations ago, past the pond where he and Marianne had started out in a trailer, past the one-story modular home they moved into next, and pulled into the driveway of the white farmhouse with the big front porch they had built fifteen years ago and got ready to break the news to his wife.

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Signs of the recession were everywhere as I drove through Elkhart in March 2009. The one above the mechanic's shop read ELKHART, LET US HELP. 10-15% OFF REPAIRS. At the insurance company: COBRA TOO EXPENSIVE? CALL OR STOP IN FOR A FREE QUOTE. The Salvation Army: WE HAVE NEW MATTRESSES. Hopman Jewelers: BUYING OLD JEWELRY. On the billboard over the Cock-a-Doodle cafe, a new church had a website for the times: WWW.MYSPIRITUALSTIMULUS.COM. Residents buzzed about the woman in nearby South Bend who robbed a Long John Silver's, apologizing tearfully, "If I wasn't down and out, I wouldn't be doing this." Martin's grocery advertised Manwich on sale, ten cans for $10. The library was almost all out of home-repair manuals. The GED books had a waiting list. Amid the sundries and secondhand furniture at the You Never Know Flea Market, the store sold a T-shirt that read I WANT A BAIL-OUT FOR ME!!! Even the welcome plaque in the civic plaza downtown called to visitors: CITY OF ELKHART. THE CITY WITH A HEART. FILE YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT ELECTRONICALLY.

Residents came and went from the unemployment office. The maintenance worker. The parking lot paver. The secretary for the RV manufacturer laid off after twenty years. They lined up in the dark well before the office opened at 7:00 a.m., drinking coffee and reading the local newspaper named simply The Truth.

They shared a similar drama. Laid off on Friday. Been out for six weeks. Every place I go says they're not accepting applications. It's just been a long haul. I worked for the company for twenty years in the RV industry and it's completely down. I was laid off five months ago. Unemployed nine weeks. I've been out since October. Too old to start a new career but too young to retire. There are no jobs here.

Elkhart itself had become a sign of the downturn. With an unemployment rate that had quadrupled to just over 20 percent since the recession began, by March 2009, Elkhart had lost jobs faster than any other county in the country. The New York Times called it "the white hot center of the meltdown." a British tabloid labeled it "Joblessville, USA." it's where Barack Obama made his first trip as president to launch the recovery act at a town hall meeting; he tried to put a face on the dire statistics, promising that the stimulus would lift not just Elkhart but countless other hard-hit cities toward recovery. But a month after the president's visit, the picture remained bleak. The first infrastructure project hadn't begun, and many residents doubted the stimulus would help much at all.

From Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History by Michael Grabell. Copyright 2012 by Michael Grabell. Excerpted by permission of Public Affairs.