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January 29, 2010

'Lucky' ends 39-year run at city

By Nate Smith

Augustine Ochs retired Friday after almost 39 years working for the city of Washington.

But most don’t know him by that name. Let me start over.

After almost 39 years with the City of Washington, Lucky retired Friday.

Lucky Ochs, 63, has been working for the city with the Street Department, mostly keeping it clean. He has been working on the back of a garbage hauler for all 39 years.

Amazingly, for most of those 39 years, Lucky has only called in sick for about three days.

“I missed a day or two but I wasn’t really sick,” Lucky said.

Those days that he had to take were for a cut he sustained on the job (he couldn’t come back to work until it healed) and for a dental appointment.

Since he did not like using sick days, Lucky has reported to work during blizzards, rain, searing heat, cold, wind, and anything else that a man working the back of a garbage hauler would find.

Lucky started working with the city in 1971, before the city had hydraulic trash packers — when trash was hauled and dumped by hand.

“You had to scoop it by hand out of the pickup and reunload it again,” Lucky said. “There wasn’t no bags then too. A lot has changed.”

Lucky said the worst weather he’s ever worked through was not last year’s snow, but during the Blizzard of 1978.

“I remember Williams Drug Store on Main Street you had to scoop (the trash) by hand,” Lucky said. “All the front doors were frozen on Main. That was bad. The worst I’ve ever been.”

Also back then, Lucky and other city workers had to deal with animals. He recalled one time where he opened the lid and, “there it was, staring back at me.”

“I saw those teeth and I said ‘There ain’t no way,’” Lucky said.

On Monday, Mayor Larry Haag, along with Street Department Superintendent Ernie Evans, presented Lucky with a gold watch for his years of service to the city.

Haag called Lucky an “icon” of the city.

“We all hope to give the years of service that he has given,” Haag said. “We hope we are that privileged to put in the service that he has done for the 39-plus years.”

Evans started working for the city in 1997 with Lucky on the back of a garbage hauler. He’s told Lucky at times to go home before when he was so sick.

“They do it in all weather and he’s been there doing this for 39 years,” Evans said. “If we would have taken him off the trash truck, he would have quit.”

Fred Kellar, one of Lucky’s coworkers on the Street Department, said he remembers him as a child.

“I was 8-1/2 years old living on Greenwood Street and there was Lucky, working,” Kellar said. “Now, I am working with him.”

Lucky’s son Gus has also worked for the street department for several years.

To keep busy, Lucky said he will work in antiques, something that he has done part-time while working at the city.

“I’m going to keep busy, I imagine,” Lucky said.

But to keep his health up, he plans to keep walking, much as he has done all these years behind a garbage hauler.

“I got to find something to do,” Lucky said. “If I have to go out and walk the town, that’s what I will do.”

Along with another hobby, singing.

“I was a singer long ago,” Lucky said. “I sing at karaoke and other places.”

But until Friday, Lucky continued to do what he has always done.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” he said after the interview.

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