Carl Harris sat behind a desk at the city’s street department office late Wednesday morning.

It was one of the few times since the recent attack of wintry weather that he had been able to slow down since the sleet and freezing rain hit Monday. Harris is the city’s street department’s supervisor who oversees 30 people in the department’s six different divisions, and like the crews he supervises, he was out early Tuesday and again Wednesday trying to keep city roads open.

“We got started Tuesday about 2 (a.m.) and started sanding,” he said. “It went on all day until about a quarter to 11 that night. We started again at 5:40 this morning. We had some reports that the bridges had re-iced over I-20, Halls Ferry (Road) and then Indiana (Avenue) and we hit the one on Wisconsin (Avenue). All of them still have ice on them. It didn’t get warm enough for the ice to melt on them.”

Harris has been with the city for 11 years, seven of those as supervisor.

“I started in 2003 — May 5, 2003,” he said. “I came in as a concrete finisher. Skipper Whittington (the present street department superintendent) was the foreman. It wasn’t really that bad. We had a lot of guys working, and when you have a lot of people working together, it’s not really hard on you.”

He was later promoted to concrete foreman and then supervisor.

“It kind of did surprise me,” he said, “but when you work and do what you’re supposed to, do the rewards will come,” he said.

Harris oversees and is responsible for the efforts of the city’s right of way crew, the department’s truck drivers, operators, the concrete department, the brick crew, and the welders. “I have to get in and out to make sure this department has to get what it needs done,” he said.

His day begins when he wakes up at 4 a.m. He gets to the street department office about 5:20 a.m., when he and Whittington go over the work orders for projects and set priorities.

“If we’re working on something from the day before, we’ll continue working on that, depending on what we may get,” he said.

Toughest part of the job, he said, is putting in the time and effort to do it right.

“It takes up a good bit of your time, but when you have the stuff to do it with, it’s a lot easier,” he said. “It’s a handful. It helps when you have the workers to send out who are able and can do it. It helps a lot. Our workers take a lot off us.”

And very little time is spent in the office.

“It’s very seldom we sit behind a desk,” he said. “We’re out on the job. My office is my truck. We might spend that hour, hour-and-a-half in here in the mornings, but when the guys come in here at 6:30 a.m., we’re out and about. I’m pretty much on call 24/7, and if they call, I try to get up and go. We do have an on-call guy, but we don’t try to make him do everything on his own. We come out and help him. I spent the last two days on the sand truck.

He said emergency periods like the wintry weather situations can get to be stressful because the calls about problems from dispatchers and the concentration required to stay on the task.

“And you don’t have as many people out, because the city said for non-essential workers to stay home,” he said. “When we have a storm, everyone works, because the non-essential workers are here and they help.”

Harris said he doesn’t know why he went to work for the street department.

“I never would have thought I would have been with the city,” he said with a laugh. “It was a job posted, and I applied and it just went on from there. I never actually dreamt about working for the city of Vicksburg, but since I’ve been here, it’s been real nice. I’ve never had a problems working for the city.

“I’m here until whatever happens, I’ve got to do another 15 years before I retire,” he said. “If they’ll keep me.”