My Daddy, Nolan Wallace "Jackie" Johnson was Operations Manager for the Marlboro County Landfill from 1974-1978, and was the Solid Waste Enforcement Officer for Marlboro County during this time. It was a thankless job filled with malodorous chores and the unpleasant job of citing people and businesses that dumped trash illegally in Marlboro County. His job resulted in a lot of ridicule from the community and we three boys were teased about it sometimes, but it never bothered us too much. When kids would taunt us as the "Trashmen" or would refer to us as "Sanford and Son" we shrugged it off and learned to fight it off by inviting the teasers to spend a day with us at the Marlboro County Sanitary Landfill and discover what a wonderland of exploration it was, and to have possibly the only opportunity they would ever have to learn how to operate a bulldozer or to take a turn behind the wheel of a "Compactor", a large, articulated front-end loader with huge, spiked steel wheels that was used to push the dumped trash into the trenches as well as compact the trash. Once a trench was filled, the dirt that had been excavated would be pushed into the trench to cover the compacted trash with a three-foot layer of soil.
In addition to the Compactors and the bulldozer, there was an old Bucyrus-Erie "Dragline" excavator that the county had purchased from Becker Sand and Gravel when they had upgraded to a bigger dragline for their excavation operation in "Wolftrap", a section of Marlboro County southeast of Blenheim. Daddy had been the maintenance superintendent for Becker's Marlboro County operation and was possessing the knowledge of operating, maintaining and repairing the heavy equipment needed in excavating operations, so he was a natural fit for the job. All three of us boys learned how to operate all the equipment on Sunday afternoon excursions to the Landfill, which was in the "Sandy Ocean" section of Marlboro County between Tatum and Clio. The landfill occupied the southeast corner of a "Carolina Bay", curious elliptical depressions found throughout the Coastal Plains of North and South Carolina. The "Carolina Bays" have been a geological curiosity for hundreds of years and many theories exist as to their formation. Some geologists speculate that, since they are elliptical and every one of them has their long axis aligned in a southeastern-northwestern orientation and the northwestern ends of the bays are comprised of a sandy bluff that a meteorite impact with Earth millions and millions of years ago in the Yucatan Peninsula resulted in a large amount of material being ejected which arced over into what is present day North and South Carolina and when this rock and debris struck Terra Firma, it gouged the curious elliptical craters. High levels of Iron Oxide along the northwestern ends of the Bays posit a second theory of their formation, that they are the result of a meteorite that entered the atmosphere and broke apart, and the individual chunks of the meteorite struck the Earth and formed the depressions, with the accumulation of the now oxidized meteorite remains on the northwestern end of the ellipse resulting in the elevated levels of Iron Oxide.
A third possibility is that the Bays were formed by huge schools of fish, spawning in the shallow waters of the coastal Atlantic Ocean millions of years ago when the entire area was covered in water, and the "Sandhills" of the Eastern coast was a beach. The "Sandhills" stretch in a line from Montgomery, Alabama to Raleigh, North Carolina parallel with the current coastline and approximately one hundred miles inland. If you follow this line of Sandhills you will discover that many sand, kaolin and shale mining operations exist along it, proving it's history as an ancient coastline.
Daddy had successfully lobbied the County Council and the South Carolina Department of Corrections for the use of inmate labor at the landfill. Inmates that had committed non-violent offenses were allowed to participate in a work-release program and what better way to learn new skills that would be of benefit to society than to allow inmates to work various jobs at the landfill, where they could learn how to operate heavy equipment, learn how to maintain and repair this equipment, and to learn the value of an honest, hard day of labor while making a little bit of money and reducing their sentence?
With the program implemented and all permission granted Daddy went to the SC Government Surplus sales depot in Columbia one day and returned with one of the most magnificent things the three of us boys had ever witnessed: a Korean-War vintage General Motors M35 6x6 "Deuce and a Half"! It was deemed surplus from the South Carolina Army Reserve National Guard and Daddy drove it from the SC Surplus depot on Boston Avenue out by the Columbia Metropolitan Airport back to Bennettsville at it's whopping maximum speed of 45 MPH. I can only imagine how much fun he had driving it home, navigating it down US 1 to Cheraw, then down SC 9 to Bennettsville. It was painted olive drab, had "blackout" headlights and had all the cool stenciled identifiers on it that identified tie-down points, load limits, "Pull Here" notations and best of all, the stenciled star on the door with "SCARNG" as well. It had the canvas cover over the back and wooden benches along the bed, and was perfect to haul the work-release inmates from the Marlboro County Detention Center to the landfill in. It was also to be used as a utility vehicle at the landfill, for towing generators, compressors, welding machines and trailers across rough terrain in the unlikely event of a breakdown of a piece of heavy equipment out in a trench.
The weekend of it's arrival we decided to make a trip to the landfill after Church on Sunday to enjoy a picnic lunch in the sandy scrub-oak stand on the northeastern border of the "Sandy Ocean" bay that housed the landfill. We would often pack a picnic lunch and spend Sunday afternoons there in the sandy bluff of scrub oak trees where Daddy had made a little recreation area for the family. Daddy let each one of us boys have a part in it's construction; Wallace and I both were taught how to operate the bulldozer and we cut a road into the bluff, pushing scrub oaks over and grading the road in. Matt got to use his hatchet he had received for his seventh birthday to chop down as many scrub oaks as he could, a task he took to with glee. We had salvaged a castoff picnic table and carried it back there, and erected an old canvas fly for shelter in the event of precipitation. A fire pit had been fashioned from concrete rubble dumped from some demolition project by the city of Bennettsville, and Daddy had fabricated a fine barbeque grill from a cast off oil drum and some scrap round stock disposed by Powell Manufacturing. Wallace and I got our first lessons in operating a cutting torch and arc-welding in the fabrication of the grill, and we were quite proud of our accomplishments!
Upon arrival, we made a beeline for the "Johnson Hideaway" and enjoyed a delicious lunch of fried chicken with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that Mama hauled in the green and white vinyl picnic bag that had served us so well throughout the years. We had Pepsi-Colas on ice in the ancient ice chest that Matt and I labored over, and the meal was enjoyed by the five of us while being serenaded by curious Bluejays, Mockingbirds and Cedar Waxwings that were eager for a morsel of chicken or a scrap of bread crust from the picnic. We ate, talked and laughed as we enjoyed each other's company. These were the things the Johnson family did best; finding things to do that involved us all and that could be accomplished on a limited budget.
After lunch, Daddy asked...."Hey, do y'all want to go for a ride in the Army Truck?" We jumped at the opportunity and a resounding shout of "Oh, yeah!" emanated from a place deep within the three of us boys. We cleaned up our hideaway, and filed out to the landfill office/maintenance shop/breakroom "hooch" where the Deuce and a Half was parked.
It was a menacing looking machine yet looked as comforting as seeing a best friend in a crowd of strangers. The cab seemed as if it were fifteen feet off the ground and the snorkle intake with the huge air cleaner absolutely spoke of serious business! We climbed up into the cab with all five of us occupying the huge bench seat and I watched with keen interest as Daddy went through the procedure of starting the beast. He flipped the main circuit breaker to the on position, operated a priming plunger that shot raw fuel into the turbocharger and toggled the glow-plug switch to preheat the combustion chambers of the huge inline-six cylinder diesel engine. Turning the curious "chicken-head" start switch, the starter motor turned the engine over and it erupted angrily into life, signaling it's start with a huge plume of black smoke from the exhaust stack and creating an earth-shaking din of diesel clatter within the cab! The entire machine vibrated with the extreme urgency of a vital operational mission and the three of us boys were up on the edge of the bench seat with unbridled excitement which spilled over into our widened eyes and mile-wide grins! Daddy sat back and allowed the Deuce and a Half a full minute to come up to operating temperature and to allow the air brake compressor time to build the required 90 psi for the brakes to release.
With all operational parameters reached, Daddy selected "2WD Hi" with the transfer case lever, eased the massive gear shifter into first and we lurched away, the exhaust roaring and the turbocharger whining, making that curious whistle of the waste gate relief with each shift of the transmission. We made a few laps on the perimeter road, enjoying the commanding view of our surroundings from what felt like, to me, a ride from atop an A-frame ladder. The three of us boys could hardly contain our excitement as Mama and Daddy grinned like a mule eating briars over our reaction.
Daddy rolled to a stop at the edge of a freshly excavated trench devoid of trash and remarked "Let's see what this old crate can climb!" He then eased the transfer case into "6WD Lo", eased out on the clutch and the Deuce and a Half bucked like a bronco as it leapt forward. With that big diesel screaming, he pointed it at the edge of the trench and proceeded down it at a 45 degree angle. It felt like we were standing on our heads as we started down the slope, leveled out at the bottom and then started up the opposite side of the trench. The windshield suddenly filled with nothing but blue sky and clouds, and we felt as if we were laying on our backs as the behemoth clawed it's way up at an impossible angle.
In my mind there was no obstacle that could stop this machine, and when we cleared the crest of the trench and started down the next incline I was proven wrong! Mama started yelling "Jackie! Jackie! Stop it! You are going to flip this thing and kill us all!" Mama was in the middle of us, flanked by Daddy on her left and three boys pumped up on adrenaline on her right. She continued her protest with much wailing and gnashing of teeth as Daddy just grinned and continued down the embankment, nose down 45 degrees with the windshield filled with a view of the bottom of the trench.
At the bottom of the trench Mama escalated her protest to a level of concern that I had never witnessed, and Daddy brought the Deuce and a Half to a halt. Mama made the three of us exit the cab, spent a quick moment alone with Daddy in the cab, then exited. She had "that" look on her face and instructed us to file out of the trench, that Daddy would be meeting us back at the office after we hiked there.
We walked the quarter mile back to the office in silence, seething over Moms refusal to let us have any "fun at all" and each vowing secretly that we would, somehow, get even with her. We tried protesting to no avail.....Mama had made up her mind and that. Was. It! End of discussion, don't bother bringing it up again!
In the end, we three did enjoy a few "off-road" adventures in the Deuce and a Half, just without Mama's knowledge! I was right, there was pretty much no obstacle that could stop it short of a direct hit by an 88mm Nazi artillery shell and it excelled in it's role as a hauler of work-release inmates. I often wonder whatever happened to the old Deuce and a Half; and whenever I see one a silly grin comes across my face thinking of my Mother shrieking in abject fear on that wild ride.