Back when I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: A bulldozer operator.

I made miniature dozers out of my mama’s empty thread spools, using rubber bands and matchsticks. If I didn’t have a bulldozer to play with, I was a bird without wings.

But I grew up and left the dozers behind. I outgrew them.

The other day, I watched a man move dirt — and I was hooked again.

He sat in a little cab on a huge machine, playing with his controls like a pilot landing a 737. In my mind, he was that good. His name is Randy Turner, and he knows his business.

I had a little problem with a driveway that needed the attention of someone like longtime Gastonian John Jenkins, who has worked in the dirt here and yonder for more than 60 years. When he was a boy, they said he was a noise with dirt on it. It was the beginning of a lifetime calling. Check out those many dirt machines with his name emblazoned upon their doors working on streets and highways.

The machine that showed up at our place growled to a stop and sat there trading gossip with a road scraper doing business across the street. Soon the scraper’s muscle was needed elsewhere, so the conversation was brief, although apparently satisfactory.

After the job was finished, Randy and I chatted a spell while his buddy, the Gradal, idled and did a halfway snort like an excited elephant.

Randy, 54, is a homegrown fellow who lives in Dallas. He is married and has two grown children.

He signed on with John Jenkins in 1989 and learned to operate both big and little machines. It’s operating the big machine — the Gradall — that brings him the most pleasure, “because it can do more things. It is absolutely fantastic!”

If you need to build roads, back fill, do driveways, curb and gutter, whatever — call on Mister Gradal. It has 10 huge wheels and enough muscle to start rumors.

“This machine will do anything where you can get it in place,” Randy said.

There was a time a few years back when one of the local Wix plants needed to have a wall taken down. So Randy Turner cranked up his Gradal. In order to do the job, with people still working inside, he had to send that balled-up giant fist through a window and bring down the wall from inside out. Problem?

No problem, and the folks inside didn’t miss a beat.

The other day, Randy Turner had taken his Gradal pal to the corner of 19th Avenue and South York Road. It is there that Jenkins is building a 200-car parking lot for Tabernacle Baptist Church, located across the street. The church not only has this property but also has purchased other property in the area formerly used for business purposes. A church on the rise.

Randy again was at the controls of his monster. I watched as machine moved 6 inches forward, a few inches to the right. At the same time, that huge fist was extending at the end of an arm that eased out of a steel sleeve and held tight while the fist opened and grabbed a pile of dirt that would fill a small truck’s bed.

In one moment, the dirt had found a new home; and it all had been done as easily and quietly as sipping a cup of coffee.

Turner said it would take about three more days to finish the job for the church. Then, it would be on to something else.

Gradall has its own diesel engine, and moves with ease along public highways.

He has no worries about someone running into him. “For some reason,” he said, smiling, “people kind of shy away from Ol’ Broadsides.”

Bill Williams is a retired editor of The Gazette. You can reach him by e-mail at:

bwilliams6864@carolina.rr.com.

John E. Jenkins probably would tell you that he can’t carry a tune, but it’s music to his ears when he hears one of his Cats humming in the distance.

Throw in another Cat or two, a muscular Gradeall, a few trucks, and that’s a symphony as sweet as any played by a Philharmonic.

John Jenkins is a dirt mover, a paver, a highway maker. And he is much more.

He rises every day at 4:30 a.m., has breakfast, does a few chores around the house and is there with the key to the gate of his sprawling 45 acres just off I-85 in West Gastonia.

A long time ago, say about 70 years, one of his jobs while living on a farm not far from where he now lives was to feed the mules. His dad had four mules, and each mule got eight ears of corn in the morning. Not seven. Not nine. Eight. One day, John miscounted and his dad happened to be nearby.

“Do it right,” his dad admonished, “and you won’t have to worry about it at night.”

Early in 1953, John E. Jenkins and I sat on a log at 1235 Westbrook Circle and talked about a little dirt-moving project. He was a dirt mover, and I had dirt to be moved. We wanted to build a house, but first we had to reshape the land.

One day last week, we were sitting and talking dirt again. This time, we were in his office at 1451 Delta Drive, Gastonia. Still talking dirt, but on a much larger scale.

Dirt is still dirt, but circumstances can be a whole lot different.

By 1953, Jenkins had seen his company grow exponentially. He had earth-moving and paving machines scattered in half a dozen states. Jenkins had moved on from the day in ’48 when he bought his first bulldozer. Back then, he had one machine and one employee: himself. Soon, however, he had added another dirt mover — maybe two — and he was making headway down a path that would establish him as one of the state’s premier earth-moving/paving companies. As the years drifted by, his machines not only were grading but were doing asphalt paving, demolition, erosion control, clearing and grubbing, hauling, curb and guttering, industrial commercial site development and subdivisions.

The name “John E. Jenkins” has been visible on his vehicles as they worked on highways and other huge construction projects. That day over half a century ago when he was in the operator’s seat himself is not forgotten now as he opens the gate each morning at 6 a.m. and makes his rounds. Today, primarily he is involved with his lead people, keeping track of finances, counseling younger people as they come along. Also, he is there to monitor financing, but is not actively involved. He also bids small jobs and demolition work.

It has been one magnificent ride for this Gaston County homegrown lad, now 85. He went off to war when he was 18. He was drafted into the Army, learned how to pick up land mines in North Africa and Italy, clearing a path so equipment could get through.

He came out of the Army and told himself that he was going to have to get busy. The country was going to move forward, and he wanted to help. Opportunity was there, so he bought his first bulldozer.

The current recession, however, has seen some of Jenkins’ big Cats idled. The shop “is comfortably busy” as his company’s work goes on at the Martin-Marietta plant in Kings Mountain, at the Gaston County Industrial Park, the airport site in Rutherford County, and other places.

One of the newer faces seen in the shadow of John Jenkins is his grandson, Wesley Bumgardner, 27.

Wes has a man-sized record of experience, having graduated the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served as a platoon leader, executive officer and operations manager in the Army and was awarded the Bronze Star for combat service in Afghanistan.

As an Army captain and Airborne Ranger, he developed plans, coordinated resources and executed organizational training for 350 paratroopers in preparation for combat operations.

At the firm Wesley joins his mother, Joy — John Jenkins’s daughter — who is payroll specialist and shop assistant.

John Jenkins is obviously proud to have them on board. “We have a good organization here,” he said. “For Wes to get rolling, it is going to take know-how and ability, and Wes has all of that and more. This country will come back, but it will take young leaders like Wes to do it — those leaders and everyone else willing to get back to the basics of hard work for fair pay. If we do that, they will all have a good life, and the means to raise their children and guide them in the right direction.”

In the distance, the sound of music …deep-throated big Cats, humming a familiar tune.

Bill Williams is a retired editor of The Gazette. You can reach him by e-mail at:

bwilliams6864@carolina.rr.com