Nim Cash has done more than build Dallas. He has cleaned up its mess — our mess — for 50 years. This, at least, is what the Official Proclamation signed by Mayor Mike Rawlings says: "On April 30, 1969, Mr. Nim Cash began working for the City of Dallas Sanitation Services Department as a Truck Driver and now works as a Fleet Supervisor for Transfer Station Operations."

But that is not quite right, as the proclamation fails to note that Cash actually began to work for this city around 1950. He was 15, hanging off the side of an open-top trash truck, collecting garbage bound for the old West Dallas landfill.

"I lied about my age when I worked for the city, when I was a kid," the 83-year-old said Wednesday, after a surprise trip to Dallas City Hall to collect a plaque from his council member, Rickey Callahan, and offer in exchange a few reluctant words of appreciation. "I got on early at the city."

Got on early and stayed late, because that is what was expected of him. What he expected of himself.

"I like getting things done for the community," he said. "If I went home and sat down, I wouldn't last."

1 / 2Nim Cash in an undated photo: "I am a truck driver," he said Wednesday. "That's what I put my life on, driving trucks and heavy equipment and training folks who want to do it."(Courtesy Nim Cash) 2 / 2Nim Cash poses for a photograph in his Dallas home on Wednesday. Cash has been working for the city for the last 50 years, and at 83 he is not ready to retire. (Shaban Athuman / Staff Photographer)

Cash came to City Hall on Wednesday unsure of why he had been summoned. His daughter Susie said he feared he was going to be fired after he had missed a few days for being sick, though he has so much accrued time off he could likely skip the rest of 2019 without penalty. Callahan simply wanted to honor a constituent and thank him for a lifetime's worth of service to this city.

Cash wanted no part of Wednesday's presentation, at first, because he seeks no recognition or reward beyond the paycheck now larger than the $35 a week he pocketed 50 years back. He came dressed in his bright-yellow jacket because he had hoped to return to work right after, though his family eventually persuaded him to take the day off.

His daughter said Cash eventually warmed to the kind words and gratitude from Callahan and the mayor and city manager, who seemed genuinely touched by Cash's tenure, commitment and obvious care for the city. Rawlings was especially moved after Cash said his father also worked in the city's sanitation department for three decades before his retirement. The mayor assembled the council for a group photo, after which City Manager T.C. Broadnax explained that when Cash officially went to work for Dallas in 1969, it was a city of only 845,000 residents, and his pay was $1.35 an hour.

"God bless you," said Broadnax, "and have a wonderful retirement."

"I haven't retired yet," Cash deadpanned. He grinned, then offered a small wave as he stepped away from the podium. The council briefing room, packed for the morning's meeting, roared louder and happier than I have ever heard it.

There is nothing romantic about Nim Cash's story; there is no need to dress it up. Because it is what it sounds like and nothing more and nothing less — the tale of a man who went to work because he had to and never stopped. Because once he had siblings to care for — 10 all told, brothers and sisters, all younger than he. Then four children of his own. He provided. He provides.

Every morning, still, Cash rises at 4, then drives a short distance from his Pleasant Grove home to the McCommas Bluff Landfill to clock in. After that, he heads to the Northwest (Bachman) Transfer Station on Harry Hines Boulevard, where he spends his day inspecting vehicles, filling out paperwork — "whatever needs to be done." Most days he drives himself. Because, he said, "I am a driver."

He was born in Anna and grew up in McKinney, then came to Dallas when his father went to work for Southern Pacific. For a time they lived in Mount Vernon before coming back. Nim returned first as a teen to find work, because of the many mouths to feed. His father could not do it alone on a trash man's salary.

Work became "just a thing," he said — a thing to do because there was no other choice.

"You get yourself situated to where you do it," he said. "When I see someone who won't work, I don't see how they got that way. If you want something out of life, you gotta put something into it."

"He is a great man," said daughter Susie. "If you needed something, he would give it to you, even it if means taking from himself." (Courtesy Nim Cash)

He took other jobs between turns disposing our rubbish, among them a stint cutting potatoes for H.W. Lay & Co. and selling Fritos chili pies at Fair Park; and driving trucks for J.H. Rose Truck Lines and the Red Ball moving company and Sears, Roebuck & Co. He also spent 11 years in the Air Force, driving trucks and overseeing the motor pool at Hensley Field.

But in time he returned to the job he'd had as a kid, recruited by John Teipel, longtime director of streets and sanitation, to help build and operate the transfer stations that kept trucks from driving all the way to faraway landfills.

"You used half as many trucks, and that's worked out real well for Dallas," Cash said. "Saved Dallas money."

Of this, perhaps, he is most proud — and not of the years spent working, always working. Because this, he says over and again, is what you are supposed to do — labor until you are unable, provide until you cannot.

Nim Cash, who loves this city more than ... well .. just about anyone. (Shaban Athuman / Staff Photographer)

"You will not find many people that can match the dedication and commitment that Mr. Cash has to his job, his coworkers and this city," Cash's boss Kelly High told me Wednesday. "He is a wonderful gentleman, and I have never known him to be unpleasant or in a foul mood."

Through proud tears, his daughter Susie said she has asked Nim to slow down; she has warned her father that age will one day catch up with him. He tells her he can't leave, not yet, because there are still trucks to inspect, workers to train.

"He likes to say, 'We got a lot of boys in grown men bodies at the city,'" Susie said, a phrase that resonates with more truth than anything I have ever said or read about Dallas City Hall.

"The city can't find somebody who has loved their job as much as Daddy."