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In Marshall, It’s Waste Disposal With A Smile
In Marshall, It’s Waste Disposal With A Smile
By Leonard Shapiro
Peggy Wang has one of the easiest commutes of all to a job she’s now held for more than 36 years. She can walk from her house just a few minutes away from the Marshall waste collection site, pretty much known to one and all simply as “The Dump.”
She won’t be making that walk much longer though because she’s retiring at the end of the year at age 71. For many locals, the place where they regularly dispose of their trash, their recycled cans and bottles, newspapers, cardboard and all manner of bulk items won’t be the same without her.
Wang has been a constant presence, Tuesday through Saturday, since 1987, when she first took the job as a Fauquier County employee. She also helps keep the place as spotless as possible considering that most weekdays, 300 vehicles come through the entrance, with 400 on the weekends.
She’s a natural born talker, and better yet, an even better listener.
“People come here and they tell me about their lives,” Wang said, sitting in her tiny and so tidy office cabin that includes a mini-refrigerator, microwave, radio and television. “They talk to me because I’ll talk to anyone. Sometimes I make them laugh, especially older people. They really like to talk because it makes them happy. And I’ll help them carry their trash if they need it.”
Wang is mostly happy about her work, save for the times she has to tell someone they’ll have to take certain items elsewhere.
“People want to bring old mattresses, electronics, air conditioners, humidifiers, tires,” she said. “That has to go to the landfill in Warrenton, and they don’t like to hear that.”
The facility is only open to Fauquier residents, and at times she also must tell visitors with out-of-state license plates they’ll have to turn around and leave.
“Most people I know, they’re from here,” she said. “They don’t have to show me a piece of paper. I do get cussed sometimes because we won’t take their stuff. I’m used to that. It bothers you, but that’s part of the job.”
Wang knew all about the job growing up in Marshall, in the same house she still lives in. Her parents, the late Lynn and Mary Rector, also worked at the facility until they retired.
She graduated from Fauquier High School in 1974 and had several other jobs, working as a housekeeper at the Fauquier Hospital and later at the now closed Warrenton Motor Lodge, where she did a little bit of everything, including cooking in the motel’s small restaurant.
That’s where she met her husband, but they separated in 1989 and she’s remained happily single ever since. She was hired to her present position by the former head man, Johnny Hitt, who lived for awhile in the old schoolhouse next door.
There are other unpleasant tasks at the collection site, folks dumping trash in the recycle bins, not flattening cardboard boxes or properly piling up newspapers, or dealing with equipment mechanical issues.
But on Jan. 1, she’ll leave it all behind, the better to take care of her nearby house and property, to watch car racing and bull riding on TV, to visit nearby country fairs.
And what will she miss most?
“The people,” she said. “I just like to talk to people. It makes me happy, too. They know they can tell me things they can’t tell anyone else. And I don’t tell. I can keep a secret.”
