Red Clay, Spreading the Hay and the Dump Truck Blues

Everybody has to work somewhere and during a couple of college summers, I was employed by Hill-Yarborough, a company owned by Dad and Kenneth “Red” Yarborough. Red was a red-headed Scots-Irishman who had all traits stereotypical of that group. He was the best builder around, equipped with a quick temper, and almost as hard-headed as my father. From time to time they would come nose to nose on an issue and I tended to suffer the fallout from Red. I was fired several times and quit several more but always went back without a word said on either side. Nothing was ever serious enough to last more than a couple of hours. 

I started work with Hill-Yarborough as a shovel operator. To begin construction of a house, the first step is to dig a footing. A footing is a trench about 2 feet deep deep and the brick or block foundation is set into it. In the current era footings are dug by a small backhoe. Hill-Yarborough did not have a small backhoe. They had a Merry Tiller to break up the red clay soil and Mike Hill to dig out the dirt with a flat-nosed shovel. It was hot, hand blistering work and my heart was not in it. To paraphrase somebody, a shovel is a tool with a digging implement on one end and a disgruntled college student on the other. The real pisser was that Red’s was a year younger than I, spent his days driving a pick-up from one job site to another asking if we needed anything or occasionally delivering me to the next footing so I wouldn’t miss any of the fun. Alan is a good guy and to be honest, much more experienced in construction. I just hated being low man on the payroll.  

Eventually I was promoted to assistant landscaper. I think Dad engineered the move to reduce friction at home and improve my language. There were just two of us in the landscaping department: Ronnie, a black man in his early 30’s and his assistant, me. I liked the move. Ronnie, like most of my supervisors at the time, knew I was a knucklehead and always had a good laugh when I outsmarted myself.  

When the latest house was close to completion, we would come in and use rakes to smooth out the red clay clods in the yard and then scatter grass seed and cover the seeds with broom straw. We would have to go pick up a load of straw bales. Straw bales weigh about 45 pounds dry and much more if they are wet. They are tied up in two strings of bailing twine. To load them on a truck means lifting them at least shoulder high and tossing them on the truck bed.  It doesn’t take many bales to make a backache.  

This was the middle of summer and the first time we started to spread the straw, despite warnings from Ronnie, I took off my shirt to stay cool and work on/show off my tan. By the time we finished, I was covered with straw dust and itching like crazy. Ronnie had rolled down his sleeves and buttoned his shirt. This was not his first experience with straw. We started first thing in the morning and, when I put my shirt back on, things just got worse. Finally, tired of my complaining, he had me take my shirt off and soaked me down with the water hose. He made no attempt to hide his enjoyment at outsmarting my know-it-all self. I learned to listen when he had any advice. He was not the first person nor the last to take me down from my high horse. 

While the grass and mulch were getting a good soaking from a sprinkler, we would plant boxwoods or holly along the front of the home.  

Ronnie and I would usually bring a sandwich or Beanee-Weenees for lunch and eat under the nearest shade tree. Sometimes, if we felt flush on payday, we would pick up a burger at the Bantam Chef. I had heard that a little grill at the bottom of Main St. had a good burger, so one Friday we went there. We walked in the front door and we were immediately met with, “He can’t come in here. He has to go to the back!”  Ronnie didn’t go to the back. We walked out and went to the Bantam Chef and I apologized all the way.  This was my first conscious contact with overt racism and it made me feel filthy. That was the first and only time I ever set foot in that place.   

The next summer, I was promoted again. Hill-Yarborough purchased a 10 year-old dump truck. I hope they bought it cheap. The truck’s black paint was scarred and the body was dented on every available surface but the tires were fairly good. The dump bed still worked pretty well and the idea, (Dad’s, I believe) was that we could save money by hauling crushed rock from Pineville and create our own driveways. Dad was always in the process of becoming his own supply line. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. 

In 1969, a book called The Peter Principal was a sensation. The major premise was that in any organization, people tend to rise to the level of their own incompetence. This was my introduction to my level of incompetence. I was given a lesson or two on how to use the dump bed and sent off to pick up a load of rock. The system was that the rock company had a large hopper that the truck would drive under and the hopper would drop a measured amount of rock into the bed. I would then haul the mixture called “crusher run” to the site of the driveway and raise the bed and then several of us would use rakes to smooth out the rock and create the driveway. As I gained experience, I learned to raise the bed and drive forward so I could spread the rock more evenly along the drive. More evenly off the truck, less raking. (I was pretty good at finding ways to reduce my shovel and rake time.) 

I don’t remember the exact weight limit for the dump truck but I believe it was 5 tons. On one run, I pulled under the hopper and the operator set it for 7 tons by mistake.  We (The operator and I) thought it would be okay to drive with it. We were almost fatally wrong.   

The road from Pineville to Fort Mill was the Charlotte Highway (Business 21) and at one point, just beyond the Fort Mill town limits, there is a long, steep hill curving to the right with a bridge at the bottom. I had driven the route many times before but never with an overloaded bed.  As I started down the hill toward town, I tapped the brakes to keep down my speed. Rather than slow down, the truck veered hard to the right. I straightened it out but knew I was in trouble. I was gaining too much speed down the hill. I tried to gear down but that was a no go. The gears would just grind when I tried to downshift. I had to hang on and occasionally tap the brakes to slow the truck a little. I crossed the bridge leaning hard right terrified that the truck would flip. I managed to make the turn but am sure a couple of wheels were off the ground. Thankfully the truck slowed as it climbed the hill on the other side. I breathed a sigh of relief but just as I reached the top of the hill, the right front tire blew out.  I was able to wrestle the truck to a stop on the side of the road.  

I knew I had dodged the big cannon ball. Few people survive flipping a dump truck full of rock. I sat in the truck for a good thirty minutes considering the frailty of life and cursing the frailty of the dump truck. I guess it would be a better story if I had decided never to drive the dump truck again, but not so. I finished out the summer. I didn’t really tell Dad or Mom how frightened I had been. There were just not enough words. 

All of us have those times in life…times when the angel of death passed so close that we can hear the rush of his passing and feel the chill of the grave.  It makes us grateful and it makes us cautious.