A Sod Story
We had stopped for gas on our way to a job site on the far west side of town after a morning of cutting and loading sod. Tom and I strolled out of the gas station and headed toward our truck, a Ford flatbed. I had already guzzled my bottle of Coke. Tom continued to nurse his. We passed by Otis, who sat in his pickup, wearing a feed store cap and drinking cold grapefruit juice mixed with vodka from a thermos bottle.
“Hey, Red, take the GMC,” he hollered.
I don’t know why he had me switch trucks. I hated driving the GMC. It required much more skill than the Ford and stressed me out, but when Otis told you to do something, you did it.
Tom and I retrieved our gear from the cab of the Ford and climbed into the GMC.
“I hate driving this pile of junk,” I whined.
I started the engine and, with saddle tanks topped off, pulled onto the crowded thoroughfare. The GMC always took the lead because it had a history of breaking down.
Squinting into the shards of reflected sunlight that bounced off the vehicles ahead of me, I drove the flatbed truck, fully loaded with fresh-cut rolls of sod, up a long, steep grade on the main east-west drag through town. Heavy afternoon traffic had backed up at the intersection ahead of me.
Tom rode shotgun. His feet rested on coils of green garden hose piled on the floorboard in front of him.
“Something smells like it’s burning,” Tom said. He took a swig from his sweating bottle of Coke. “Something is definitely burning.”
“It’s probably somebody up ahead,” I observed, “and the smell is coming in through the windows.”
“I think it’s us.”
I glanced over at Tom, whose eyes were wide with alarm.
“Smoke is coming up through the gearshift,” he said, pointing at the gearshift boot where white smoke had begun to filter into the cab.
Now I was alarmed. I checked the road ahead and applied the brakes. The traffic signal had turned red.
“Shit! We’re on fire,” Tom yelled.
I looked down and to the right and saw bright orange and yellow flames shooting up around the shifter. I thought of the saddle tanks full of gasoline.
How did a 20-year-old college student, whose only previous work experience had been in retail and food service, end up behind the wheel of a burning truck loaded with sod?
My friend, Tom, told me about the opportunity to work on a sod crew after I had mentioned that I needed a job for the summer. I planned to hire on at the Burger Queen like I had the previous year, but when Tom told me I could make $50 a day cutting and laying sod, I changed my mind. Eight hours of working the grill at Burger Queen at $1.25 per hour totaled only $10 per day. Laying sod, I’d be making in a day what I would have made in a week flipping burgers.
Only after I had joined the sod crew did Tom disclose that I’d be paid at piece rate for my labor: twenty-five cents per roll for cutting and loading and another twenty-five cents per roll for laying the sod. He said I would have no trouble cutting, loading, and laying an average of a hundred rolls per day; some days I’d earn more, some less. In reality, I made much less than $50 per 12-hour day, but it still beat working for $1.25 per hour, and it was a lot more fun.
The first day on the job, Otis, the owner of the sod business, asked if either one of us hippies knew how to drive a standard transmission. We stood on a wide gravel drive that led to the back of his house and some outbuildings. Chickens ran loose in the yard. Otis clutched the straps of his striped bib overalls with large, chubby hands as he waited for an answer.
I spoke up and said, “I drove a three-speed on the column for a couple of years in high school.”
Otis nodded, then turned to Tom. “How ‘bout you?”
“I have never driven a standard transmission,” Tom confessed.
Otis nodded at me and smiled. “You drive, Red,” he said. From then on, I was known as Red among the crew because of my shoulder-length red hair.
That day, Otis drove in the morning and showed me how to double clutch and shift through the gears. I drove in the afternoon and winced at the sound of metal grinding on metal. Each time it happened, I waited for a rebuke, but it never came. Otis gently corrected me whenever I made a mistake and then showed confidence in me by letting me continue to drive. Somehow, the transmission survived my learning curve. I would never make a living behind the wheel of a big rig, but I became proficient enough to satisfy my instructor.
Otis had three flatbed trucks and only two license plates. Each day, he would select the two trucks we would use, depending on the job and which trucks were operational. If a truck did not have a license plate, we would take one off of the third truck and wire it on the truck that needed it.
We took the back roads to and from the sod fields to avoid weigh stations.
Tom and I reacted at once to the presence of fire. I shut down the engine. He poured the remainder of his Coke on the flames, but it was too little to make a difference. Tom and I looked at each other.
I yelled, “Get out!”
Tom pushed open his door and began throwing the garden hose out of the cab.
“Forget that!” I shouted.
I bailed out and sprinted around the front of the truck, across a parking lot, and into a taco joint. As I ran, I braced myself for the detonation of the explosion I expected to occur at any second. The exploding gas tanks of the GMC would ignite secondary explosions in the vehicles surrounding them. Flaming body parts and smoldering sod would fly in all directions.
“Welcome to Taco Pronto,” said the girl behind the counter as I rushed through the door.
“Call the fire department!” I said with muffled urgency between labored breaths. “A truck is on fire!”
The girl turned away from me and shouted, “Robert! Robert, I need assistance!”
A young man about my age appeared from behind a partition.
“Call the fire department!” I repeated. “This is an emergency! A truck is on fire and it could explode!”
The man stepped to a phone that hung on the wall behind him and picked up the handset.
I sprinted back to the truck and got there just in time to see Otis coming toward it, lumbering between cars, his face flushed from the effort.
“Why are you stopped?” he demanded when he arrived at the truck.
Before I could answer, he had already grasped the situation. Without saying another word, Otis fetched a fire extinguisher from behind the bench seat, aimed it at the flames, and put out the fire in a matter of seconds. The cab smelled of burnt rubber.
“You left the emergency brake on,” he said as he put the fire extinguisher back in its place. He didn’t raise his voice, but I could tell he was pissed. “Where did you run off to?”
“I had someone at the taco place call the fire department.” I could hear the distant sound of sirens approaching.
“Shit! Get this thing out of here before the fire trucks arrive,” Otis ordered.
“Me?”
“Drive!” he shouted over his shoulder as he hustled back to his pickup truck.
I got in and started the engine while Tom frantically threw the hoses back into the cab. He jumped into his seat as I let out the clutch.
At the end of the day, Tom and I joined the rest of the crew at a crossroads bar and grill to refresh ourselves. Otis bought the first round. We sat at a scarred wooden table, drinking red beer, eating pickled eggs, talking about the latest developments in the Watergate scandal, and listening to country music.
It had been a good day. By my calculations, the crew had cut, loaded, and laid 400 rolls of sod. Split four ways, my share came to 100 rolls or fifty bucks.
“You know, boys,” Otis said. “I have never seen anyone or anything skedaddle like Red did from that burnin’ truck, except for a scared dog, maybe.” He grinned and chuckled and took a bite of his pickled egg.
We all laughed.
That was the last time Otis mentioned the truck fire. He didn’t hold it against me; I had learned my lesson. That summer, I learned many lessons while working on the sod crew that would serve me well in the years to come. Otis took all of my mistakes in stride, patiently correcting me and then moving on. I loved him for that.
A cool memory from times gone by.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. 👍