Back before U.S. 220 bypassed Ellerbe, if you drove up 220 North about six miles, you could take a right turn onto N.C. 73 and you would be at what I’ve always called DeWitt Junction.

Most of the buildings that still stand there today are completely deserted. Back in the ‘50’s, ’60s and ’70s and into the early ’80s, however, The Junction was a hopping place.

In those days, there was an office building there for L.G. DeWitt Trucking, a general store, a tire business, a produce stand, a peach packhouse, a shop for truck maintenance, eventually a NASCAR racing shop and another trucking firm called Textile Motor Freight, Inc.

My first job at The Junction was in the ’60s and it was at the peach packhouse. I started out grading peaches and ended up as a ringer. When I was a grader, I made 50 cents an hour and thought I was really moving up in the world when I started making 75 cents as a ringer.

As a grader, when the peaches came by on a conveyor belt, we picked out the ones that didn’t look so good and placed them into the cull bin. As a ringer, I picked up the best-looking ones and placed them in a circular-shaped metal pan and eventually they ended up on the top of the peach basket when it was opened. Wouldn’t you want your-best looking fruit at the top of the basket?

Years ago, there were a lot of peach trees around The Junction. They were growing all around that area and DeWitt trucks were used to ship them all over the eastern states and beyond. The DeWitts also owned peach orchards in Lilesville, McBee, South Carolina, and in Florida. At one time, L.G. DeWitt was the largest peach grower in the world!

The peach packhouses in Richmond County, especially the one at DeWitt Junction, provided employment for a lot of teenagers and teachers during their summer break. The DeWitts even had a bus that picked up a lot of the workers in Ellerbe and Rockingham.

The only bad thing about that job was the fact that you had to work until all of the peaches were packed. Sometimes that meant working late at night. If you rode the bus home, I’m sure those late nights made it hard to get up and come back again the next morning. I wouldn’t really know about that since I never rode the bus because I lived in the other direction — toward Derby.

My second job at DeWitt Junction was in the early ’70s at the Textile Motor Freight office. The office building for Textile was across the street from the store building and was a completely different business from L.G. DeWitt Trucking. The building was once someone’s home and had a lot of different rooms that had been converted into offices.

One whole side of that house was one long room with the only dividers being partial walls. Since all the women’s desks were so close together, you could pretty much hear everything that went on. My desk happened to be the last one before you got to the office manager’s room.

One day when the office manager had gone out to get a file, I heard his telephone ringing. I usually answered his phone if he was not there and took a message for him. When I answered the phone that day, it was L.G. DeWitt himself on the other end of the line. He asked me where the office manager was, I said: “He’s in the Outhouse. Can I take a message?”

You see, the Outhouse is what we all called the building out back where we filed our old records. I didn’t realize how outhouse sounded until all of the women in the office started laughing. By then, it was too late to unsay what I had already said to Mr. DeWitt, so I just told him I would have the office manager call him when he came in.

When I got off the phone, I thought all of the women were going to fall out laughing. I had to join in myself because I had already put my foot in my mouth and it was too late to take it out!

Another time I got a phone call myself from a trucker who had brought a load of freight back from up north and wanted to get paid. It seemed like every other word that trucker uttered was some type of profanity. Let me tell you, he was really getting on my last nerve. Using profanity has always been something that I have no use for whatsoever. If your vocabulary is so limited that you cannot talk without using profanity, then I think you really need some help.

In just as nice a tone of voice as I could, I said “I don’t like to hear the use of profanity and if you continue to use it, I will hang up on you.” He acted like I had not said a word! He was still talking away and still cussing like a sailor, so I hung up the phone.

One of the girls in the office asked “Did you just hang up on that guy?”

I said “Yes, I did.” About that time, the phone rang again. I told the girl that usually answered the phone: “I’ll get it. I’m sure it’s for me.”

I picked up the phone and said “Hello. This is Azalea Bolton.” That same foul-mouthed trucker said: “Hello. I was just talking to you and we got cut off.”

I said: “Cut off? Not on your life. I hung up the phone and I will do it again if you continue to talk to me like you were talking before.”

He said: Yes, ma’am.”

You know, that trucker talked just as nice and polite as could be after that. He did not use even one colorful phrase in the rest of our conversation.

That just goes to show you that people can change how they act and talk if they have enough incentive.

It’s probably a pretty good incentive if the person you’re talking to also happens to be the one who is going to write you a check, don’t you think?

Azalea R. Bolton is a resident of Richmond County and a member of the Story Spinners of Laurinburg, Richmond County Historical Society and Richmond County Writers’ Club.

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Azalea R. Bolton

Storyteller