STEPPING IN: In this series of occasional stories, New Era staffers walk a mile in other people's shoes.

I, in my hard hat and out-of-the-package-new neon green safety vest, approach flagman Andy Qusuplos for the passing of the flag.

"You don't want this job," he says, noting the day before he had directed traffic in the hot sun for 13 hours without a break, except for two sprints into a cornfield to answer nature's call.

I had hoped this was going to go a bit better than my last stint as a flagman, 35 years ago. I was working on a paving crew as a summer job. It was draining, backbreaking work, hunched over 300-degree asphalt.

One morning, the foreman said he needed a volunteer to flag traffic that week. I shot up my arm AND GOT THE JOB!

I couldn't believe my good fortune, though I thought it curious at the time that no one else had raised a hand. No matter, I thought smugly, I'll be standing around while you suckers are sweating like pigs.

By the end of the first day I was a baked noodle. My joints ached like they had been beaten with a baseball bat.

The heat of the pavement flowed through my boots and into my bones. Try standing hours on end without sitting down — the human body is just not made to do that. And without busy work, the time dragged from here to eternity.


     Flagman for a day


That day I was taunted, ridiculed and ignored by motorists annoyed at being held up. I drove home and went straight to bed.

So when I call McMinn's Asphalt vice president Jeff Sweigart the other day, asking to put myself briefly in the boots of a flagman, I understand his chuckle.

"It's a good experience to appreciate what a guy goes through out there," he said. "Overall the flagman doesn't get a lot of credit. His job is to protect the workmen and motorists.

"One thing you'll notice right away are the cell phones," Sweigart continues. "People are not watching the flagman. Traffic is moving through and you see all their jaws moving. It's an accident waiting to happen."

Now that's a new wrinkle since my last turn at flagging. Can't be good.

All new construction hires at McMinn's have to start by flagging and Sweigart was no exception.

He didn't last very long.

"The joke at the time was I had to move into the office because I was so bad at flagging that they were afraid of a lawsuit," he says.

"I did have a temper at the time. I was known to break an antenna from time to time."

I can tell he is beginning to take a cruel delight in sending a reporter into the breach of a task that invites hostility and seems deceptively easy.

"Don't make me have to come out there and can you," he says.

***

They aren't about to just throw me into the fray, so I spend a half-hour shadowing Qusuplos as the Manor Township resident dances into the street to serve as the maestro at a four-way intersection on the outskirts of Elizabethtown.

The repaving job's foreman, Sean Wissler of Mountville, describes what Qusuplos does as a ballet, and I soon realize that's not an overstatement.

The 50-year-old Qusuplos pirouettes between the streets. His arms seem always to be in motion, jerking up a flag to arrest traffic in one direction while the other points and sweeps, ushering other motorists on.

On some jobs the number of motorists he directs daily is counted in the thousands.

"The worst flaggers are the ones that just stand there stiffly," he lectures.

Always, he makes eye contact with the lead motorists.

"Don't turn your back to traffic," Wissler explains, quite serious. "All it takes is one idiot on a cell phone and the next thing you know you're a hood ornament."

Flaggers for McMinn's have, in fact, been struck by vehicles on rare occasions.

Qusuplos has had one close call: A woman hit the accelerator instead of the brake and he bounced off her hood unhurt.

More frequent are barbs or curses. Qusuplos has already gotten the finger once this morning. He's had bottles and cigarettes thrown at him.

Female flaggers are sometimes flashed. Once, a motorist charged out of his car and rushed a McMinn's flagger

"People take being stopped personally," Qusuplos sighs. The worst times for a flagger, he says, are the evenings when people after a long day at work just want to get home or are late for a children's soccer game.

But all the "Get a real job!" shouts and dagger stares are forgotten when a resident in the work area or a grateful motorist brings him a piece of pizza or a Sno Cone.

***

"Sending Harry," Qusuplos says into the two-way radio and sends a backed-up line of traffic down Bainbridge Road. He sizes up the color and make of the last car that will be the other flagger's cue to send his queue.

But it's not always that easy. Sometimes cars pull from driveways in the work area, messing up the communication. Sometimes confused drivers swing into the work lane where they might meet heavy equipment.

Qusuplos' biggest pet peeve: drivers who intend to turn but don't have their turn signals on. Navigating construction zones should be a two-way street, he says.

It's nearly noon and I ask Qusuplos if he's hungry. "We don't get eating breaks," he laughs.

Roadwork continues nonstop when it can. The flagger eats and drinks on the run. Qusuplos has a cooler at curbside with sandwiches cut in halves. He's found he can tilt his head and eat a half-sandwich without having to stop or use his hands.

He's lost 7 pounds since he was laid off at Armstrong three years ago and started flagging.

"When you get done with this, you're not cutting your lawn at night," he says. So serious is he about the need to stay focused when flagging that he hits the sack early.

Qusuplos asks me if I'm ready and hands me the red flag.

I try to imitate a traffic light. I try to remember the things my mentor told me: Make eye contact with the driver, be animated, pay attention to traffic approaching behind and to the side.

I am nervous, afraid of screwing up and aware how fast something could go wrong. I don't like the burden of protecting motorists and workers.

It's only been a half-hour, but already I can feel an ache in my shoulders from holding up the flag.

I'm not aware of any menacing glares and quite a few of the drivers actually wave in thanks as they pass.

As flagging jobs go, it's been a gravy day — light traffic, courteous drivers and a cloudy day. Still, I'm more than willing to let him resume the responsibility.

And I understand why, at the end of almost every day, some worker on the road crew will come up to Qusuplos and thank him for watching the crew's backs.