Red Clay, Spreading the Hay and The Dump Truck Blues

Everyone has special abilities and I discovered mine working with Hill-Yarborough Construction Company. My father and Kenneth Yarborough created the company and built over 100 houses in Fort Mill in the 1960’s and 70’s. You would think I would move up pretty quickly in a company owned partially by my father. Not so, but it didn’t take long for me to find my special ability. I became the standard bearer for “unskilled labor.” Never in the history of construction has anyone been able to stay unskilled as long as I have.

I started work with Hill-Yarborough as a shovel operator. To begin the 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 (2020 at this writing) 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 as I finished digging, Red’s son, a year younger than I was, would drive up in a pick-up truck and deliver me to the next footing so I wouldn’t miss any of the fun. He is a good guy and to be honest, much more experienced in construction. I just hated being low man on the payroll.

OK, truth be known, I was once given a chance to work with the carpenters as they roofed a house. These guys would kneel or crouch and drive flat-head roofing nails through the shingles. That was tough on the knees and I found that sitting and nailing down the shingles was much easier. I also learned shortly thereafter that soft pillows reduce the pain of sitting on a seriously blistered butt.

Eventually I was moved to assistant landscaper. I think Dad engineered the move to minimize my chances to hurt myself and to 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 clods in the yard and then scatter grass seed and cover the seeds with broom straw. We would have to go pick up a truck 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 me outsmarting my know-it-all self. I learned to listen when he had any advice. He was not the first 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!” He didn’t go to the back. We 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 and 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 spreading it to create our own driveways. Dad was always in the process of becoming his own supply line. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

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 rake out the rock to 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 to the right. I knew I was in trouble because I was gaining too much speed on 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 and I was sure 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 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 passes so close that we can hear the rush of his wings and feel the chill of the grave. It makes us a little more cautious and I think it makes us grateful to be alive .